01-08-2019, 10:40 AM
It is impossible to associate one partisan agenda with what it means to be an American. To decide what isn't? I'd say that selling out the interests of Americans to foreign powers or ideologies hostile to democracy is un-American, l whether the ideology is Communism, fascism, or "Islamofascism". Even the KKK is American by default.
"American" is so meaningless as a cultural description that it is more geographic than anything else. Think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire without the despotic tendencies. As a political description, then look at the Constitution and at such laws as the 1964 Civil Rights Act that fits the description of the legislation that Congress has for enforcing it.
If a dispute is possible among well-intentioned, wise people, then one cannot use the word "un-American" to describe something that might seem exotic or even clearly from elsewhere. There may be nothing American about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, but enjoying them is as American as having a pizza at a birthday party at which the kids break a pinata.
"American" is so meaningless as a cultural description that it is more geographic than anything else. Think of the Austro-Hungarian Empire without the despotic tendencies. As a political description, then look at the Constitution and at such laws as the 1964 Civil Rights Act that fits the description of the legislation that Congress has for enforcing it.
If a dispute is possible among well-intentioned, wise people, then one cannot use the word "un-American" to describe something that might seem exotic or even clearly from elsewhere. There may be nothing American about the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky, but enjoying them is as American as having a pizza at a birthday party at which the kids break a pinata.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.