CitationCapt
STILL determined
- Joined
- Dec 3, 2001
- Posts
- 229
Fellow Aviators,
Next time you are looking for some good reading, try the book "Why the Left Hates America". It can be found in the current affairs section at any bookstore and is quite profound.
Obviously this is not a political forum, but the book “Why the Left Hates America” provides insight into an ideology that has the potential to adversely change the lives, freedoms and economic well being of everyone browsing this board.
Below are a couple of excerpts I found at two sites pertaining to American leftist thinking, one written by the book's author, Daniel J. Flynn. It is not my intent to start a flame thread as I have no intention to debate beyond this post or to discuss the arguments in Flynn’s book, but to encourage all of you to read Flynn’s book.
Enjoy the freedom of flight.
CC
From: www.aim.org
The Left Hates America
By Daniel J. Flynn
October 22, 2002
Why does a large portion of the Islamic world hate America? Since 9-11, media pundits, government officials, and academics have obsessed over the question. Ignored is a more troubling and perplexing problem: Why does the American Left hate America?
In the year since the bloodiest attack on U.S. soil, the familiar bastions of the Left have been awash with anti-Americanism.
“The war on terrorism is terrorism,” proclaimed actor Woody Harrelson. “The whole thing is just bull**CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**.” The National Education Association warned teachers to avoid assigning blame for the 9-11 attacks: “In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise.” The NEA then asked its members to use their classrooms to “discuss historical instances of American intolerance.” Berkeley, Sacramento, Amherst, and points beyond were the site of flag-burnings. Author Alice Walker, feminist leader Gloria Steinem, actor Ed Asner, and dozens of other celebrity intellectuals hyperbolically blasted the war on terrorism as “unjust, immoral, and illegitimate.” These signatories of the infamous petition “Not in Our Name” announced, “we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration.” The petition included an obligatory statement claiming that the signatories “mourned” 9-11, but gratuitously added, “even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam.”
As I outline in my new book Why the Left Hates America, on campus the response was even more despicable, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Officials at Holy Cross, Lehigh, and numerous other schools ordered the removal of American flags that had annoyed them. Resident assistants at Central Michigan scoured the halls of a dormitory tearing down patriotic images deemed “offensive.” On the day of the attacks, Marquette banned a group of students from holding a moment of silence around an American flag. A University of Colorado student declared, “we had it coming,” while a Wake Forest scribe opined, “sometimes it is our fault.” Most infamously, New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold shamelessly announced on 9-11: “Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon would get my vote.”
Should the Left’s reaction be at all shocking?
For years, the Left’s programmatic response to any ill that had befallen the world was to blame the United States. America was the obvious victim of 9-11, yet following the carnage the Left deferred to their familiar script—it’s all America’s fault.
Of greater relevance, the institutions that were targeted by Islamic terrorists on 9-11 had been the target of Leftist rhetoric and violence for decades. In the fall of 1920, an anti-capitalist bombing on Wall Street killed 40. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Weathermen bombed the Pentagon, robbed lower-Manhattan financial institutions, set off explosives in a New York City police station, and perpetrated acts of terrorism throughout the country. In the 1980s, E.L. Doctorow spoke for many when he professed, “The Pentagon and the Stock Exchange are in the eighties the twin images of our idolatry,” noting that there was something “really rotten in America right now.”
The Left had rhetorically and violently targeted the same places—the centers of America’s military power and financial might—hit by the terrorists on 9-11. What the American Left failed to do—destroy “the twin images of our idolatry”—their foreign allies nearly accomplished. Why should we be surprised at the American Left’s reaction to 9-11 and the War on Terrorism? While the domestic Left’s rationale for hating America may be different than the Islamists’ rationale, the fact remains that the Left hates America just the same.
The response from mainstream liberals to their more extreme ideological allies is conspicuously muted.
Why are State Department officials calling for pro-American propaganda overseas, but ignoring anti-Americanism at home? Why are colleges turning out a spate of courses dedicated to “understanding” the Islamists who hate us, but in denial of the campus ideologues who despise America? Where are the media, who reported on the rabid anti-Americanism in Nablus and Islamabad, but ignore it in Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Amherst?
Liberals take the “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to confronting the enemy within not only because it is politically convenient, but because liberals are all too ready to excuse the sins of allies to their left as well. American liberals refuse to face the uncomfortable truth about their ideological cousins that the rest of the country has come to realize: the Left hates America.
Also, from: www.humaneventsonline.com
Editorial:
Hollywood Left Still Hates America
Just in case you thought that the national emergency created when al Qaeda terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on September 11 had created a sense of patriotism and national solidarity that included people all across the American political spectrum, the Hollywood left has now reemerged to disabuse you of the notion.
Led by Jeremy Pikser, the screenwriter who wrote the movie Bulworth, a coalition of left-wing actors, authors and academics have joined together to publish a blame-America-first attack against the U.S. war on terrorism.
The letter, published June 14 in the The Guardian of London, claims that the ongoing congressionally authorized U.S. war against the terrorists that attacked the United States is "unjust, immoral and illegitimate."
"We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do," say the signatories, "we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world."
The signers include actors Ed Asner and Ossie Davis, writers Alice Walker, Russell Banks and Grace Paley, academics Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, and Martin Luther King III and Gloria Steinem. Radio personality Casey Kasem also signed the letter.
The letter is a carefully constructed piece of propaganda that conflates the current declared war against al Qaeda with an as yet unlaunched war against Iraq. It also conflates acts of Congress with acts by the President, while throughout distorting and confusing constitutional principles and long-standing U.S. laws.
Most remarkably, it compares the September 11 attacks against America to U.S. actions in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf. "We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11," said the letter. "We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the horrible scenes of carnage—even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam."
Even while claiming to be "shocked" by the carnage of September 11, the signatories specifically attacked the U.S. action in Afghanistan today. "In our name, the Bush Administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere anytime."
Presumably, these radical leftists would prefer that the United States had not defended itself against the September 11 attackers and had left the Taliban regime in place in Kabul so it could continue to repress the Afghan people and violate their rights.
But it is not only the U.S. vindication of rights in Afghanistan that angers these limousine left-wingers, it is also what they spuriously claim to be the violation of rights, and suppression of liberty, here in America. "Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked and suppressed," they claim. This is an odd assertion considering that the signers of the letter are Americans who in some cases have enjoyed long careers promoting unpopular or anti-American ideas in the U.S. entertainment industry and in academia. They are tenured members of the Hollywood and scholastic elite.
But this may be the most bitter irony: The letter writers falsely claim not to enjoy the very freedom Americans are now risking their lives to preserve for them, the very freedom that allows them to spew anti-Americanisms in a foreign newspaper even in time of war. "We say not in our name," the signers conclude. "We refuse to be a party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies: We will show our solidarity in word and deed."
How would that differ from what John Walker Lindh is alleged to have done?
________________
© HUMAN EVENTS, 2002
Next time you are looking for some good reading, try the book "Why the Left Hates America". It can be found in the current affairs section at any bookstore and is quite profound.
Obviously this is not a political forum, but the book “Why the Left Hates America” provides insight into an ideology that has the potential to adversely change the lives, freedoms and economic well being of everyone browsing this board.
Below are a couple of excerpts I found at two sites pertaining to American leftist thinking, one written by the book's author, Daniel J. Flynn. It is not my intent to start a flame thread as I have no intention to debate beyond this post or to discuss the arguments in Flynn’s book, but to encourage all of you to read Flynn’s book.
Enjoy the freedom of flight.
CC
From: www.aim.org
The Left Hates America
By Daniel J. Flynn
October 22, 2002
Why does a large portion of the Islamic world hate America? Since 9-11, media pundits, government officials, and academics have obsessed over the question. Ignored is a more troubling and perplexing problem: Why does the American Left hate America?
In the year since the bloodiest attack on U.S. soil, the familiar bastions of the Left have been awash with anti-Americanism.
“The war on terrorism is terrorism,” proclaimed actor Woody Harrelson. “The whole thing is just bull**CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED****CENSORED**.” The National Education Association warned teachers to avoid assigning blame for the 9-11 attacks: “In this country, we still believe that all people are innocent until solid, reliable evidence from our legal authorities proves otherwise.” The NEA then asked its members to use their classrooms to “discuss historical instances of American intolerance.” Berkeley, Sacramento, Amherst, and points beyond were the site of flag-burnings. Author Alice Walker, feminist leader Gloria Steinem, actor Ed Asner, and dozens of other celebrity intellectuals hyperbolically blasted the war on terrorism as “unjust, immoral, and illegitimate.” These signatories of the infamous petition “Not in Our Name” announced, “we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration.” The petition included an obligatory statement claiming that the signatories “mourned” 9-11, but gratuitously added, “even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam.”
As I outline in my new book Why the Left Hates America, on campus the response was even more despicable, particularly in the immediate aftermath of the attacks. Officials at Holy Cross, Lehigh, and numerous other schools ordered the removal of American flags that had annoyed them. Resident assistants at Central Michigan scoured the halls of a dormitory tearing down patriotic images deemed “offensive.” On the day of the attacks, Marquette banned a group of students from holding a moment of silence around an American flag. A University of Colorado student declared, “we had it coming,” while a Wake Forest scribe opined, “sometimes it is our fault.” Most infamously, New Mexico Professor Richard Berthold shamelessly announced on 9-11: “Anyone who can blow up the Pentagon would get my vote.”
Should the Left’s reaction be at all shocking?
For years, the Left’s programmatic response to any ill that had befallen the world was to blame the United States. America was the obvious victim of 9-11, yet following the carnage the Left deferred to their familiar script—it’s all America’s fault.
Of greater relevance, the institutions that were targeted by Islamic terrorists on 9-11 had been the target of Leftist rhetoric and violence for decades. In the fall of 1920, an anti-capitalist bombing on Wall Street killed 40. In the 1960s and ’70s, the Weathermen bombed the Pentagon, robbed lower-Manhattan financial institutions, set off explosives in a New York City police station, and perpetrated acts of terrorism throughout the country. In the 1980s, E.L. Doctorow spoke for many when he professed, “The Pentagon and the Stock Exchange are in the eighties the twin images of our idolatry,” noting that there was something “really rotten in America right now.”
The Left had rhetorically and violently targeted the same places—the centers of America’s military power and financial might—hit by the terrorists on 9-11. What the American Left failed to do—destroy “the twin images of our idolatry”—their foreign allies nearly accomplished. Why should we be surprised at the American Left’s reaction to 9-11 and the War on Terrorism? While the domestic Left’s rationale for hating America may be different than the Islamists’ rationale, the fact remains that the Left hates America just the same.
The response from mainstream liberals to their more extreme ideological allies is conspicuously muted.
Why are State Department officials calling for pro-American propaganda overseas, but ignoring anti-Americanism at home? Why are colleges turning out a spate of courses dedicated to “understanding” the Islamists who hate us, but in denial of the campus ideologues who despise America? Where are the media, who reported on the rabid anti-Americanism in Nablus and Islamabad, but ignore it in Berkeley, Ann Arbor, and Amherst?
Liberals take the “see no evil, hear no evil” approach to confronting the enemy within not only because it is politically convenient, but because liberals are all too ready to excuse the sins of allies to their left as well. American liberals refuse to face the uncomfortable truth about their ideological cousins that the rest of the country has come to realize: the Left hates America.
Also, from: www.humaneventsonline.com
Editorial:
Hollywood Left Still Hates America
Just in case you thought that the national emergency created when al Qaeda terrorists killed 3,000 Americans on September 11 had created a sense of patriotism and national solidarity that included people all across the American political spectrum, the Hollywood left has now reemerged to disabuse you of the notion.
Led by Jeremy Pikser, the screenwriter who wrote the movie Bulworth, a coalition of left-wing actors, authors and academics have joined together to publish a blame-America-first attack against the U.S. war on terrorism.
The letter, published June 14 in the The Guardian of London, claims that the ongoing congressionally authorized U.S. war against the terrorists that attacked the United States is "unjust, immoral and illegitimate."
"We believe that people of conscience must take responsibility for what their own governments do," say the signatories, "we must first of all oppose the injustice that is done in our name. Thus we call on all Americans to resist the war and repression that has been loosed on the world by the Bush administration. It is unjust, immoral and illegitimate. We choose to make common cause with the people of the world."
The signers include actors Ed Asner and Ossie Davis, writers Alice Walker, Russell Banks and Grace Paley, academics Noam Chomsky and Edward Said, and Martin Luther King III and Gloria Steinem. Radio personality Casey Kasem also signed the letter.
The letter is a carefully constructed piece of propaganda that conflates the current declared war against al Qaeda with an as yet unlaunched war against Iraq. It also conflates acts of Congress with acts by the President, while throughout distorting and confusing constitutional principles and long-standing U.S. laws.
Most remarkably, it compares the September 11 attacks against America to U.S. actions in Vietnam, Panama and the Persian Gulf. "We too watched with shock the horrific events of September 11," said the letter. "We too mourned the thousands of innocent dead and shook our heads at the horrible scenes of carnage—even as we recalled similar scenes in Baghdad, Panama City and, a generation ago, Vietnam."
Even while claiming to be "shocked" by the carnage of September 11, the signatories specifically attacked the U.S. action in Afghanistan today. "In our name, the Bush Administration, with near unanimity from Congress, not only attacked Afghanistan but arrogated to itself and its allies the right to rain down military force anywhere anytime."
Presumably, these radical leftists would prefer that the United States had not defended itself against the September 11 attackers and had left the Taliban regime in place in Kabul so it could continue to repress the Afghan people and violate their rights.
But it is not only the U.S. vindication of rights in Afghanistan that angers these limousine left-wingers, it is also what they spuriously claim to be the violation of rights, and suppression of liberty, here in America. "Dissident artists, intellectuals, and professors find their views distorted, attacked and suppressed," they claim. This is an odd assertion considering that the signers of the letter are Americans who in some cases have enjoyed long careers promoting unpopular or anti-American ideas in the U.S. entertainment industry and in academia. They are tenured members of the Hollywood and scholastic elite.
But this may be the most bitter irony: The letter writers falsely claim not to enjoy the very freedom Americans are now risking their lives to preserve for them, the very freedom that allows them to spew anti-Americanisms in a foreign newspaper even in time of war. "We say not in our name," the signers conclude. "We refuse to be a party to these wars and we repudiate any inference that they are being waged in our name or for our welfare. We extend a hand to those around the world suffering from these policies: We will show our solidarity in word and deed."
How would that differ from what John Walker Lindh is alleged to have done?
________________
© HUMAN EVENTS, 2002
