posted November 17, 2004 09:45 AM            

Hi. Are you nuts?

Forgive me for being so blunt, but your reaction to our re-election of President Bush has been so outrageous that I’m wondering if you have quite literally lost your minds.

One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?” and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre – to explain the election’s outcome to their readers.
In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.” And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”

Of course, you are entitled to whatever views about us that you care to hold. (And lucky for you we Americans aren’t like so many of the Muslims on your own continent; as the late Dutch filmmaker Theo van Gogh just discovered, make one nasty crack about them and you’re likely to get six bullets pumped into your head and a knife plunged into your chest.)

But before you write us off as just a bunch of sweaty, hairy-chested, Bible-thumping morons who are more likely to break their fast by dipping a Krispy Kreme into a diet cola than a biscotti into an espresso – and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

We believe that church and state should be separate, but that religion should remain at the center of life. We are a Judeo-Christian culture, which means we consider those ten things on a tablet to be commandments, not suggestions.

We believe that individuals are more important than groups, that families are more important than governments, that children should be raised by their parents rather than by the State, and that marriage should take place only between a man and a woman.

We believe that rights must be balanced by responsibilities, that personal freedom is a privilege we must be careful not to abuse, and that the rule of law cannot be set aside when it becomes inconvenient.

We believe in economic liberty, and in the right of purposeful and industrious entrepreneurs to run their businesses – and thus create jobs – with a minimum of government interference.

We recognize that other people see things differently, and we are tolerant of their views. But we believe that our country is worth defending, and if anyone decides that killing us is an okay thing to do we will go after them with everything we’ve got.

If these beliefs seem strange to you, they shouldn’t. For these are precisely the beliefs that powered Western Europe – you – from the Middle Ages into the Renaissance, on to the Enlightenment, and forward into the modern world. They are the beliefs that made Europe itself the glory of Western Civilization and – not coincidentally – ignited the greatest outpouring of art, literature, music and scientific discovery the world has ever known including Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Shakespeare, Bach, Issac Newton and Descartes.

Europe Is Dying

It is your abandonment of these beliefs that has created the gap between Europe and the United States. You have ceased to be a Judeo-Christian culture, and have become instead a secular culture. And a secular culture quickly goes from being “un-religious” to anti-religious. Indeed, your hostility to the basic concepts of Judaism and Christianity has literally been written into your new European Union constitution, despite the Pope’s heroic efforts to the contrary.

Your rate of marriage is at an all-time low, and the number of abortions in Europe is at an all-time high. Indeed, your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying. And of the children you do manage to produce, all too few will be raised in stable, two-parent households.

Your economy is stagnant because your government regulators make it just about impossible for your entrepreneurs to succeed – except by fleeing to the United States, where we welcome them and celebrate their success.

And your armed forces are a joke. With the notable exception of Great Britain, you no longer have the military strength to defend yourselves. Alas, you no longer have the will to defend yourselves.

What worries me even more than all this is your willful blindness. You refuse to see that it is you, not we Americans, who have abandoned Western Civilization. It’s worrisome because, to tell you the truth, we need each other. Western Civilization today is under siege, from radical Islam on the outside and from our own selfish hedonism within. It’s going to take all of our effort, our talent, our creativity and, above all, our will to pull through.

So take a good, hard look at yourselves and see what your own future will be if you don’t change course. And please, stop sneering at America long enough to understand it. After all, Western Civilization was your gift to us, and you ought to be proud of what we Americans have made of it.

posted November 17, 2004 11:26 AM              

quote:

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One of Britain’s largest newspapers ran a headline asking “How Can 59 Million Americans Be So Dumb?” and commentators in France all seemed to use the same word – bizarre – to explain the election’s outcome to their readers.

In Germany the editors of Die Tageszeitung responded to our vote by writing that “Bush belongs at a war tribunal – not in the White House.” And on a London radio talk show last week one Jeremy Hardy described our President and those of us who voted for him as “stupid, crazy, ignorant, bellicose Christian fundamentalists.”

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They are seeing us from another perspective, jwhop.......and I don't think it's cool that so many outside our country HATE us! ...and we're all lumped together now, that they "think" the majority of us voted for bush...eeeeee

Rainbow

(it used to be that BUSH was hated! Now it's the whole damn country that's hated!)

posted November 17, 2004 06:06 PM              

Honestly, what are they going to do if they hate us so much? Throw cheese at us? I think Europe is old, it's nice, but I wouldn't live there except for Britian, and the continent doesn't compare to the hustle and fast pace style of America. Honestly, I like the fast pace because I'm used to it. On average, Europeans only work 35 hours per week, and have two hour lunch breaks. Yet they call us lazy? I live in New England so everyone is just rushing around going absolutely no where sometimes. Europe is good for one thing though, they really do make good cheese. Also, who wouldn't want to attend Oxford University in England? How about seeing Pompeii and Vatican city? I like my New England area though, I like being in a mad rush, and seeing some real action. Of course I'll settle down and relax for a week or longer, and then I'll go right back to being in a mad rush again.

posted November 17, 2004 07:23 PM              

Sorry, sorry, I'm just so used to it. Sometimes, you don't even know you're stressed out. Like today, I got a letter in the mail from my guidance teacher, and it said I should go to a stress management class. LOL, that is life for yeah.

posted November 18, 2004 01:02 AM              

Ya know hon, I just wanted to tell you that I love my country too (altho having seen here, numerous times, that I'm a communist, a traitor, Saddam's buddy, on the side of the terrorists, and that I hate my country) I wouldn't find it surprising if you believed all that stuff (it's a "train the brain" thing)...

...not because I believe that you're naive enough to you take someone's word for it, right off the bat....... but - because after having it drummed into your subconcious over and over it can start to become "truth" for you...

That's why McDonalds' used to tell you "You deserve a break today...at McDonalds" (over and over and over)....They knew about "train the brain."

Subliminal messages work the same way....we can be influenced to act in a certain way without even realizing that it has happened.

That's why a lot of people make positive affirmations daily too....hear it over and over and it becomes a part of you....

Anyway, I've gotten way off the track here....

I started to tell you, that believe it or not, I love my country too...and it's because I love my country that I now find it embarrassing and humilating that my country no longer has the respect it once had. The beautiful country that I grew up in (and believe me honey, I've been around a long time....probably your elder most poster here), is being turned into something that is ugly and hated by the rest of the world......and damn it! I STILL love my country and hope and pray that someday it will be healed from the ugly cancer that is destroying it!

This is the America I remember....

AMERICA THE BEAUTIFUL

America, America
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!

MY COUNTRY 'TIS OF THEE

My country tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing.
Land where my fathers died!
Land of the Pilgrim's pride!
From every mountain side,
Let freedom ring!

My native country, thee,
Land of the noble free,
Thy name I love.
I love thy rocks and rills,
Thy woods and templed hills;
My heart with rapture fills
Like that above.

Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet freedom's song.
Let mortal tongues awake;
Let all that breathe partake;
Let rocks their silence break,
The sound prolong.

Our father's God to, Thee,
Author of liberty,
To Thee we sing.
Long may our land be bright
With freedom's holy light;
Protect us by Thy might,
Great God, our King!

StarLover, as a kid I used to sing these songs in school; a one room country school, I used to walk two miles to every day and then back home again....the teacher taught children from grades one thru eight, all in that one room...I used to carry a lunch in paper bag....drinking water was brought into the school which was pumped from an outside pump, into a big bucket....and then a common "dipper" was placed by the bucket, out of which each child could drink when he/she was thirsty.

It was a calmer time back in those days...

Lord, we didn't have TV's (there was no TV broadcasting in those days) telephones (some "rich" families did), rock music, let alone anything so marvelous as a computer...

Life was much simpler back then....

.....but...we had a keen sense of who we were. We knew that we lived in a very special place....AMERICA...and to appreciate it and be proud of it....

We pledged our allegiance to the flag every morning.

I guess what I'm trying to tell you, StarLover, is that patriotism has been instilled in me, from a very early age. I DO love my country and I have loved it for a LONG time (oh yeah, longer than jwhop, even)

So in spite of what some others would like to have you believe, I hope you believe ME, when I tell you once again, that I do indeed love my country...

Love,
Rainbow

posted November 18, 2004 03:39 PM            

quote:

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....your birth rates are so far below replacement levels that in 30 years or so there will be 70 million fewer Europeans alive than are alive today. Europe is literally dying.

---

What's wrong with fewer people around on this already crowded planet?

And yeah.. Isn't anxiety one of the #1 causes of illness in this country? I think we would all be alot happier and healthier if we slowed down to smell the roses more often.

posted November 18, 2004 06:46 PM              

For God's sake, we should know by now that the mass media doesn't represent the whole opinion of an entire country or continent.

posted November 18, 2004 10:03 PM              

Remember most of the nations of Europe know what happens when fascism reigns. They have been through it. They know how it begins and they see the same things happening in the U.S. as happened when Hitler took over Germany. Including the exodus of Americans out of America after this election. The same thing happened in Germany. Those that could see where it was going got out of the country while they could.

My best friend lives in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada and talking to her today I was told that the immigration dept. in Canada is really overwhelmed now. Right after the election they were getting about 5000 hits a day at their website. Now, according to what she heard on the news yesterday, the immigration dept. itself is being contacted by about 115,000 Americans each day wanting to move to Canada. Canada has more land than people so they are pleased by this but were not prepared to handle the load. That is not a good commentary for America. As Rainbow pointed out it should sadden the hearts of any true American patriot to know that other nations no longer look up to us but fear us. The reason they do fear us is as I stated before, they know despots and they can see the beginnings of fascism in this country. So can many Americans and that is why they are leaving. If it is true the figures the Canadian news reported that is a lot of people and a lot of tax base for the U.S. to lose.

Those things cited in the article are true of what America used to be. Not true of what it has been the past four years or will become in the next four years. For instance the achievements cited in the article:

quote:

---

and who inexplicably have won more Nobel prizes than all other countries combined, host 25 or 30 of the world’s finest universities and five or six of the world’s best symphonies, produce wines that win prizes at your own tasting competitions, have built the world’s most vibrant economy, are the world’s only military superpower and, so to speak in our spare time, have landed on the moon and sent our robots to Mars – may I suggest you stop frothing at the mouth long enough to consider just what are these ideas we hold that you find so silly and repugnant?

---

Those things represent an America that had nothing to do with Bush and his administration. It was what you neo-cons call the "radical left" and awful "liberals" who sent a man to the moon. John F. Kennedy. It was under the Clinton (the man you love to hate)administration that the Pathfinder mission to Mars was launched in 1997 and the Mars Global Surveyor in 1998 that sent robots to explore the surface of Mars.Those finest universities and symphonies and the wine the article speaks of are all in those awful, terrible "liberal" blue states that you guys love to bash for voting for Kerry. We do not any longer have a "United" states. It is horribly divided right down the middle by the Bush administration and those who follow his ideologies and continue to vote for him in blind obedience and misguided patriotism. Name one contribution to the culture of this country in the Bush adminstration over the past four years. War is not culture. Name one space mission. Name one thing he has done to care for this country environmentally. Instead he has done the opposite. He has violated and removed enviromental protection programs. He proclaims junk science by saying global warming doesn't exist. It is mid Nov. and in Michigan it was 60 degrees today. It should be normally snowing by now and very cold. Name one contribution that Bush has made for the betterment of this country. Name one contribution Bush has made for the betterment of the world and mankind.

I love my country too and all that it always represented in the world. And like Rainbow, that's why it breaks my heart to see what my country is becoming. The article spoke of freedom and how Americans have always loved their freedom. We have and we felt blessed to have been born in this country. But over the past four years those freedoms have been taken away from us under the Patriot Acts I,II and III. We are no longer allowed to dissent in a country that was founded on dissent and which was always the voice of the people. We can no longer dream of future space missions that broaden our knowledge of our universe as in the past because all of our nations resources are going towards war. Bush claims we are taking democracy to the rest of the world while it is being denied us and taken away from us by him in this country. Never in the history of this country has the gap between the haves and have nots been so widened as over the past four years. Most of America cannot even share the American dream any longer.

The author of this letter is nostalgic. He recalls a time that was, not a time that is. Those who wonder how 59,000,000 people could be so dumb don't recall the nostalgic past that we do and the author does. They see what the U.S. has become a whole clearer than 59,000,000 Americans see it. He even speaks of believing in separation of church and state and that has not been a part of America over the past four years either. If Bush is allowed to appoint Supreme Court Justices who promote the Christian Right agenda it will be the final nail in the coffin of freedom and democracy. It will be the death of the Constitution - the only thing that if upheld and fought for by the American people - protects us from being totally a fascist controlled nation.

The author speaks of tolerance in the difference of others. Do you see that in the America of today? Not when we make homosexual marriage a political issue. Not when we in effect ostracize groups of people ( blue states, liberals, homosexuals, etc.) Not when even the President cannot tolerate a differing point of view, a different opinion. Which is why he surrounds himself in yes men. Not when jwhop and others here at this site who follow Bush cannot tolerate a different point of view or an opinion that differs from theirs without labeling and name calling. That is not tolerance.

Jwhop you post this letter but you too are remembering an America that was prior to Bush. If you did in fact love the things this man mentions in his letter and want that for America you would not be such a staunch supporter of a man who is tearing that all down.

posted November 18, 2004 10:24 PM            

Hello Star, I just love Wisconsin cheddar...also NY sharp and extra sharp, so I don't need any cheese from France

Have you ever had a good look at their cars, Citroën, Peugeot and Renault.