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  Blog \Blôg\, n. [Jrg, fr. Jrg. "Web-log".
     See {Blogger, BlogSpot, LiveJournal}.]
     A stream-of-consciousness Web journal, containing
     links, commentary, and pointless drivel.


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Monday, January 21, 2002
18:36 - Steven den Beste: Undiplomatic Diplomat
http://www.denbeste.nu/cd_log_entries/2002/01/fog0000000193.shtml

(top) link
The author of USS Clueless has been taking a bit of flak from his in-defense-of-America-against-Europe post from a couple of days ago. A Finnish emailer has taken him to task, rebuking him and the US in general for holding the Constitution in such high regard that we will place it above foreign nations' requests and demands that we change to suit their whims.

"Then it's time to change. The Constitution can't be holy, can it?" says the Finn.

Well, yes, dumbass. That's what it's there for.

Read den Beste's post. Also note the updates at the end-- other bloggers who have done what I'm doing now, which is to libate it with the anointment of the modern Internet: the Blog Link, the vindication of a really well-written post, the consensus that spreads via this mechanism throughout the blog world that someone has added a thought to the Internet's stream of consciousness which deserves to have more eyes stuck to it than the average snippet of textual trivia.

In his earlier post, den Beste brought up the notion that Europeans, while most modern nations have come more and more to look alike on the surface, really don't understand what it is about America that makes us different as a nation. And the current post amplifies it for the benefit of people who didn't get it the first time around.

Lots of people in the world seem to think that America is just another clone of France or England, except one that doesn't know how to behave itself and refuses to play by the rules of the world at large. Well, guess what: the whole point of the Revolution in 1776 was so that we wouldn't have to play by the rules of Europe. One gets the impression that Europe and America have grown similar in recent years, but then we scratch the surface a little bit and find out that while European countries have prime ministers now instead of kings, and McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts and Starbucks sitting smugly on their urban streetcorners, they still think the same way they always have-- and we still want nothing to do with that style of thought.

We've proved our worthiness as an independent country many, many times, and still we're being expected to fall into line and behave like a good upstanding "citizen of the world" (as den Beste puts it, code for the US to cease attempting to advance its own interests). Look-- we've done that. We've done it pretty damn well, as a matter of fact. And yet somehow we've avoided becoming another France or Germany or Finland, a feat for which we don't feel much like apologizing. If that antagonizes Europe, fine-- we're sorry you don't like it, but we're not going to change to avoid offending you. We haven't done so in the past 200 years, and we're not about to start now.

It isn't often that I feel that if Thomas Jefferson and Ben Franklin were alive today, they would not be displeased with how we've held to our ideals. But I do today.

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© Brian Tiemann