Truth be told, I have a great deal of love for the Mother County… and her next door neighbor, Great Britain. In fact, there are a great deal those of us in Western Civilization have inherited from East Ireland. Much of those principles thrived here in North America, while the lords and ladies of England chose to pursue empire over liberty, and thus made the wreck we Americans inherited both during the Cold War and its aftermath.
So of course it stings a little when certain English writers take aim at the principles of the United States — principles which give us not only our strength, but the ability to keep the Western world free.
The anecdotal evidence for why this intellectual version of the Black and Tans thinks our American values of free speech are too free? Why, it’s this caricature right here:
I was asked some time ago by a university-educated Texan, in the nicest possible way, what it was like to live in a country of “baby-killers” about to be “overrun by Muslim bad guys”. I inquired where he had gained this bizarre impression of Europe, which he had never visited. It turned out his sole information about the world beyond America’s shore came from Fox News. He was not stupid. But he and millions of people like him considered this source of news a sufficient window on the world. He genuinely thought American troops would soon have to save Europe from “the Arabs”.
Can we say “stereotypical ugly American” three times fast? I mean, did he actually interview anyone, or did he just flip through the coloring book and pointed at the first cowboy he saw?
Based on this anecdote, this UK Guardian columnist believes your freedom of speech is too free. Take a good look, because this is little more than the commonly held opinion of either the uneducated or the powerful who hate free minds, free markets, and a free society.
My opinion? Go back home, John Bull. How many times do we have to throw you and your ideas off this continent before you get the point?
Oh, and thanks for completely screwing up the world before your empire collapsed while its policies wrote checks Great Britain couldn’t cash. The Americans are more than happy to do your cleanup in Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, southern Africa, China, southeast Asia, and every other corner of the world.
At least the Irish had the common sense to throw you out of most of the country…
Unlike Britain, while one may disagree with what you have to say, I and many Americans will defend to the death your right to say it. I guess “free speech” has a more universal appeal in the paraphrasing of that little quote, doesn’t it?
