Fanning the flames of civil war
Admittedly, young people are capable of letting their passion for justice exceed the public relations skills of professionals. And extremists advocating wacky things will always be around in any public event (Fred Phelps, anyone?)
But is it wise for the daughter of immigrants to fan the flames of racism repeatedly, in her quest to bring a civil war to the US? Her point seems to be that racists she agrees with are better than the people with opposing views that she thinks are worse racists.
In short, “Neener-neener, we’re smarter and better than these kids and extremists, because we stand for the law and proper flag protocol this week, unlike the previous weeks when we were flying George Bush on a flagpole above an upside-down US Constitution.”
It sure would be a shame to start a civil war to make a point like that. Here’s another point I’d ask folks to consider. America is an entire hemisphere. From the southern tips of Chile and Argentina to the northernmost reaches of Canada, we’re all ‘Americans’. So why do we continually refer to us - U.S. citizens - as ‘the Americans’ and call all our fellow Americans names like Chileans, Argentinans and Canadians?
Perhaps, Ms. Malkin, when we begin to address the myriad ways we divide and separate people from their neighbors and when we put the concerns of all Americans above flag protocol, we can begin to display democracy, humanity, courtesy and civility at its best. Striving to be a good model of all that would seem to make more sense and would be more moral than always trying to claim you’re superior to everyone else, and hoping to incite a race war.
April 2nd, 2006 at 3:17 am
We call ourselves “Americans” because the word “America” is part of our nation’s name, and the other words, “United” and “States,” do not provide much in the way of a basis for an alternative moniker. This does not imply that citizens of other nations of “the Americas” are not also “Americans” in this more general sense. I would not read more into it than that.