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From: gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor)
Newsgroups: net.flame,net.politics,net.legal,net.nlang.celts
Subject: Re: Americans: Response to Dave London
Message-ID: <18@lasspvax.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 15-Aug-84 09:20:23 EDT
Article-I.D.: lasspvax.18
Posted: Wed Aug 15 09:20:23 1984
Date-Received: Fri, 17-Aug-84 00:19:09 EDT
References: <180@bonnie.UUCP>
Reply-To: gtaylor@lasspvax.UUCP (Greg Taylor)
Organization: Cornell University Theorynet
Lines: 41

Excuse me, but what a disingenuous bit of arguing. I'm certainly not going
to feel much like trotting out an argument about the Brits and the Irish
(you've got a bone to pick, eh? Well, just be glad you live in America 
during the second war where we can put you in the internment camps.......)

I sympathize with your position, but you're being a bit myopic, I think-hey,
wasn't that one of our Brit pal's comments. You wanna try curtailed rights?
Okay, how about Blacks? The Nisei? Curfews during the 60's? (But wait, those
were not *legitimate* complaints like.....) The pure and simple reason you
can trot out the old "Colonial Oppressor" argument is that this country missed
its share of the colonial pie during the 19th century. We were too busy putting
our own native-born third world on reservations where they wouldn't bother us.

As for the legal end of things, if you'd look at something besides English
jurisprudence, you'd notice that the "guilty until proven innocent" (How
do the British describe this legal principle?) has a long history of its own
with its origins in the dim past. Perhaps we could talk about the notions of
British/European Jurisprudence vs. the American notion here. ANyone up for it?

As I read our British friend's posting, I can't say as I find much to disagree
with. Not that it's not understandable or anything. My lovely wife (who is 
Dutch) found the original very interesting, and said that it was, in fact, one
of the politest mentions of what "Americans are like in general" that she'd
ever heard in American company from a Non-American.

I don't think that the original posting was concerned in any way with the
superiority of the British system. It merely suggested that some AMericans
are *painfully* ignorant of the rest of the world, and unworried about it.
They may be uninterested in the rest of the world, (except for the cuisine
;-)  ) and all the more ready to point to the ethnic background of the US as
a grounds for exemption for knowing what the world out there is like. Sad
to say, I think he's right, and no amount of Olympic broadcasting is gonna
mess up that sense of shame.

gtaylor
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If you ask me, I may tell you   gtaylor@cornell
it's been this way for years	Gregory Taylor			 
I play my red guitar....	Theorynet (Theoryknot)		  
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