Quote:
Originally posted by Felix The Assassin:
Excellent Shamrock.
I do find a very small fragment that I'd like to discuss, hopefully Larry will allow it.
In the middle Ms Peters quoted some stats about violence. But in Waynes closing he mentioned good and bad people. Ms. Peters replied that good and bad people only exist in movies.
I'm still ROFLMAO.
Are there any jails in Australia?
If so, are there only 'good' people in their?
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Lol, I believe we should put it in context however. It was poorly worded, but that's mostly because she was talking about something else. Presumably, when he talked about good and evil people in the world, he was referring to the law-abiding American citizen, and the burglar he can defend his house against with his gun.
However, I would imagine that
she thought he meant
America is good and the rest of the world is evil, presumably taking "good and evil people in the world" literally.
She would have interpreted his sentence as America is
intrinsically good, and the rest of world is
intrinsically bad by nature of them not being American.
She obviously was reading far too much into what he said (if he was referring purely to American criminals trying to break into his house), but the instinct outside of America is to equate statements of morality made by right-wing Americans with the global conflicts that we see today.
When we (meaning us outside of America) hear right-wing American's talk about the evil in the world we immediately think of the Middle-East and the belief that Western values are intrinsically better and it is a moral duty to impose them on others.
The extent to which this association between American action in the world and our consequent amusement when we hear right-wingers speak of values might not be immediately obvious which is why I thought I'd elaborate. I would imagine it was this connection which made her immediately link his categorisation of good and evil to the world and therefore why she said it was fantasy.
She was basically refuting the school of thought which holds there is a clash of civilisations, one evil, one good.
Sorry if this takes it slightly off-topic, although I think to understand her response it was necessary. And this definitely isn't supposed to start a debate on Iraq!
[ 10-14-2004, 08:50 PM: Message edited by: shamrock_uk ]