(Vince Hart) wrote in message . com...
I love my country. I think the Founding Fathers got hold of some of
the most profound and wonderful ideas regarding rights and freedoms
that the world has ever known. I do not believe, however, that the
Founding Fathers fully understood the implications of these ideas and
they were clearly less than completely successful in putting these
ideas into practice. Nevertheless, the fact that they incorporated
these ideas into the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution
was a great boon.

"Democracy is a great institution in spite of its nuisances."
--Gertrude Atherton (Senator North)

Dear Mr. Hart,

Thanks very much for writing. I believed that there were some more thoughtful,
tolerant, and humane Americans here than those few jingoistic Americans who
like to act as though they must represent all Americans. And your general
response has corroborated that belief.

I agree that the great American experiment in self-government has many noble
aims, and it has inspired and continues to inspire many diverse people around
the world. Unfortunately, at the moment, the United States might be entering
a particularly dangerous phase of that experiment.

Many Americans are not content with a country that is founded on great
principles. They must also have a country that is correct in all its
actions and whose destiny is the fulfillment of some divine plan.
These Americans often prefer to remain ignorant of the rest of the
world and of historical facts that contradict their preferred view of
the United States. They frequently question the patriotism of anyone
who acknowledges such facts.

"If a man makes you a great many compliments, always suspect him of some bad
design, and never believe him your friend till he tells you of some of your
faults."
--Fanny Burney (Camilla)

In my view, a true friend is a friend who's not afraid to tell another friend
that he or she may be too drunk to be able to drive home safely, even when
that friend could be expected to respond with denial, anger, and even abuse.

(In real life, I have taken the keys away from a friend who was unfit to drive,
though he or she did not recognise it at that time. I was thanked later.)

If I were to write, contrary to what I believe, that everyone else in the
world already embraces the ideal "preferred view of the United States" of a
few jingoistic Americans here, then they might feel better and become less
abusive toward me. But I would not be doing a real favour to my American
friends or to the American people. A true friendship cannot be established
or maintained only on the foundation of dishonest flattery.

I hope that the American people will be able to enjoy peace, freedom, and
prosperity, with equal justice, rights, and opportunities for all. I hope that
the United States will become a civilization respected and admired by most,
if not all, people around the world. I do not believe that the United States's
current foreign, military, and economic policies are the best way to accomplish
that. And for writing that here, I have been denounced and vilified, sometimes
in racist terms, by a few jingoistic Americans.

America's racism is in part a product of the insistence on believing
that the United States always acts according to divine mandate in a
manner consistent with its founding principles. Since the manner in
which the United States treated Blacks and Indians (among others) was
so plainly inconsistent with the principle that "all men are created
equal," many Americans readily accepted the idea that these people
were less than fully human and therefore somehow outside the purview
of the Declaration of Independence.

Unfortunately, the public discussion of racism has degenerated to the
point where the term "racist" often becomes little more than a slur
tossed around by people like Bibuld.

In his communications with me, Jerome Bibuld has been honest and respectful.
I don't know how he may have acted toward some other people, so I am in no
position to make any judgement or comment about that.

I do believe that it's important to recognise that not all racism and all
racists are alike. Some apparent racists are capable of changing themselves.
For example, a good white American friend of mine has become one of the least
racist persons whom I have ever known. He grew up in an insular bourgeois
family in a nearly all-white community. As a young soldier in Vietnam, he
used racist language about Asians since almost every other American around
him did the same thing. Later he came to realize that what he had been doing
was wrong and harmful to other human beings. So he stopped doing it and, as
he put it, began to grow up. Sometimes he found it hard to face honestly
all the prejudices with which he had grown up. But he never quit attempting
to learn and to grow. Today, he still feels ashamed of some things that he did
in Vietnam, and he wishes that he could apologize to the people whom he hurt
there. But I can recognise that my friend has become a quite different human
being from what he was then, and I told him that I hope that, if they could
meet him now, the people whom he had hurt in the past would also be able to
recognise that he has greatly changed for the better.

"You want nothing but patience; or give it a more fascinating name: call it
hope."
--Jane Austen (Sense and Sensibility)

--Nick