It’s An American Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand

48 Responses to “It’s An American Thing, You Wouldn’t Understand”

1. Wintermute writes
   November 28th, 2008 5:47 pm

   But NOT free to use the euphoriants of our own individual choice.

2. Instapundit » Blog Archive » IT’S AN AMERICAN THING, you wouldn’t understand…. writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:08 pm

   [...] IT’S AN AMERICAN THING, you wouldn’t understand. [...]

3. Mikey NTH writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:21 pm

   Because use of the euphoriant of your choice is such an important freedom compared to worship, speech, work, and residence.

   You are a child, Wintermute.

4. Jim Harris writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:29 pm

   Bill Frist is right to praise our freedoms, but he’s completely wrong to do it by insulting other countries. He talks as if we’re perfect and no one else has a clue. In fact, that sort of arrogance is a threat to freedom. Some of Frist’s own votes are a case in point.

5. Dean writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:35 pm

   I’m really sick of this “America is always wrong” attitude.

   It’s not insulting other countries and it’s not arrogance.

   It’s a simple fact.

   The fact that you can actually disagree with Frist, and not be hauled off to jail is a testament to that.

   People like that need to live in other countries for a while, and you’ll see the difference. Certainly explains why so many people want to come here.

6. John writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:36 pm

   Yes, because every country is as good as every other country. And an elected leader should not pick favorites.

7. Greg McHale writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:37 pm

   How is what he said a threat to freedom? Am I missing a subtext to his message?

8. Oligonicella writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:42 pm

   Jim Harris –

   …, free to express ourselves in ways that other countries don’t understand.

   That clause is a stand alone. The insult, if there was any, is against those countries which prohibit freedom of expression.

9. Bleepless writes
   November 29th, 2008 1:47 pm

   Euphoriants? We are free to choose our own euphemisms. All of us. Even junkies.

10. Claude Hopper writes
    November 29th, 2008 1:54 pm

    Two things:
    Go to Singapore and trash the administration, you are called into court and fined.

    Some euphoric dependents, at some point, end up not being able to care for themselves and require a forced donation from me (tax money).

11. SleeperG writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:09 pm

    Re: It’s An American Thing

    Canada - CHRC Article 13 banning hate speech
    Germany - Prohibitions against Neo-Nazi literature
    UK - Rsestrictions via Hate Speech and liberal libel laws
    Muslim Countries - Don’t get me started.

    All of the above permitted, for better or worse, in the US because we prize freedom of assembly, speech and religion above almost everything else. That it why it is first in the Bill of Rights (even though we have the odious McCain Feingold Act).

    So yes, in ways other countries don’t understand or tolerate.

12. M. Simon writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:10 pm

    To prove our commitment to keeping people from using euphoriants of their own choice we have put 400,000 people who didn’t get away with it in prison.

    Which is why America is the the land of the free.

    The main focus of this dragnet is on poor people of color while richer whites walk. Proving our commitment to racial equality.

    For this Americans can all give thanks.

13. bobby b writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:14 pm

    No, no, don’t misunderstand him.

    Other countries aren’t less worthy than the United States of America - they’re simply structured in ways that reflect the different cultural norms that exist throughout the world. You can’t expect people with different histories and problems and resources to be just like us.

    So, some countries are structured to support women-hating, gay-hating, kill-them-all-for-allah cultural paradigms, some are structured to support “the masses are always more important than YOU, you puny individual, and I represent the masses!” socialist-murderous-dictatorship paradigms, some are structured to support the “oh, sorry, there’s only enough food here to feed me and my family, so you 8,000,000 in my front yard, please go over there and starve to death quietly” starvation paradigm, and of course the popular “you aid WHAT?! BLAMMM!!!” paradigm . . .

    Not “better”. Just another system.

    Wintermute should go explore them, and report back.

14. M. Simon writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:14 pm

    Might I add that in America that racial hatred is frowned on socially.

    Hating junkies however is still an approved sport. Especially if the junkies are people of color.

15. bobby b writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:17 pm

    “For this Americans can all give thanks.”
    - - -

    Well, at least us richer whites can!

    (Don’t we just suck?! Doesn’t it make you want to move somewhere more just and fair and prosperous?)

    (Uh, could you maybe list those places for us?)

16. Jim Harris writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:23 pm

    I’m really sick of this “America is always wrong” attitude.

    I never said, meant, or believed that America is always wrong. America is a great country. But it doesn’t make America any better to put it on a pedestal above the rest of the world. That’s what Bill Frist doesn’t understand.

    How is what he said a threat to freedom?

    It’s a threat to freedom to brag about how much better you understand freedom than “other countries”, because it means that you won’t admit to mistakes. Frist is one of the most powerful men in America, but he’s done very little for our freedom other than brag. He brags about our great record of free expression, but he tried to ban flag burning. Sure, I agree, we do have a good record of free expression, even flag burning was ruled unconstitutional. No thanks to Bill Frist!

    Many free countries in the world, beginning with our neighbor Canada, aren’t about to ban flag burning. But all that Frist has to say about that is, we can express ourselves in ways that you just don’t understand. No he was not just talking about Singapore, and yes it is an insult.

    I’m not saying that flag burning is by itself the big lynchpin of freedom — it’s just one example. I’m also not saying that Canada is superior to America; I don’t particularly think that it is. The point is, freedom is not about bragging that you have more of it than anyone else. Freedom requires a humble government, one that learns on a case by case basis, sometimes from other countries. America is a great and free country and many American leaders do have that humility. Bill Frist not included.

17. ThomasP writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:35 pm

    MikeNTH: “Because use of the euphoriant of your choice is such an important freedom compared to worship, speech, work, and residence.”

    Some drug use is a matter of freedom of worship. Moreover, the inconsistent and superstitious application of prohibition in America has weakened the Fourth Amendment prohibitions against unreasonable search and seizure, as well as the right to a fair trial (if you are charged with pharmaceutical capitalism), and even the right to due process (criminal asset forfeiture, where the burden of proof is on the accursed), and we still haven’t made a dent. In order to succeed at prohibition, we’d have to become Saudi Arabia or Belarus.

18. Richard Armstrong writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:45 pm

    M. Simon: Your website declares “Writing is how I earn a living”. I want to know how you reach the keyboard with your head in that position.

19. zombyboy writes
    November 29th, 2008 2:52 pm

    But it doesn’t make America any better to put it on a pedestal above the rest of the world.

    No, but it is important to acknowledge what is good and what works in the world–to make a value judgement about what is better and best in relation to social and economic systems that its citizens the greatest possible opportunities of success, long life, health, and happiness.

    Saying, “This system works well and, in fact, this system works better than others,” is vitally important to acknowledge that something is, indeed, more successful than another. The important part, though, is to ensure that the judgement is correct.

    Humble doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge your own successes, it means you shouldn’t be arrogant about them. You might find Frists’ comment to be arrogant; I don’t. Simply a recognition of fact and not an unwillingness to learn from others, not an unwillingness to see our own weaknesses.

    In an absolute sense, you won’t find too many countries that come close to allowing the kind of freedom of expression that you have in the US. Perfect? No, but awfully damned good.

20. Jim Harris writes
    November 29th, 2008 3:17 pm

    Humble doesn’t mean you shouldn’t acknowledge your own successes, it means you shouldn’t be arrogant about them.

    If it isn’t arrogant to say that foreigners don’t even understand our freedoms, then nothing is arrogant. It would be less than polite if I said that my car is better than your car; it would be downright rude and arrogant if I said that you don’t even understand my car.

    Besides, Frist himself could use extra tutoring in the subject of free expression, since he tried to ban flag burning. Fortunately, since America is a free country, flag burning laws are unconstitutional. Mind you, Frist did not try to ban burning national flags in general, just the American flag. If someone burned the Canadian flag or the Norwegian flag, that would be all right by him, maybe because those numbskull Canadians and Norwegians don’t understand our freedoms anyway.

21. Seerak writes
    November 29th, 2008 3:38 pm

    You are a child, Wintermute.

    Adults think in principles. Freedom, understood as a principle, means essentially that every individual is free to think, to make choices based on those thoughts, and to reap the consequences thereof — so long as said actions do not interfere with the same freedom as held by others around oneself.

    Understood this way, freedom can be seen to protect not only the freedoms the Founders named, but is a blanket protection for all possible choices an individual may make in the future. Only the actions that interfere with the freedom of others are proscribed.

    Since ingesting “euphoriants” does not cross that line, it is covered under the same principle as worship (or non-worship), speech, work and residence. It does not say that only “important” freedoms are protected (who decides that?). Freedom is the freedom of thought, choice and action. Period.

    That is how principles work. Epistemological adults think in terms of principles. Mikey Nth does not think in terms of principles… so draw your own conclusions about who is the child.

22. inmypajamas writes
    November 29th, 2008 4:13 pm

    Yeesh, don’t get your panties all in a bunch. Frist was just referring to the broad allowance we give to many forms of speech that other countries restrict and think we’re crazy to allow.

    I personally don’t see why it’s such a valued “freedom” to be able to burn the flag of the country where you live and enjoy enormous personal freedom and opportunity. Flag burning is silly, adolescent behavior that demonstrates incivility and disrepect for authority and the country of your birth. My then 10-yr-old son understood that instinctively when watching a protest on TV and promptly declaring the flag burning “really stupid”. America is a great country and our home and I, for one, understand completely why Frist was concerned about preserving respect and honor for the flag that represents America and all the principles we strive to live up to. I have more respect for someone who is trying to promote positive behavior than someone who feels it’s important to indulge negative behavior. (Nice straw man you have there with the nonsense about the Canadian and Norwegian flags.)

23. almiller writes
    November 29th, 2008 4:38 pm

    Wintermute

    I am perfectly fine with you using a euphoriant of your choice as long as I don’t have to pay one red cent of the cost. That means when you are drunk on your hiney and can’t support yourself we kick you out on the street and lock the hospital doors (the government supported ones) and let you die in the gutter. When we haul your carcass of we sue your wife and children for the cost.

    You want freedom? End the welfare state and you can be free as a bird.

24. David Underwood writes
    November 29th, 2008 4:56 pm

    The simplest,irrefutable measure of a nation’s quality of life is surely that of the numbers of people in other countries who want to move there, versus the number that wish to leave. I don’t have the figures, but they sure aren’t equal. How about a guess of 10,000 wanting in to the US, versus one wanting out?

    Perhaps someone in the US can name a more desirable country they would prefer live in.

    As a Canadian, I’m still waiting for the tidal wave of Hollywood and other loudmouths who promised that if Bush were elected those many years ago, they would move up here the following day. None of them ever arrived - thank Heavens.

    Viscount

25. 49erDweet writes
    November 29th, 2008 4:57 pm

    I’m really thankful Bill Frist has twisted Jim Harris’s shorts into such tight little knots, otherwise we would have missed JH’s over-reaching and misguided “analysis” of Frist’s rather innocuous thanksgiving message. What fun to see the ridiculous lengths to which nut jobs will go to “diss” those with whom they disagree. Happy thanksgiving.

26. Jim Harris writes
    November 29th, 2008 5:10 pm

    Frist was just referring to the broad allowance we give to many forms of speech that other countries restrict and think we’re crazy to allow.

    See there you go slipping in the same patronizing talk as Bill Frist. Most Canadians, for instance, don’t think that we’re “crazy” to allow any particular form of speech that we do allow. Everyone understands that not all speech is protected — you’re not allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded theater — and Canada has come to roughly the same answers for what to protect as the US. What Canadians do think is “crazy”, or rather sanctimonious and not to be trusted, is the attitude of the Bill Frists of America.

    After all, the Bush Administration kidnapped a Canadian citizen at Kennedy airport and sent him to Syria where he was tortured, and it still has not apologized or explained why it had to do this. The same Bill Frist who lords it over other countries that we understand freedom better, condones arbitrary kidnapping of foreigners. When I say that America is a great country, I mean an America that knows how to apologize, which we will hopefully do next year in this particular case.

    Flag burning is silly, adolescent behavior that demonstrates incivility and disrespect for authority and the country of your birth.

    Look, either you’re for free expression or you’re not. It’s easy to defend expression that you admire. The First Amendment is the most important when it protects expression that deeply offends you.

    Nice straw man you have there with the nonsense about the Canadian and Norwegian flags.

    It’s not a straw man at all. Denmark, for instance, bans the desecration of any flag other than the Danish flag. Their view is that if you burn another country’s flag, that could in principle inflame foreign relations. But if you burn the Danish flag, the Danes feel that they know how to turn the other cheek. Turning the other cheek is the whole point of the First Amendment.

    So why is it that in your view, and Bill Frist’s, burning the American flag is this big childish thing that can be banned; but burning any other country’s flag is not a problem? After all, the flag-burning law (and proposed amendment) did not just apply to American citizens burning the American flag, it applied to anyone in the US for any reason. But if a Canadian wanted to burn the Canadian flag when in Tennessee, Frist never had in mind banning that.

27. Jamie writes
    November 29th, 2008 5:20 pm

    On the subject of flag-burning: The reason American flag-burning is an issue, whereas the burning of other nations’ flags might not be, is that we don’t have a sovereign. The flag is symbolic of the sovereignty of the United States; Queen Elizabeth II is the actual sovereign of the United Kingdom (and Canada), King Carl XVI is the actual sovereign of Sweden, etc. It’s illegal in those countries, obviously, to threaten those sovereigns, and by extension to “deface” them, just as it is illegal in the U.S. to deface the flag (Title 4 of the U.S. Code) though there’s no mandated penalty for doing so.

    I myself don’t think flag-burning needs to be “banned” any more than it already is by that section of the Code; those who partake in this activity show what they are and what they believe by doing so, and I’d rather know about them than not, whether they’re doing their thing on the “Arab street,” for instance, or on the “Berkeley street.”

28. Jamie writes
    November 29th, 2008 5:26 pm

    Jim, I don’t think that “turning the other cheek” was necessarily “the whole point” of the First Amendment. It seems to me that the overarching point was that almost unfettered freedom of expression could be a way to keep tyrants from gaining and holding power. Don’t you?

    As for Denmark’s curious flag-burning law, the Danes have come a long way since their beginnings; once they were brave, now they’re cautious. (I speak of the Danish government, which for the sake of argument I’m considering to have been once embodied in its seafarers, not of Danes individually.) In the U.S., we frown on the burning of ANY flag, but we expect that other nations will exercise the same restraint that we do when those in other nations burn OUR flag. That they wouldn’t necessarily exercise that restraint should not change our expectation, any more than (get ready: this analogy may “inflame” you) a parent should change her commitment to expecting appropriate behavior from the children at a birthday party simply because she knows some children have not been as carefully raised as her own.

29. Jim Harris writes
    November 29th, 2008 5:53 pm

    Jamie, your argument doesn’t make any sense. It’s illegal to threaten people in general, but it’s not illegal to deface a representation of another person if that representation is your property. This has little to do with flag burning, because flag burning is legal in some countries that don’t have a sovereign, for instance Ireland. And the US doesn’t ban flag burning of such countries.

    When I looked in Title 4, Chapter 1 of the US code, the only section that banned anything was section 3, which applies only to the District of Columbia. It imposes a $100 fine and misdemeanor status on several flag activities. But it clearly isn’t in force, because the statute says that it’s illegal use the flag in advertisements!

    http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/4/usc_sup_01_4_10_1.html

    There have been several protests in which Americans have burned the Mexican flag, usually to protest illegal immigration. Mexico has no sovereign either. So consider what Bill Frist is saying to Mexicans: “When Americans burn YOUR flag, they’re expressing themselves in a way that you don’t understand. But I want to ban the burning of OUR flag.”

    Again, America is a great country and Frist is just wrong on both counts. Mexicans understand exactly what we mean when we burn their flag. And they can understand as well as we can that burning anyone’s flag is offensive but protected speech. I don’t burn flags myself, but I’m not going to ban it. The point translates perfectly well into Spanish.

30. Jim Harris writes
    November 29th, 2008 6:02 pm

    It seems to me that the overarching point was that almost unfettered freedom of expression could be a way to keep tyrants from gaining and holding power.

    Well yes, by turning the other cheek in response to offensive speech. After all, a tyrant can only come to power in a free country if the people let him. What argument does a tyrant ever have to quash free expression? He always says, “That expression is an outrage, a despicable criticism of our great nation! You should all be offended and we must punish the speaker!” Go to a country that has a tyrant, for instance Russia has Putin, and you’ll see. If you criticize Putin, they’ll call you a Russia-hater, someone ready to burn the Russian flag.

31. Peg C. writes
    November 29th, 2008 6:57 pm

    I’ve read M. Simon’s scribbings here and there for years. I’m done. Simon, get off that hobbyhorse before it dies under you.

32. "europhiant" ? writes
    November 29th, 2008 7:56 pm

    ?

33. JorgXMcKie writes
    November 29th, 2008 10:10 pm

    Jim Harris, is it difficult to make such idiotic ‘arguments’ or is it a natural talent??

34. Brendan writes
    November 29th, 2008 11:00 pm

    Harris, you wrote:

    >”I never said, meant, or believed that America is always wrong. America is a great country. But it doesn’t make America any better to put it on a pedestal above the rest of the world.”

    It doesn’t? I beg to disagree. Believing in our exceptionalism has a lot to do with our being the oldest continuously operating free government (or any government) in the world, despite best efforts of enemies within and out. In the last half century, it is that exceptionalism that has kept our country remarkably free, despite best efforts of a claven of dead-beats, especially the campus left, a.k.a. “soft subject” faculties with their slimy mouths clamped tightly on the public tit, whilst from the corners of their mouths they defame productive corporations, the lumpenprols, and work itself). Other enemies of the Constitution that associate with these mutts are the corrupt teachers unions, other public-union extortionists and the assorted bed-wetters of self-interested government bureaucracies. Like any skilled pedophiles, they seek to get the kidies on the program early, and where could be better than school, since nobody is around watching them fooling around with the kid’s heads. When you hear anti-American and anti-Western screeds and apologia coming from the mouths of little public school kids, who can’ttell you how many houses there are in Congress but the ol’ US of A is the source of all grief, you know the reds have arrived. And surprise, surprise, the next thing you hear from them at university is that the United States is just another country, and we can learn how to have a better country not from our incredible history, but from other countries. Therefore, we can tamper with the foundation stones, as if human nature has actually changed since the Founders, on its way to perfection a la Marx.

    Shuuuuuurre we can. Anyone who has ever attended the UN opening ceremonies is instantly assured of this, provided they’ve had a generous serving of delusional anti-Western Kool Aide. The UN. Talk about a clown house for malevolence, tyranny and psychopathy!

    But here you are, Mr. Harris, grudgingly conceeding that the United States is a pretty o.k. country, but not exceptional. How generous of you!

    Let me instead propose that it is YOU that is not exceptional.

    Today, many citizens of the United States have lost their way. The root of this was the consequence of “questioning authority” (I still have my little button). This was an idea that is by no means without legitmacy, now or in 1968. The side effect, however, other than infecting the campuses with a permanent class of scam artists, was that it shattered long held social formality. Formality that could and did “dish out” severe consequences to the obscene and slothful in private and public life. Something went wrong when this collapsed. These days few people miss meals because of their sloth and self absorption; it’s supposed to be none of our business. In fact, such conduct is extolled by the MSM and TV programs dwelling on the excesses of the rich and shameless. And no one is more slothful, meandering down the road to Perdition, than the league of sensitive fellows in touch with their feminine-side, sniffy metrosexuals with permanent non-judgementalism implants. It is entirely consistant that such wienies use relativism to escape the one duty of citizens of the one exceptional nation, and that is to defend it. Having suffered no aprobium, no injury in refusing to fight for its principles, why should they then not take up against it, and perhaps be mistaken for thoughtful? After all, contrariness is mistaken for such among the academic elites. Amazingly, not even the widespread current depravity of rich and poor alike has broken our ancient promises up ’til now, so it seems safe enough to mock exceptionalism. And thus these useful idiots swallow the illogical, afactual naratives of those who truly want to hurt us all and then regurgitate them as their own.

    More bluntly, you are a parrot. Go AWK yourself.

35. May Pelletier writes
    November 29th, 2008 11:59 pm

    As for the hate America bunch, even the most active hater ie, Jane Fonda ilk et.al. won’t leave. Having been abroad on various occasions, I still come home and feel like kissing the American soil as I land on the shores. There never has been or will be another America. There are those so sated who cannot appreciate our homeland anymore. Then there are those of us who are forever loyal to the end…however imperfect our citizens behave, America is the shining city on a hill.

    God Bless America and forgive us our sins.

36. Jim Harris writes
    November 30th, 2008 12:14 am

    There never has been or will be another America.

    People are really swinging between extremes in this discussion. Either you think that America is God’s gift to the world, or you must hate America. My advice is, calm down. Find some perspective. I’ve traveled abroad too and I’m always glad to be home. But there’s a difference between that and kissing the soil just because you flew in from Heathrow airport. That’s actually not the way that self-respecting Americans behave.

    Or hey, you can smooch that shrub pot on Concourse B if you really feel like it. I would rather go to the baggage claim and drive home.

37. May Pelletier writes
    November 30th, 2008 12:38 am

    Some get it and some don’t!

38. Towering Barbarian writes
    November 30th, 2008 1:02 am

    Jim Harris writes
    “See there you go slipping in the same patronizing talk as Bill Frist. Most Canadians, for instance, don’t think that we’re “crazy” to allow any particular form of speech that we do allow. Everyone understands that not all speech is protected — you’re not allowed to yell “fire” in a crowded theater — and Canada has come to roughly the same answers for what to protect as the US.”

    Jim Harris,
    With all due respect the proper answer is “No, they haven’t. Freedom of Speech is clearly something the nation of Canada has chosen to reject.”

    Do you doubt me? Then consider this excerpt from “The Volokh Conspiracy”:

    “I’d heard of this quote from a Canadian Human Rights Commission investigator, but I wanted to see the hearing transcript for myself just to confirm that it’s not being misquoted or quoted out of context. I just got the surrounding pages (available here; see PDF page 43 for the quote), and here it is:

    MS KULASZKA: Mr. Steacy, you were talking before about context and how important it is when you do your investigation. What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate one of these complaints?

    MR. STEACY: Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.

    MS KULASZKA: Okay. That was a clear answer.

    MR. STEACY: It’s not my job to give value to an American concept.”

    http://volokh.com/posts/1207856516.shtml

    So we have the word of Mr. Steacy of the Canadian Human Rights Commission that Canadians do indeed lack Freedom of Speech. If you don’t like that then go argue with him and the other members of the Canadian Human Rights Commission. They’re the ones who say that Canadians aren’t allowed to have Freedom of Speech!

    So Bill Frist is right and we should indeed be thankful to be Americans. ^_~

    Sincerely yours,
    Towering Barbarian

39. Ed Nutter writes
    November 30th, 2008 1:10 am

    “free to send our children to good schools”

    Uh, not necessarily. If you have the financial means to move out of a failing school district you do. It takes at least that. But you don’t have the freedom to pull your children out of a school where PC trumps 3 Rs and send them to where academic effort and excellence is the norm.

40. Jim Harris writes
    November 30th, 2008 1:58 am

    Freedom of Speech is clearly something the nation of Canada has chosen to reject.

    The quote that you picked has bounced all over the blogs and I could guess that someone would bring it up. Your all-or-nothing approach to this topic is certainly a convenient style of sanctimony. You find ONE Canadian, some lawyer named Steacy, who says something dumb about free speech, and you come to the sweeping conclusion that the entire country has rejected it entirely.

    But obviously Dean Steacy does not speak for all 30 million Canadians. As the post that you linked to say, the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedom guarantees “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication”. That completely covers freedom of speech.

    It’s the same story in both countries. People now and then try to chip away at free expression. In the US it might be Senator Frist trying to ban flag burning. In Canada it might be lawyer Steacy making a bogus argument in court. In both cases, the Constitution usually prevails. You’re arguing this based on the mote in your brother’s eye.

41. HoweeCarr writes
    November 30th, 2008 8:43 am

    But not free for adults to gamble over the Internet, thanks to Frist’s Nanny Stating by attaching an internet gambling ban to- of all things!- a Port Security Bill.

    Tool.

42. Olde Yellar writes
    November 30th, 2008 9:07 am

    Thanks Mr. Harris!
    At the next protest I’ll wrap an Old Glory around a peace goon and set it ablaze!

    Or, even…

    Tie one around an H-Bomb and drop it on Iran!
    (Maybe just a decal, if that counts?)

    Would not Ford Motor Co. want to wrap one around it’s debt and burn that? Hmmm?

    Contents: One American Flag Caution:Burns Hotter that NY Times,please stand back!

    Dude, I’m down with your struggle!

    WickedGnomeLaugh:off
    End Of Message:Nothing Follows

43. Kathy writes
    November 30th, 2008 7:07 pm

    “Yes, because every country is as good as every other country. And an elected leader should not pick favorites.”

    Are you going for equality here, John…or egalitarianism?

    (By the way, have you ever been to another country?)

44. furious writes
    November 30th, 2008 7:48 pm

    But obviously Dean Steacy does not speak for all 30 million Canadians.

    Actually, since the Canadian HRC has subpeona and sanction powers (and can, ala’ Mark Steyn and Maclean’s, require one to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in one’s defense), Dean Stacy does indeed “speak for 30 million Canadians”…whether they want him to or not.

45. Towering Barbarian writes
    November 30th, 2008 10:40 pm

    Jim Harriw,
    Furious is quite correct. To argue that your beloved Dean Steacy is “just some lawyer” is a bit like arguing that Janet Reno or Ruth Goldberg is “just some lawyer”. True enough when discussing them as human beings but hardly to the point when they are backed by the authority of office. The fact remains that the HRCs of Canada have deprived that nation of Freedom of Speech not merely in one instance but rather on a systematic basis. All in the name of “Human Rights” of course.

    I wonder if the average liberal or leftist will ever be bright enough to see the Orwellian irony of that one? ^_~

46. Jim Harris writes
    November 30th, 2008 11:54 pm

    So in order to argue that America has a superior grasp of freedom to Canada, what you folks are saying now is that Dean Steacy, investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission, is equivalent to the a Justice of the United States Supreme Court.

    But as the transcript made clear, Steacy makes arguments to the HRC; he doesn’t decide for the HRC. And the Canadian Human Rights Commission is below the Canadian Supreme Court. Steacy does not decide constitutional law in Canada any more than a Justice Department lawyer such as John Yoo does so in the US — and John Yoo has made all kinds of crazy unconstitutional claims.

    So as I said before, passing judgment on Canada because of what one investigator said is the mote in your brother’s eye. Just in order to claim superiority, you expect every federal lawyer in Canada from top to bottom to be on the same page on constitutional questions, when clearly nothing of the sort happens in the US.

47. Catharyne Stauffer writes
    December 5th, 2008 2:46 pm

    I find it disgusting and offensive to see any nations flag being burned. There are many ways for people to express themselves in an intelligent , creative thought provoking manner. Those that burn flags obviously lack those qualities and abilities and are regarded as the lowest common denominator of any society.

48. kmandu writes
    December 8th, 2008 3:15 pm

    Hey M. Simon…
    People of color?
    I’m so sick of this. White is a color too.
    AND, those of you who want me to be colorblind, quit telling me how black you are.
    Someone wears a black pride t-shirt, people say right on. Someone wears a white pride t-shirt, he/she is called a racist.
    B.S.