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Throughout my academic life, one pseudo-intellectual reality has never ceased to amaze me. It would seem that to be a self-respecting American progressive, you must adopt the affectations of cultural self-hate. According to many "liberal" academics, the United States is to blame for nearly every conceivable global ill that has ever taken place. Sectarian violence has just erupted in an African country. Ah, this is a delayed response to European colonialism, which the United States tacitly supported via its non-intervention. The reign of terror unleashed by Islamists around the globe is of course driven by the United States' "warped" foreign policy. The sadistic regime of Saddam Hussein is the creation of the United States, as "we supported Saddam in his war against the Iranians." Many of the older American academics with Marxist leanings have never been able to digest the genocides that were afflicted by Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-Tung on their respective peoples: "Hey, a dictator has to find some way to relax no? The real evildoers though are the American capitalist pigs." The killing fields of the Khmer Rouge were apparently a delayed posttraumatic response to the American bombings that had taken place several years earlier during the Vietnam War. I am not kidding! Some "progressives" have even questioned the military involvement of the United States in WWII. Pacifism would certainly have defeated the Allied Axis much more humanely than the brutality of the American military-industrial complex. Nice! The weak-minded and tortuous logic let alone the intellectual dishonesty are hallucinatory. See my recent post on a related set of issues here.
Am I suggesting that the United States has never engaged in bad actions? Does the United States consist of perfect beings that have never committed geopolitical transgressions? Of course not. Show me a country that does not doggedly pursue its self-interests and I'll show you pigs that fly. However, I do believe that the United States stands for a set of universal ideals that has illuminated the world. Within the pantheon of moral and altruistic civilizations, it is difficult to argue against the preeminent position that the United States would hold in any such ranking. One wonders why otherwise the world's populace has always sought to gain entry into the United States. Ah, it must be because the United States plundered the world's natural resources and hence prospective immigrants are "forced to escape" their poverty to join the oppressor. Perhaps the millions of immigrants who've desperately sought to come to the United States were experiencing a twisted form of the Stockholm Syndrome!
In the warped world of the Ivory Tower, to be pro-American in one's geopolitical orientation is viewed with derision. No "progressive" academic should ever be caught displaying shameless and "vulgar" patriotism. Every American reader whose eyes are scrolling these words should think about the plight of billions of people around the world who do not have the freedoms that he/she takes for granted. So to Sean Penn, Michael Moore, Noam Chomsky, Barbara Streisand, Martin Sheen, and the rest of the useful idiots (to borrow Lenin's famous term), there are endless countries that you could emigrate to, as a means of escaping the "horrors" of the American experience. Live your convictions.
Unlike the useful idiots, I grew up in Lebanon and experienced firsthand the devastations of religious and political oppression. Once my family moved to Canada, I quickly learned to cherish the freedoms afforded to citizens in Western liberal democracies. I also lived in the United States both during my doctoral studies, and then as a visiting professor. Hence, I am forever thankful for the open arms with which both Canada and the United States have received me, and for the civil societies that they stand for.
I end today's post by making the following observation. Canada has often positioned its national identity in a manner that is contrarian to that of the United States. It is as though Canada is the younger sibling wishing to show the parents that it is radically different from its older more powerful sibling. Look ma, I am not like the big older ogre. Well, I am a Canadian academic who cherishes unconditionally the liberties that the United States stands for.
Addendum: After putting up the post, I realized that some readers might offer the most obvious of horrifying acts committed within the United States, namely, its long history of slavery, as a counter-argument to the points raised in my post. Needless to say, no person of conscience would support such a reality. Of course, such prolonged evil was not a reflection of what the American constitution stands for.
Source for Image:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7a/Anti-American…
