QUOTE (Ham Salad @ Jul 22 2005, 06:47 PM)
P.S.- Most Americans wave their flag out of pride. They believe in their nation, and what the flag represents to them.
Proud of what? Flag representation went UP after the US invaded Afghanistan, a nation that has not YET been linked to 9/11, outside of that speech Bush made two days after the attacks. Americans wave their flag to "support the troops," out of fear that they will create the disenfranchised post-Vietnam vet, something they are not proud of. "Supporting the troops" eventually becomes "supporting the war," whether you like it or not. You say it's pride, or patriotism, I say it's solidarity out of fear that they might collapse the economy, or be labelled unpatriotic. It's a Patriotism of Fear. I'd say Jordan's comments pretty much sum up a lot of the Americans I have seen abroad as well. Embarrassed, but "proud."
I don't know about the cowardly Canadians you have met, or their weak-willed flag ownership, but as you have made quite a few quick leaps to insult so far in this thread, I'll just toss that in with the rest of it.
(Rape business, Taggart resigning to Galt = not being taken out of context. BOTH novels ended in lengthy philosophical rants, so they are really more political propaganda than fiction. The rape was a central act involving archetypes. In Rand's "philosophical" works she quoted her own novels for support, so she meant them to be taken very seriously. You don't just go have your "hero" rape someone and then have her give in because he is such a powerhouse, not in that sort of work, unless you want to make a comment about the roles of men and women. Rand hated women, and not just lesbians and feminists. Oddly enough, lesbians have found a lot to cling to in Rand, because of the individualism, while feminists don't like her much, because of the rape thing.)
Yeah, I mentioned Rand's name first; you're right. Mea culpa. Doesn't prove you don't worship her, and you did attack lesbians, as well as feminists (though now you qualify it with "militant," whatever that means). So appeal to the rest of the room, but you ain't convincing me.
"I had a lot of different ideas. At one point, Luke, Leia and Ben were all going to be little people, and we did screen tests to see if we could do that." -George Lucas, in STAR WARS: the Annotated Screenplays (p197).