America the Proud?

[Hasty Ent]

Originally posted by GrayMouser
Look at the Skokie, PA case. A racist anti-Semitic group wanted to march through a neighbourhood heavily populated by Jews; in spite of overwhelming public revulsion the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) fought and won their right to peacefully assemble.

it was Skokie, Illinois, not Pennsylvania

As far as I know, there are NO countries that are totally free, including the United States. Furthermore, I don't understand the position that books are not banned in the US. It is my belief that they are.

I've excerpted the following from a site on banned books http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/banned-books.html

"Ulysses by James Joyce was recently selected by the Modern Library as the best novel of the 20th century, and has received wide praise from other literature scholars, including those who have defended online censorship. (Carnegie Mellon English professor and vice-provost Erwin Steinberg, who praised the book in 1994, also defended CMU's declaration that year to delete alt.sex and some 80 other newsgroups, claiming they were legally obligated to do so.) Ulysses was barred from the United States as obscene for 15 years, and was seized by U.S Postal Authorities in 1918 and 1930. The lifting of the ban in 1933 came only after advocates fought for the right to publish the book.

In 1930, U.S. Customs seized Harvard-bound copies of Candide, Voltaire's critically hailed satire, claiming obscenity. Two Harvard professors defended the work, and it was later admitted in a different edition. In 1944, the US Post Office demanded the omission of Candide from a mailed Concord Books catalog. "

and more recently:
"An illustrated edition of "Little Red Riding Hood" was banned in two California school districts in 1989. Following the Little Red-Cap story from Grimm's Fairy Tales, the book shows the heroine taking food and wine to her grandmother. The school districts cited concerns about the use of alcohol in the story. "

There are good and bad qualities in every country. The US is not perfect, but it's not a terrible place to live. I would not say I'm proud of it: 40 million people with no health insurance, miserly support for the arts due to disdain at worst and disinterest at best, a consumer culture caught up in accumulating items they don't need, and a citizenry that is often arrogant with respect to other countries and their worth. On the other hand, there is a history of achievement and exploration if not tolerance. Of course, rampant materialism is not exclusively an American characteristic, nor is intolerance.

The problem with "pride" and "patriotism" is it so often grows into a "I'm better than ________" attitude. Hardly conducive to peaceful coexistance with other cultures.