More symptoms of insanity on the American right

[fpb]

In yesterday's American Thinker, a man with the Italian name of Bonelli wrote the following, extremely offensive statement:

The United States is different from most other countries in many ways. One unique aspect of our country is that our elected officials, officers of the court, and the military, all pledge their allegiance to the Constitution and not to an office, individual or party. This assures continuity of the ideals set forth by the founders.

As an Italian citizen, I have personally sworn to defend the Constitution of my country when I served in the Italian army. The presumption involved in this ignorant display of insular arrogance is an insult to every constitutional government in the world.

Comments

[marielapin.livejournal.com]

I currently live in the South in a very Republican area where about 75% are Republicans, or at least vote Republican. Granted, that does not mean hard core right conservatives. I have also lived in Alabama for ten years, so I have a pretty good idea about the types of folks fpb is talking about. I also think these guys are not mainstream, by any means. I personally have not met one of these people that he keeps mentioning, saying that the US is so far superior to Europe, etc. And while most of my friends I would say lean more conservative (not in the way of the folks he keeps pointing out) I do have friends though that are extremely far left, that advocate scary ideas like birth regulation.

[inverarity.livejournal.com]

I've met plenty of far right (and not so very far right) conservatives, and know a few personally, who do indeed believe that Europe is (to use a few of the favorite words they like to throw around), "effete," "ineffectual," "socialist" (they apply this label to all of Europe, not just those countries that actually are socialist), "godless" (which they equate with "amoral and corrupt"), etc.

Remember "cheese-eating surrender monkeys"? Yeah, it was a joke, but it's also what an awful lot of them deeply believe. That is mainstream conservative political discourse right now.

OTOH, I've heard birth regulation advocated by conservatives as often as by liberals, and almost always it's in the context of someone spouting off about "parenting licenses" after seeing some particularly egregious example of bad parenting on the news. Very few of them really mean it. (And of those who do, it's usually the conservatives who don't back down when you ask, "Are you serious?")