Reply #135: it is indeed [View All]

[iverglas]

If the most liberal people in America are this xenophobic
I shudder to think about how xenophobic the average
"real Murican" is.

And I think that every day I read stuff at DU.

Not just xenophobic, of course, to give 'em their due -- ignorant.

This talk about how the non-native born can't/won't understand "American values" ... like, uh, what -- freedom? democracy?

Yeah, nobody out here in the outer darkness understands any of that stuff, because we all live in totalitarian states where we dare not speak out against what our unelected governments do to us ...

It's the underlying belief that only USAmericans understand that stuff, and that nobody is as free or democratic as USAmericans, that seems to be the real problem much of the time.

I'll never forget the hitchhiker I picked up in Tennessee years ago. Very nice young man, unemployed and unskilled and broke, going to another state to visit his sick mother. He admired my funny coloured money, and then asked, very respectfully and with genuine curiosity: "What's it like up there? Are you free to go wherever you want?"

I said yeah, it was pretty much like down there ... except with free health care for everybody. And he seemed to get that and find it worth thinking about.

Yup, some of us do have different "values". They might even be worth some USAmericans knowing about and considering the wisdom of.

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