How Conservatives Love America
“They love America the way a four-year old loves her mommy. Liberals love America like grown-ups. To a four-year-old, everything Mommy does is wonderful and anyone who criticizes Mommy is bad. Grown-up love means actually understanding what you love, taking the good with the bad, and helping your loved one grow. Love takes attention and work and is the best thing in the world. That’s why we liberals want America to do the right thing. We know America is the hope of the world, and we love it and want it to do well. We also want it to do good.” -
— Al Franken
(via dulce)
Re-blogged for being 100% right.
(via nefariousnewt)
OMG THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS.
(salymander)
via: emilytheslayer
From The Angry Black Tumblr | Comment below or Reblog @ Tumblr
Dead on.
Love is not blind faith, love is respect and compassion. You help a loved one overcome their sins not indulge them. You love them because you know who they are. You love them as a human being because you know their virtue and hate their selfishness.
If you love someone do not ignore their sins confront them.
I agree with this sentiment- exept for the last part. America is not “the hope of the world”. I know Americans are often encouraged to go from patriotic “I love my country” to nationalistic “My country is better than all the others”, but that doesn’t make it true. There are a lot of people who have every reason to see America not as a great hope but as a threat to everything they love about their own country.
If liberals manage to use their grown-up love for America to turn it into what it could be, then America can be one positive power, one among many to give people hope- but if the ideal is to turn it into “the one great hope” then they are still perpetuating one of the tenents of American nationalism. Which would defeat the point of tryin to make America better.
Grown-up love also means understanding how you are enabling your loved one’s bad habits and stopping. Grown up love means realizing that your loved one doesn’t have to be the best, most amazing in the whole world to deserve being loved. It means that looking at others and seeing how great they are doesn’t mean you love your loved one less.
I agree, Lauren. The US can be the world’s so-called “[#1 / greatest / only / what have you] beacon of hope” only by continuing to be a colonialist power. USians need to take our place as one of many nations of good will and stop thinking that we speak for the world.
Good post.
I want America, at the least, to “do no harm.”
I would be satisfied with that.