Remnant of "Red Scare" repealed.

[Tiki Tom]

Well, I have to say that my parents were both immigrants to the USA in the early 1950s. They attained a degree of hard work-based success in America that, at that time, probably would not have been possible in "the old country". My dad worked three jobs while putting himself through college in California. He was the first in the history of our family to earn a college degree. ( love you, dad. And thank you. RIP) They did not come from the aristocratic class in their home county in Europe, not by a long shot. At the same time, I acknowledge that the fact that they were "white" in America certainly didn't hurt. America is an on-going expirement in learning how to make the dream of prosperity and equality real. We are yet a work in progress. That having been said, during that time and that era, I was lucky to have been born into a family that struggled it's way across an ocean to find its way into what has since become something of a cliche: the American dream. Ironically, I have raised my own family back in Western Europe (and I truly love this place in the new millennium. Love it!) but I never stop bowing down gratefully to my parents, who took a hopeful chance on the unknown. The Cold War has receded into history, but my parents certainly knew in which direction they were fleeing.

 

[LizzieMaine]

For many, the freedom to know you have a job and a place to live and that you won't have to worry about how you'll pay for your health care is still just an unattainable dream. For millions of Americans, the most important freedom of all, FDR's "Freedom From Want," has yet to be fulfilled. My grandparents were the children of immigrants and worked hard their whole lives and died broke, chewed up and spit out without so much as a "Thank You For Your Service" by a fine American oil corporation. So the "American dream" to me seems to be really more of a crapshoot. It's great as long as you keep rolling those sevens.

I'm not so much arguing the USSR's position here, as I am refusing to out and out demonize it. I once asked my fifth grade teacher how we knew we were right and the Russians were wrong, and she couldn't really give me an answer that didn't sound like she memorized it from a book. I asked her if the Russians really wanted to kill us and told her I certainly didn't want to killl any Russians, and she told me to sit down and be quiet. That's how I looked at things all thru my own Cold War upbringing -- people threw out slogans and feel-good catchphrases and waved flags, and that stuff made me suspicious. It still does. We were being force-fed ideology as children every bit as much as any Soviet schoolchildren were, but we pretended we weren't -- and that bothered me.

But neither am I out to demonize the US side of things. What I am out to do is discuss the situation facing the world at the dawn of the Cold War era and to point out that a very great deal of misery could have been avoided on both sides by treating each other with respect instead of provocative paranoid suspicion. Stalin's paranoia was fed by an equal amount of paranoia from the Kennanite crowd, and vice versa. I agree with historian Frank Costiglilola's thesis -- had FDR lived, Stalin would not have made the moves he made, and there would have been no Cold War, no Korean War, no Vietnam, trillions of dollars and rubles wouldn't have been wasted building increasingly ridiculous missiles that neither side had any desire to ever use, the situation in the Middle East would be far different than what it is now, and neither Russia nor the US would be sitting on a nuclear arsenal controlled by an unstable nationalist kleptocracy. Frankly, I'd prefer that history to the one we got in its place, and I imagine there are a great many people around the world who feel likewise. At least millions of them would still be alive to discuss the question.

 

[Tiki Tom]

Fair enough. No one can claim that mistakes were not made, all the way around (some worse than others.). Now the task is to learn from the past and make the world a better place. It sounds trite, but what else can we do?

 

[LizzieMaine]

That really is the question, isn't it? But I don't think we'll find the answer here. We can chew over the past, but the present is not part of our brief at the Lounge, and the future will be up to the kids. I might see another twenty years of it, but they're the ones who'll have to live with what we leave behind.

 

[BlueTrain]

My impressions have been that for the average Russian, the standard of living rose during the Soviet era. That's by Russian standards, not ours. But different standards are applied by some people to other people. Some people in this country to this day believe that black people were better off when they were slaves. Slave owners were sometimes astonished that their former slaves left as soon as they could.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think if you talked to the average Ivan Ivanovich in 1938, now able to read and write, and with access to running water and electricity, and a guaranteed job, guaranteed free education for his children, and free cradle-to-grave medical care for himself and his entire family, and asked him if he'd like to go back to the days of the Tsar when he was a grimy illiterate serf with a life expectancy of 32 years, he'd hit you in the head with a shovel and call you a dirty kulak. How you define "freedom" depends on what you've had to live without.

 

[tonyb]

.,, How you define "freedom" depends on what you've had to live without.

Freedom to versus freedom from, eh?

Among us are many who would appropriate the word, much as they would appropriate the flag, for their own ends without giving any apparent thought to other definitions, let alone nuance.

 

[LizzieMaine]

There is a certain American tendency to assume all the world looks at life thru a certain sort of Post-Enlightenment lens, and that those societies that don't are somehow defective. I doubt very much that Comrade Ivanovich could have ever laid awake at night wondering if Bukharin was getting a fair trial -- because nowhere in his experience, or in the experience of any of his ancestors back to the steppes had the western concept of a "fair trial" ever in any way existed.

I think judging the Soviet Union of the 1930s by the standard of the United States in the 1930s is an impossible comparison, like comparing a yak with an armchair. The USSR in 1938 was twenty years removed from its revolution, twenty years from being a stunted nation of illiterate serfs ridden by a decadent aristocracy. I think a more valid comparison would be to compare the USSR in 1938 with the USA in 1809, and I think, to be blunt, that the USA would come off on the short side of that comparison. There was plenty of theoretical freedom for men in silken knee britches to discuss twenty years after the end of the American Revolution, but nearly a sixth of the population lived in chattel slavery, and the majority of "free" citizens were struggling subsistence farmers dominated both socially and politically by an aristocratic merchant class. And women of any class were, for all intents and purposes, non-persons. Viewed on that basis, twenty years post-revolution, you have to wonder who really was better off.

Certainly the US made real progress on all fronts, but it took the better part of two hundred years to shake off the stench of slavery, and much of that progress was not achieved by mutual agreement that it was the right thing to do. Most of it was achieved only by force, at the point of a gun, because "property rights" or "states' rights" were considered by many of the descendents of those men in knee britches to trump human rights. Labor achieved a great deal of progress, but it was not achieved by mutual agreement that it was the right thing to do -- it was achieved thru bombs and rocks and fists and blood. And women achieved much progress -- but only by fighting and scraping for every little concession. All of those battles continue.

The Soviet Union lasted only about the length of one human lifetime, survived being burned nearly to the ground during WWII, and yet the USSR of the 1960s -- its economic and cultural peak -- was far different than that of the 1930s. Who is to say how it would have evolved if it had the same two hundred-plus years the US has had?

 

[vitanola]

I suspect that you are over thinking the roots of the post WWII Red Scare, Miss Maine. The greater part of it initially seemed to be a c
cynically wielded club for the party which was out of power to use to beat the supporters of party which had been in power for four terms. Then there were the charges of "premature anti-fascism"...

 

[LizzieMaine]

Well yeah, but you know how I hate to get political.

 

[vitanola]

Well yeah, but you know how I hate to get political.

Oh yes. Of course.

 

[HudsonHawk]

There is a certain American tendency to assume all the world looks at life thru a certain sort of Post-Enlightenment lens, and that those societies that don't are somehow defective...

One of the things I've found throughout my world travels, particularly in ancient civilizations in Africa, the Middle East and Asia, is that locals don't necessarily identify with political boundaries they way we do in the US, or even to the extent people do in Europe. For them, governments and geopolitical "countries" change and have changed over the millennia, to the point where they're almost inconsequential in peoples' thinking. People identify with family and culture, not with political elections. There simply is not the same sense of nationalism, and language, for example, unites people far more than citizenship. This isn't really directly in response to the Red Scare, but I think it puts perspective on our own lenses and speaks to the notion you describe...that we automatically assume everyone thinks about patriotism the same way we do and consider the lack of it a character flaw. It's really our own slanted view of the world.

 

[Stearmen]

I think if you talked to the average Ivan Ivanovich in 1938, now able to read and write, and with access to running water and electricity, and a guaranteed job, guaranteed free education for his children, and free cradle-to-grave medical care for himself and his entire family, and asked him if he'd like to go back to the days of the Tsar when he was a grimy illiterate serf with a life expectancy of 32 years, he'd hit you in the head with a shovel and call you a dirty kulak. How you define "freedom" depends on what you've had to live without.

One of the things that frustrates me the most here in the good old USA is, people can't seem to grasp that one can be against Czar Nicholas II and Fulgencio Batista and at the same time disliking Joseph Stalin and Fidel Castro!

 

[BlueTrain]

Nationalism as we use the term doesn't go back that far. For most countries in Europe, only to the post-Napoleonic period, in this country, to the Revolution, obviously. It is easy to forget that there was no national government in America before the revolution. Before that, governments of countries could change with a marriage or a long, long war. Many modern countries were a long time in the making. Germany, for example, technically only became one country after the Franco-Prussian war and only in the way we think of it today after WWI and the changes didn't stop there.

People have long thought of themselves as "a people," typically united by language, although that still isn't true everywhere. The Swiss have several official languages, so it must not be as important as all that but it helps to be bilingual, something not fashionable in the United States.

It helps that a border is a significant natural border, including between states, provinces and the like. An ocean has to be the best. A significant mountain range helps, too. Rivers are traditional boundaries, too, although easily crossed. And a few places seem to forever in-between and are forever switching sides, so much so that the inhabitants are neither one nor the other. But large areas of flat plains have no natural borders and the demarcation lines have been moved several times over the centuries. Land is very important.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Nationalism may be the single most destructive force in human history. You can't have a We without a They.

 

[ChiTownScion]

I do not understood the notion of "I'm proud to be an American*." Gratitude and appreciation of the sacrifices of others in the cause of liberty (whether on a bridge in Selma Alabama or on Omaha Beach), yes. Pride is reserved for our own accomplishments, on the other hand. Most who thump their chest and proclaim, "I'm proud to be an American" owe that status to the fact that they were born into it. It isn't a personal accomplishment in any sense.

*Same could be said of any nationality or ethnic identification, of course.

 

[ChiTownScion]

Nationalism may be the single most destructive force in human history. You can't have a We without a They.

Religion has a longer track record- and often the two are so intertwined that drawing a line of demarcation is impossible.

 

[Fading Fast]

...Some people in this country to this day believe that black people were better off when they were slaves.....

How many? I've lived 52 years and I've never met one of those people. I am not denying at all (in any way) that they exist as I've read the rants of those who think that way, but again, what percentage of the population are they? I know pretty far right and pretty far left people and all between and have never, ever met someone who would say something like that (maybe they think it, but I can't climb inside people's heads). The worse thing I've ever heard from a "street corner yeller" is some of the most vile anti-semitic things coming from followers of Louis Farrakhan.

There are 300+ million people in this country, so if a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand think that slavery is good - so what? Sure they are insane, evil, mean, horrible - but come on, is that a prevailing view in this country in any normal sense of the word?

I think this country is losing its mind trying to find the last racist mosquito. For example, murder is worse than racism, yet we aren't on a campaign to get the murder rate in this country of 300+million down to zero. If you murder someone they are dead - that's it - no life left. But if you are a racists advocating for slavery in this country you can maybe negatively impact some people (probably psychologically more than physically), but you can't legally kill them or turn them into slaves.

We should treat racism the same way we do murder. Beat it back, fight it, denounce it, push it to the fringe of the fringe, never let it come back from there, but then say enough. So, like murder, it will live on in some deminimis way because killing the last racists mosquito would require - I don't know what because you can't force people to change their minds and freedom of speech allows people to say horrible things (but not argue for violence against others - that's illegal and should be enforced aggressively).

For many, the freedom to know you have a job and a place to live and that you won't have to worry about how you'll pay for your health care is still just an unattainable dream. For millions of Americans, the most important freedom of all, FDR's "Freedom From Want," has yet to be fulfilled. My grandparents were the children of immigrants and worked hard their whole lives and died broke, chewed up and spit out without so much as a "Thank You For Your Service" by a fine American oil corporation. So the "American dream" to me seems to be really more of a crapshoot. It's great as long as you keep rolling those sevens....

Freedom from want is tautologically impossible at the societal level as want for clothes, food, shelter and basic medical care requires work, effort and knowledge (someone has to grow the food, build and maintain the homes, hospitals, etc.). If we guarantee it to all, and all decide to accept at once, then who actually provides those things? If we start "means" testing it, then we are where we are now - with large social programs and endless fights over who qualifies, who pays via taxes, etc. The only people who've ever had freedom from want were those we called kings, etc., as society can carve out a niche of people and provide freedom of want to them - but the rest of us become actual or de facto slaves to the ones who have the freedom from want.

The American Dream - IMHO - is the opportunity to try, not a guarantee to succeed. My grandfather's business all-but failed. My father closed down his business as the town around it died. I've lost - without an ounce of exaggeration - five jobs (really more) owing to corporate cut backs, closings, mergers, etc. and have - without an ounce of exaggeration - had to learn a full set of new skills three times to keep myself employed. I am sincerely sorry your grandparents hard work didn't pay off, but there are no guarantees in life. I've been cheated, lied to and deceived in business and not paid for work I did - but so what. I brush myself off, find a different path to success and plod on. That's it - that's what this country offers - the chance, the opportunity, not a guarantee.

And as to luck. I agree. Luck comes into play. I have had both good and bad luck like most people. I graduated college with a friend who has worked for the same company since graduation - he was lucky (and knows it) that it didn't get re-organized out of existence. I also graduated from high school with a girl who died a few years later from cancer. Life is brutally unfair / luck and being unlucky is brutally unfair. All we can ask of our gov't is not to be too unfair to us and other than that, we have to do our best. I believe if you keep trying and are relatively hard working and have reasonable intelligence and some luck here and there, you can do alright in this country. But I know for some that formula won't work as their bad luck has been so great it overtakes all effort, but I don't believe that is the case for most who keep trying.

I do not understood the notion of "I'm proud to be an American*." Gratitude and appreciation of the sacrifices of others in the cause of liberty (whether on a bridge in Selma Alabama or on Omaha Beach), yes. Pride is reserved for our own accomplishments, on the other hand. Most who thump their chest and proclaim, "I'm proud to be an American" owe that status to the fact that they were born into it. It isn't a personal accomplishment in any sense.

*Same could be said of any nationality or ethnic identification, of course.

When I say, "I'm proud to be an American" (I probably never say it, but I do feel and believe it) for me it means I'm proud that my ancestors came here and took advantage of the opportunities to make a better life for themselves and their decedents. I didn't do that, but I'm proud that they did, that I came from them. I'm proud that I'm part of a country that I believe has been a force for good in the world (you can disagree with that, but that's not the question you asked, your question is about my pride in being an American) - while I didn't do those things personally, I believe I contribute to this country's legacy by participating in its traditions, arguing for political change I believe will help it and by being a productive member of the country that helps keep it moving forward in a positive way - I'm proud of that. I'm proud that I had relatives that fought (and died) in wars to help this country. I didn't - there wasn't a draft for my generation and I chose not to enlist - but I am proud that my relatives did and openly acknowledge that it is not something I did personally. So maybe the issue is the definition of the word "proud." I believe you can be proud of your relatives contributions to this country and proud of this country's history and values even if much of that happened before you and proud of the (in my case) small but positive contributions I make to honor my relatives and the history of this country by being a citizen in good standing of this country. And I think that fits this definition (top choice of Google) of proud:
proud
proud/
adjective

1. 1.
   feeling deep pleasure or satisfaction as a result of one's own achievements, qualities, or possessions or those of someone with whom one is closely associated.

I feel I've contributed in a very small way to this country's achievements as have my relatives / ancestors and I'm proud of what this country has stood for and accomplished - and that's why I'm Proud to be an American.

 

[BlueTrain]

Nice reply. Mine's going to be shorter.

I'm also proud to be an American, although I don't say it as though it were an accomplishment. All I had to do was be born here. The first person bearing my family name, who spelled it a little differently, came here (about a hundred miles from right here, too) in the mid-1600s and one ancestor came even earlier. Others came later, none later than 1800. None came by way of New York. None are illustrious in any way, although my wife has some very distinguished ancestors, including George Mason and Mary Ball Washington. Anyhow, I like to think there are American qualities that we should be proud of, whether or not they are often exhibited. But I also like to think that everyone has a good side and exhibits good qualities, too. I realize that it's hard to accept that people who do evil (the contemporary buzzword) things can also do good things. One aspect of "I'm proud to be an American" that I don't like is simple flag-waving. I realize people mean well but that's what I call cheap patriotism. It cost nothing; it involves no sacrifice. It is not service in any way. And that little American flag sticker on the back of your Toyota won't get you into heaven, either.

As far as people expressing sentiments about good slaves, just remember that few people will talk and act like they come through on an anonymous internet forum. Not only will people be more conservative (!!) in their speech, there is much more communication going on besides just the use of the written word. But some people, I have discovered, can be even worse in person.

That's enough. Today is called Decoration Day where I'm from.

 

[HudsonHawk]

How many? I've lived 52 years and I've never met one of those people. I am not denying at all (in any way) that they exist as I've read the rants of those who think that way, but again, what percentage of the population are they? I know pretty far right and pretty far left people and all between and have never, ever met someone who would say something like that (maybe they think it, but I can't climb inside people's heads). The worse thing I've ever heard from a "street corner yeller" is some of the most vile anti-semitic things coming from followers of Louis Farrakhan.

There are 300+ million people in this country, so if a thousand or ten thousand or a hundred thousand think that slavery is good - so what? Sure they are insane, evil, mean, horrible - but come on, is that a prevailing view in this country in any normal sense of the word?

Sadly it's far more common than you realize in the South. The "Lost Cause" ideology is not on the fringe, it's a dominant attitude for large swaths of the population.