Josh Howard, an American hero

[zeebneebV.3]

The anthem was written the night settlers won independence. Blacks were not considered people during that period(and some people still believe that), thus could not fight for the US. I can somewhat understand where he's coming from.

Yup, becuase he was there that night.

...

[Black Dynamite]

Does he have to be there for it to look crappy from his point of view? Again add an asterisk to my point because Howard is a dumbass, but he doesn't have to be there when the bs is put together to call it bs.

[zeebneebV.3]

Does he have to be there for it to look crappy from his point of view? Again add an asterisk to my point because Howard is a dumbass, but he doesn't have to be there when the bs is put together to call it bs.

For him to say what he said, then yes, absolutly he had to be there.

He has a better lifestyle then 99% of all Americans(Hell in the WORLD) thanks to this fine country. If anything he should be even more thankfull for this country then the common masses that make it up.

It's this country that made him a gazillionaire, its this country that lets him say stupid-ass crap, and its this country that lets him live free, and be happy.

His point of view doesnt give him the right to say what he said, this very country he refuses to respect gives him the right to say what he said, the freedom of speach.

People claiming the past they HAD NO PART OF, in excusing poor behavior is worse then the behavior itself.

He wasnt a victim here, just a dumbass. A dumbass that needs to be bitch-slapped for saying something so fucking stupid.

[Fool]

The guy is a moron and has shown such numerous times. To pretend that the justification for this protest is nuanced in anyway is to give him more credit then he's shown worthy of. So unless the guy breaks it down with more than "I'm black", I don't imagine his personal opinion on the matter is anything more then individual bigotry and probably ignorantly misguided based on partial and biased knowledge he's gleaned from his life.

That's not to say that a protest of the National Anthem would not be justified on similar grounds as those Mr. Howard would like to believe he's making his protest on. However, the guy is a knucklehead and deserves no benefit of the doubt on this point.

And of course, Mxy is correct when he says America the Beautiful would be a better anthem as it would fit more with the traditional role of a national anthem (a general positive message about the country as a whole rather then a reminiscence of one moment in our history, even if it's perhaps our most crucial moment in history). Plus, it sounds better.

[Big Swami]

I really hate to be the one to say something shocking here, but the Founding Fathers and all that patriotic stuff is just hogwash. The existence of slavery and Jim Crow tells us that they talked a lot of mess about freedom and brotherhood, but they didn't really mean it.

The real founders of freedom in America are the people of today. And the foundation of a free society did not happen in 1776, 1787, 1812, 1840, 1865, 1916, or 1945. It took until 1965 to start forming a truly free society.

If someone wants to talk about how great a country we were during the war of 1812 and how worthy dying for this country was ... sorry, but I beg to differ. But if someone wants to write something about the Voting Rights Act that has a nice melody, I'm up for it.

Go ahead and mock Josh Howard for being a fool and an embarassment - which he is - but don't mock him for choosing to exercise his right to judge a country based on its actual merits.

[Glenn]

Strong, Swam.

Can I suggest the theme from "Good Times"?

[Fool]

You can't judge history ethically based on modern day morality. If you do all people ever would be considered immoral. Just as in a hundred years people would look back and judge us as immoral for who knows what we don't realize we do.

Yes, we became more free after the Civil Rights movement but to say those who came before were not freedom fighters is a slander to those who came before.

[Big Swami]

If you can't judge history based on modern morality, why change anything ever at all? That's senseless. That's tantamount to saying that all societies progress through trial-and-error.

And it's not as though I'm sitting here laughing at Julius Caesar's masseur who thought he could cure Caesar's epilepsy by rubbing his feet (although that is pretty funny). I'm pointing out that there were a group of men founding a nation who knew they had an opportunity to eliminate a great evil, failed to do so, and were conscious of that failure and how it might impact posterity.

The philosophical memes that made slavery palatable to some people in the early US were an innovation. Let me say this another way: someone INVENTED a rationale that made slavery tolerable, and passed it along. Before that, it was appalling, like we find it today.

Anyone who trusts the evidence of their senses knows that all human beings are so biologically similar as to render differences negligible. While it may be fashionable to deny one's own senses in different eras, it is never conscionable.

[Fool]

It's not senseless, it's actually the only thing that makes sense. History must be understood in context or else whatever you draw from it is meaningless. What you are doing is like laughing at people who used steam power because they hadn't invented the internal combustion engine.

And not judging history by today's standards has nothing to do with whether you want to change the present. You don't have to play hypocrite and pretend we are 100% morally righteous to understand how people of their day weren't 100% morally righteous themselves. Noting their failings is a good thing to do. Obscuring their successes by denying the biases/lack of advancement of their age is a bad thing.

And no one had to invent anything for slavery to be palatable. Slavery was in common practice long before the dudes in wigs pontificated "natural rights" and the fact that it continued afterward is sad but doesn't mean they didn't accomplish anything.

[geerussell]

People claiming the past they HAD NO PART OF, in excusing poor behavior is worse then the behavior itself.

He wasnt a victim here, just a dumbass. A dumbass that needs to be bitch-slapped for saying something so fucking stupid.

Following through on that theme, people who salute the flag, people who put their hands over their hearts and sing the national anthem are equally stupid. They achieved no victory there, after all. They're just a bunch of bandwagon cats claiming a past they HAD NO PART OF.

The past we had no part of is still a part of us. We inherit the good part and the bad parts.