Mrs. Obama: FINALLY Proud of Her Country?

You know that recent Tamar thread on why we're still here? For me, wading through 8 pages of pseudo-patriotic bullshit to find this piece of wisdom worthy of engraving in marble is a pretty good answer.

If enough people had a problem with it, yes, it would have been both her problem and her husbands. That's the way elections work, no?

In this case, she misspoke, and she corrected the intent of her comments.

Most of the rest of this thread has been whether it's ok or not to feel pride in your country, and the fact quite a few folks here can't differentiate that with mindless emotionalism.

Love America or we will punish you!!!

I didn't see that discussed here. It certainly wasn't related to my point, and I'm pretty sure it's at best tangentially related to Diacanu's.

That's because y'all explain it so calmly and dispassionately. Bloody chunks of meat - ROWR!!!

Goddamnit, now I'm hungry.

Wow, you really latch onto the minutiae.

I had hamburger that night, and was looking for something that was really, really not in the class of 'fruit' to compare apples and oranges.

But nice to know it made an impression. LOL

Perhaps, but apparently not this one. Two States held contests between her "scandalous" comments and her dutiful but essentially unnecessary clarification.

I'm still curious as to why Michelle Obama should fall all over herself expressing pride in things about her country if she isn't.

It's like telling people that they should be crying themselves to sleep every night because of the plight of children in Africa, and having a problem with someone who doesn't.

If they're mortified by it, then they are. Otherwise, no.

Same with pride.

I prefer to be told the truth rather than a warm and fuzzy lie.

Bullshit.

Your point was unless I was directly involved in the creation and success of my country, any pride I take in it is empty.

Sorry, the founding fathers are dead, and I don't think there are any generals, captains of industry, nobel prize winners or senators posting at Wordforge.

Me too. I'm not sure which one we got.

But the reason that the politicians tell the warm and fuzzy lie is that if they express dismay over the crimes of their country, the majority of the people that live here who actually like and respect it won't elect them.

Pretty simple concept Marathon, and certainly the reason Michelle Obama 'clarified' her meaning.

But how do you feel about voters who would rather hear a pretty lie than a gritty truth?

And yet there seem to be an inordinate number of posters who feel compelled to include pride in some large tribal territory as part of their personal armamentarium - absent which, others are deemed "less patriotic" - while simultaneously arguing that their little corner of that territory is somehow better than someone else's.

I don't blame the voters for that. I'm sure the vast majority of voters would want to hear about it if a candidate was disgusted with the United States of America. It would make the choice pretty easy for most of them.

Which is why a politician will never, ever say that.

It's easier to find a specific reason not to vote for someone than it is to comprehend their entire platform and chose a reason why to vote for someone.

If you want to blame voters for that, I wouldn't argue.

If you express dismay over the crimes of your country, you don't like and respect it?

You can't do both?

Indeed, couldn't you express dismay over the crimes of your country BECAUSE you like and respect it?

I don't regularly express dismay over the crimes of countries I despise, because that behavior is par for the course, and I deliberately place those places out of my mind to keep sane.

In a sense, the founding fathers for blacks lived in the 20th century, and the local governments were for the most part against them rather than for them.

So what part of that stirs pride?

Quoted for emphasis.

Ah, so we have to limit ourselves to our own racial subset in order to have pride in anything accomplished in our country.

That level of racism is something we shouldn't take pride in.

There's a few amendments that the Federal government threw in that might be construed as something to take pride in - that the national government showed greater insight than Jo Bob at the County Sheriff. America isn't just Little Rock, Arkansas.

NM

Isn't that what you've been doing all along?

We have to remember what race Michelle Obama is, and what that means.

I've noticed from my experience (and Alphaman, Raoul, and others can perhaps speak to this as well) that black children today get a much larger percentage of their history from familial accounts, presumably due to what I just pointed out...that their founding fathers actually lived during their lifetimes or those of their parents. Things like the March on Washington, the Million Man March, etc. Those weren't exactly expressions of pride in their government.

Exactly what part of comments like "segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!" is meant to make an African-American swoon with pride?

Part of the problem, in my opinion.

Blacks should be heirs to the tradition of liberty created by the Founders. However, the over-emphasis on the civil rights era has created a vision where, for blacks, the only consideration given to the Founding tradition is its failures and oversights. It's also left them with the liberal disease: the idea--unchangeable no matter the evidence--that the government can, should, and will fix all of your problems.

In this context, it means she clarified her statements to say that she was indeed proud of America.

Because she's a smart woman and understands what having a view other than that, at least publicly, could have an affect on her husband's presidential aspirations.

Well, assuming we are taking the concept of government as opposed to nation or country, which of course are different things, then I'd say having pride in the 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, the last one ratified in 1870 btw, and the civil rights movement in the 1960s which had the backing of the federal government are all reasons a black person could be proud of being a United States citizen. Because of the laws that government passed, even to the point of fighting a bloody war whose heart was the issue of slavery.

I would assume the part where that was stomped flat and anyone with any authority or power that made such an egregious statement now would be reviled at best and suffer grave consequences, including being fired or suffering crippling fines.

How do you get that exactly?

They should be, but they aren't. This country wasn't founded for them, but rather atop them.

That's like telling someone who wakes up from a nightmare that they should focus on how wonderfully vivid the imagery was.

I'm not seeing how this remotely applies to the topic at hand.

They had the audacity to expect the government to protect the rights they achieved in the 1860s a hundred years later in the 1960s. The nerve!

I guess I had no idea that freedom and equal access to the constitution was a problem

Yes, and only how many years after "We hold these truths to be self-evident...that all men are created equal."

Imagine all those decades that blacks read that and thought "WTF?". Assuming they were permitted to learn to read.

I'm overlooking the part of the Bill of Rights that mentions Government Housing and Food Stamps for Shaniqua. Where is it?

Protecting the rights of the individual is the fundamental duty of the government. Providing for those same individuals from the cradle to the grave is not a duty. Convincing the coloreds that it is a legitimate function of government to provide handouts was a crime.

Yes, in periods of invasion or rebellion, neither of which are happening.

There was a contemporary of Freud, I don't recall which one, but he also grew up in Vienna and was part of that circle of psychotherapists. Christian, though, and I remember this because the story he told was about attending church with his father and younger sister every Sunday, after which Papa would take the children to a sidewalk cafe as a treat. Papa would order coffee and a selection of pastries, and proceed to eat each of them and drink his coffee mit schlage while the children watched.

The children were not allowed to eat any of the pastries, not even a bite. They were expected merely to be grateful that Papa had allowed them to bask in his presence uninterrupted every Sunday.

I suspect marathon knows what I'm getting at here. I'm not sure you will.

Quite true. Which is why Paladin dragging that into this thread was a non-sequitur.