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| quote: | Originally posted by Erotic Buddha
putting an american flag because you're an american is an excessive display of nationalism? horse-shit like this is why i stopped being a liberal |
It's more the assumption that if you don't have the flag on your car bumper that you're somehow not American. I don't really see the basis for this claim, and you'd find that people in most countries with less tendency toward nationalism would be equally puzzled. Flying the flag over government buildings is one thing. Plastering it left and right in some desperate attempt to confer legitimacy, rather than by words, is another. It's just a symbol.
| quote: | | you see thats my problem with people like you, everything that goes wrong in the world we are to be blamed for just because we are the wealthiest and most powerful country in the world, we dont send enough economic aid to poor 3rd world countries, we don't do this we don't do that we are evil blah blah blah...its ridiculous...and its sad that there are so many americans that think this way |
Why don't we have that responsibility? This really speaks more of a fundamental difference in idea of what responsibility is, than whether we are responsible or not. I don't think third-world poverty or war is America's fault or something fringe like that. But I am of the opinion that if someone has the means to better the lot of all, then they have responsibility to that goal. This is the rationale for progressive taxation, really.
Most Americans don't think this way about responsibility; we're a highly individualistic society. And that's why we take so little burden in considering solutions to the problems of the world.
So the subject to argue is not really whether America is responsible for action or not. That's pretty pointless when we have different ideas of what responsibility means. The thing to argue is what we are socially responsible for, if anything.
Last edited by Cobalt on Sep-18-2006 at 07:43
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