My friend Tia over at Croissant Living, put up a really interesting piece that she had received in an email from a friend in the US.
I am posting it here out of curiousity: What do you think of it?
(info about the author is in the comments. I don't want it to affect your opinion while reading)
To Kill an American...
You probably missed it in the rush of news last week, but there was actually a report that someone in Pakistan had published in a newspaper an offer of a reward to anyone who killed an American, any American.
[Somebody] wrote the following to let everyone know what an American is, so they would know when they found one:
An American is English, or French, or Italian, Irish, German, Spanish, Polish, Russian or Greek. An American may also be Canadian, Mexican, African, Indian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Australian, Iranian, Asian, or Arab, or Pakistani, or Afghan.
An American may also be a Cherokee, Osage, Blackfoot, Navaho, Apache, Seminole or one of the many other tribes known as native Americans.
An American is Christian, or he could be Jewish, or Buddhist, or Muslim. In fact, there are more Muslims in America than in Afghanistan.
The only difference is that in America they are free to worship as each of them chooses.
An American is also free to believe in no religion.
For that he will answer only to God, not to the government, or to armed thugs claiming to speak for the government and for God.
An American is from the most prosperous land in the history of the world.
The root of that prosperity can be found in the Declaration of Independence, which recognizes the God given right of each person the pursuit of happiness.
An American is generous.
Americans have helped out just about every other nation in the world in their time of need.
When Afghanistan was overrun by the Soviet army 20 years ago, Americans came with arms and supplies to enable the people to win back their country.
As of the morning of September 11, Americans had given more than any other nation to the poor in Afghanistan.
Americans welcome the best.
The best products, the best books, the best music, the best food, the best athletes.
But they also welcome the least.
The national symbol of America, The Statue of Liberty, welcomes your tired and your poor, the wretched refuse of your teeming shores, the homeless, tempest tossed.
These in fact are the people who built America.
Some of them were working in the Twin Towers the morning of September 11, 2001 earning a better life for their families.
I've been told that the World Trade Center victims were from at least 30 other countries, cultures, and first languages, including those that aided and abetted the terrorists.
So you can try to kill an American if you must.
Hitler did.
So did General Tojo, and Stalin, and Mao Tse-Tung, and every bloodthirsty tyrant in the history of the world.
But, in doing so you would just be killing yourself.
Because Americans are not a particular people from a particular place.
They are the embodiment of the human spirit of freedom.
Everyone who holds to that spirit, everywhere, is an American.
Pass that around the World.
As far as the author is concerned, somehow the original author had become an Australian dentist by the time this made its way around to people's inboxes. But the real author is a right-wing American - a certain Mr. Peter Ferrara. Apparently this was originally entitled "What is an American?" and how it came to be "To Kill an American" is as much of a mystery as how the Mr. Ferrara came to be an Australian dentist. At any rate, you can check out Mr. Ferrara's bio at www.virginiainstitute.org/scholars.php . Credits include articles published in the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal, and National Review. He was a part of the Reagan administration and is considered one of the "foremost experts on Social Security privatization" among other things .
Lee, I love the comment leading up to the uncovering of his TRUE identity! Unmasked!
This email is fascinating if only to teach me where the other side is coming from...For months I was asking myself who the heck in the states was behind this whole war and why...
It's just too bloody simple, not to mention insulting.
America and Americans are not simply freedom loving good guys &mdash they're also gun-loving racists, wife-beating alcoholics and money-grubbing assholes, not to mention completely normal joes.
In the way that someone can say everyone everywhere is America, one could also say everyone everywhere is Chinese, African, whatever. This mail is a meaningless pile of drivel. Gah. Ick. Yuk.
Oooo..."meaningless pile of drivel." I like that. That resonates.
So where are the right wingers? Could you please stand up and make yourself known? You certainly had no trouble attacking me when I was to your turf. Too pansy to stake your claim on mine?
Come out come out wherever you are.
I have a couple things to say. One is, this email, written by a right-winger or no, didn't single out any race, nationality or creed to call 'assholes', and whatnot. And it's disingenuous to say "everyone everywhere" could be whatever, because frankly, the United States of America (calling it just America is rather rude to the rest of North and South America, don't you think?) *did* get settled in a different way than France, Russia, China, Papua New Guinea. The closest approximation would really be Australia, and the US has taken a different tack.
So if you're talking origins, then yes, I DO feel it's fair to say that the US is substantially different in origins, history, and make-up than most countries. (Never mind that some of that is because the Westerners came in and practically exterminated the indigenous population... recently).
That said--speaking as a US Citizen, mildly well edumicated, living in the US, and having lived abroad, I don't know what y'all living abroad think. I ran into a guy from Manchester and a girl from Dublin in New York over the weekend. We spent the night drinking at a nearby pub. They were ASTONISHED to hear that most of my peers--most people I know, really--aren't for a war. We talked a lot of politics (and Pete Townsend, but that's a different Talk Back) and dude. Let me make this COMPLETELY CLEAR: Most of us dread what the hell our illiterate inbred illegitimate president might get this damn country into.
So there's that.
The problem I have with flag-waving God Save America emails like this is that it focuses entirely on what the US has done right--and completely ignores what the US has done wrong. By ignoring the US's history of bass ackwards foreign policy, by shunting aside the US's ignorance of world events, and by not addressing our own internal conflicts (genocide of Native Americans? racial intolerance?) it gives room to maneuver to everyone who wants to paint every US citizen with the same gun-totin'-wackjob brush.
That doesn't mean that the details of the email are WRONG--it just means they're one-sided, myopic, and simplistic.
Amen! I agree with you about the Europeans: they think we are all hootin' and hollerin' and hopin' that Bushy rescues us from the evil Saddam. Demonstrations here are pretty severe, you would think they would be aware that the US is pretty much 50/50 on the issue, no?
As far as my reference to this being a right-wing author, I stress it only because of the emphasis on patriotism so pronounced in much of the right-wing stuff I read - which is, admittedly, little. When reading this on Tia's site, it was clear that those who approved of and appreciated this email were from the right, and those that found it to be either an outrage or a mild stretch tended to be from the left. Interesting, if not totally researched and quantified scientifically.