Yostivanich

Recently there has been a polit­i­cal storm brew­ing over Rev­erend Wright. This man was Sen­a­tor Obama’s for­mer pas­tor and his ser­mons are to put it bluntly rather con­tro­ver­sial. Here is a video of one them receiv­ing the most cov­er­age from the media out­lets, at the end of which he says “God damn Amer­ica”. This has under­stand­ably caused a great many peo­ple to have some major prob­lems with Obama being asso­ci­ated with this per­son. My focus here isn’t on Obama and wether Obama should or should not have dis­owned him or what he should have done. Though I think we have some­thing to learn from Obama’s speech, specif­i­cally to quote Ave­nune Q, “Everyone’s a Lit­tle Bit Racist”. Rather I want to focus on the con­tro­versy sur­round­ing the Rev­erend him­self over him crit­i­ciz­ing America.

This is a rather con­tro­ver­sial topic in Amer­ica and one that I am admit­tedly hes­i­tant to write about. For sev­eral rea­sons, first off pol­i­tics is a highly emo­tional and per­sonal topic, this causes peo­ple to feel very intensely about their par­tic­u­lar point of view and ignore other points of view. This is eas­ily seen by both the par­ties here in Amer­ica which will rou­tinely crit­i­cize one party for doing some­thing that they them­selves did just a few years ear­lier. Also you can see it in the scream­ing heads we have on cable tv that are more inter­ested in yelling at one another rather than work­ing through an issue. The sec­ond rea­son is that my opin­ion on this mat­ter is itself rather con­tro­ver­sial but obvi­ously I feel a valid opinion.

So should Amer­i­cans crit­i­cize not just a par­tic­u­lar opin­ion, polit­i­cal party or should they also crit­i­cize Amer­ica as a whole? Per­son­ally I feel yes for sev­eral rea­sons. Amer­ica as a whole is both a soci­ety, a cul­ture, and a the gov­ern­ment as a whole. There are times when the soci­ety, the cul­ture and the gov­ern­ment as a whole all agree on some­thing that peo­ple may feel is wrong. Who then is left to crit­i­cize other than Amer­ica as a whole? A lot of well mean­ing Amer­i­cans con­sider it unpa­tri­otic to crit­i­cize the coun­try. There rea­son­ing behind it is that no mat­ter what it still is your coun­try and to crit­i­cize Amer­ica then why are you here in the first place? Which in all hon­esty isn’t a bad rea­son, but I think it becomes faulty logic. One doesn’t have to agree with every­thing that occurs in a coun­try. Part of our cit­i­zen­ship isn’t a require­ment that you pledge to never crit­i­cize Amer­ica. Cit­i­zen­ship says that you pledge to fol­low the rules our soci­ety has put into place and to quote Wikipedia:

Respon­si­bil­i­ties of citizens

Cit­i­zens have the duty to serve in a jury, if selected. Cit­i­zens are also required to pay taxes on their total income from all sources world­wide, includ­ing income earned abroad while resid­ing abroad (regard­less of the dura­tion of the res­i­dence) – but only beyond the first $85,700 in this case because of the for­eign earned income exclusion.[1] U.S. taxes payable may be fur­ther reduced by cred­its for for­eign income taxes. The United States Gov­ern­ment also insists that U.S. cit­i­zens travel into and out of the United States on a U.S. pass­port, regard­less of any other nation­al­ity they may possess.

Male U.S. cit­i­zens (includ­ing those liv­ing per­ma­nently abroad and/or with dual U.S./other cit­i­zen­ship) are required to reg­is­ter with the Selec­tive Ser­vice Sys­tem at age 18 for pos­si­ble con­scrip­tion into the armed forces. Although no one has been drafted in the U.S. since 1973, draft reg­is­tra­tion con­tin­ues for pos­si­ble rein­state­ment on some future date.

Cit­i­zen­ship does not mean that you give up an abil­ity to crit­i­cize another cit­i­zen of Amer­ica, a polit­i­cal party, or even Amer­ica as a whole. One of the many free­doms this coun­try gives us is the free­dom to crit­i­cize Amer­ica as a whole, the soci­ety, the cul­ture, the whole gov­ern­ment. There are times when this is appro­pri­ate. That isn’t to say that this is some­thing that I feel one should do, day in, day out. But there are times when even I have felt that our soci­ety as a whole is par­tic­i­pat­ing in some­thing that goes against our foun­da­tion, our Con­sution or even just plain logic. Crit­i­cism of some­thing isn’t my way of say­ing we should throw out what­ever I am crit­i­ciz­ing or that it shouldn’t exist. It’s my way of say­ing that such and such is a wrong action. The rea­son peo­ple crit­i­cize some­thing is to cor­rect a wrong or per­ceived wrong action. If Amer­ica as a whole is under­tak­ing what I per­ceive to be a wrong action, that isn’t it my place to crit­i­cize the action and crit­i­cize the coun­try for going along with the decision.

I per­son­ally don’t agree Rev. Wright, for sev­eral rea­sons, I don’t think it is the soci­ety as a whole that needs to be crit­i­cized also I feel that what he is doing isn’t crit­i­cism so much as it is try­ing to stir up emo­tions around his topic of race rela­tions in Amer­ica. I feel that debates should be less emo­tional and more log­i­cal that sim­ply say­ing “God damn” x. That’s not a debate, how­ever to quote Voltaire “I may dis­agree with what you have to say, but I shall defend, to the death, your right to say it.” I will always defend some­ones right to free­dom of speech, even when they dis­agree with me or even when what they say is controversial.