of Americaness & idealism
I found David Seruyange’s blog post via White African. He has a great review of the book the ‘Quiet American’ and he wrote…
“Americans are ideologues. George Washington was an ideologue. The people who come here to find a future are also ideologues and that is where their American-ness begins. The focal point of that ideology is idealism; that good and evil exist; a notion that the world can be better, that our individual actions can find traction here to bring that “better” closer to us – for some that means closer to their children as they see thier lives as mere stepping stones for a better future.
Ideology is dangerous, and when it mixes with an idea that necessary sacrifice can be made it becomes a very potent evil. We forget to ask ourselves who sacrifices, who dies as a result of any “noble” effort. But the world needs ideas, and it most certainly needs ideals. It needs fools who believe in love. It needs the sort of simple mindedness that can say “all men are created equal.”
Barack Obama was on the Daily Show! I only caught a couple of minutes, i will be looking for the repeat tomorrow or video on C&L.
This entry was posted on Monday, November 7th, 2005 at 8:27 pm and is filed under Amer. Pol.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
glad you like it…now i kinda feel the pressure to post more stuff.
JJRAY November 8th, 2005 at 8:31 am
Interviews from the Daily Show go up on the Comedy Central web site several days after they air (in their entirety):
http://www.comedycentral.com/shows/the_daily_show/videos/celebrity_interviews/index.jhtml