On Fri, 2 Jul 2004 00:32:18 UTC, Ray Saintonge saintonge@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.