[WikiEN-l] Re: Re: American concepts of justice

[Dan Drake]

On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 00:32:18 UTC, Ray Saintonge 
<saintonge at telus.net> wrote:

> Dan Drake wrote:
> 
> >Actually, I considered putting a disclaimer in the posting, but thought it
> >would be a waste.  Wrong again.  I need to be more ultra-patriotic 
> >American, and assume that any praise of anything in my country will be 
> >taken as an attack on the world, foreigners being quite unable (like all 
> >too many Americans) to understand such subtleties. 
> >  
> >
> Ultra-patriotism is one thing that will unite non-Americans of any 
> political stripe anywhere.  Praising what is right is perfectly 
> acceptable to many of us foreigners.  Just try to avoid gratuitous 
> superlatives; they are not subtle. :-)

I quite agree.  In fact, ultra-patriotism of any kind will offend people 
everywhere, including America (*).  It's not clear to me, though, why you 
admonish me in this way.  It will surely have been clear that the post 
(from which you chose to cite only a paragraph of sarcasm so heavy-handed 
that perhaps I should apologize for it), as well as previous posts in this
thread, went to some trouble to avoid superlatives.  



(*) Not all, of course.  Some people approve of ultra-patriotism of the 
_proper_ sort, here as elsewhere.  By the way, thanks for giving us le mot
juste for such people; I infer that chauvinism is not unknown in the 
country which M. Chauvin had the honor (insofar as he was real, and 
separated from the mythology) to live in.