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Friday, October 04, 2002
Atrios beat me to it, but... I don't get all this crap about people in this country "hating America." With the exception of an infinitessimally small number of people on the extreme fringes of society, nobody here "hates America." How could we? Would we hate the land? The people? The constitutional system of government? Would anybody here be happier if the country were defeated in war or subjected to more terrorist atrocities? Is anyone here advocating the overthrow of the government and its replacement with a dictatorship, theocracy, or monarchy? No. It's an insultingly simplistic overgeneralization. Many people here disagree with one or more governmental policies. It's their right to do so, and to be expected given that at least 40% of the voting population in most districts voted against their current elected officials. That percentage is significantly higher with regard to the president. Some people just cannot wrap their heads around the idea of constructive dissent. It's the same crowd who got "doesn't respond well to criticism" on their first-grade report cards. Although I wouldn’t say that anyone outside of the aforementioned lunatic fringe hates America, but I will say that some people seem to like it more than others. Who is attempting to squelch the fine American tradition of free speech with shouts of “treason?” Who is in favor of curtailing more and more of our constitutionally guaranteed civil rights at every opportunity? Who is in favor of eliminating governmental initiatives to ensure equality of treatment for all under the law? Who is attempting to do away with the division between church and state upon which America was founded? We get the “hate America” treatment for acting in the tradition and according to the laws of the land. They get to call themselves great patriots for undermining them. Do these people even know what America is? 
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