If you acted respectfully, I wouldn't have to call you out. Parodying "the land of the free, the home of the brave" is NOT respectful. Questioning America's principles of freedom is NOT respectful.
Had you wanted to respectfully discuss the topic, you could have stuck to stating your opinion without making value judgments about others or other nationalities. For example, just say "I believe people have the right to gather and demonstrate in public places without being arrested by law enforcement." And leave it at that.
Only in your mind you have to "call me out", if I had broken the forum rules you could have informed the guardians of this forum, they would have set me straight/dealt with me.
You could have disagreed with my posting on the issues and that would have been that, but no you had to disagree with my post on "foreigner" reasonings.
I did not parody "the land of the free and the home of the brave", it was a genuine remark, I may not agree with letting everybody speak their racist minds, but I know how important the first amendment is for Americans. So when I say "the land of free and the home of the brave" I think of :
- Martin Luther King - a brave man who stood up for his freedom of speech
- All US soldiers especially during WW2 - the men and women who bravely laid down their lives for my freedom of speech and my freedom in General. We respect (as people from the province of Limburg, where I live and the only section of my country actually liberated by the US army) the sacrifice of US service men so much that at our local US WW2 cemetery in Margraten, where thousands of heroes are buried, all of the more than 8,000 graves have been adopted by Dutch families and/or school children. Every grave is visited multiple times a year by the family who adopted the graves. They pay for and lay flowers on important days (like memorial day) on the graves of the soldiers.
- the US founding father who fought the British
- Woodrow Wilson who had the vision that led to the league of Nations and after that to the United Nations because he realized that if we stand together there would no longer be world wars anymore
- George C. Marshall who made a peaceful Europe possible
- et. etc. etc.
If people are arrested for political free speech it goes against the sacrifice of all those heroes who laid down their lives or the physical health and liberty for the notion of freedom. If you call that parodying the "land of the free and the home of the brave" comment than that is all down to your warped view of me which causes you to read things into my comment that I did not write and especially did not mean to infer. That is all down to your hangups about me I would guess.
You were the one who did not discuss the issues, you disrespected me by attacking my heritage. I was respecting the heritage of heroes by stating that they did not lay down their lives, prosperity and freedom so that 85 year old singing people who stand up for their political views get arrested for singing and protesting.
We Dutch love the Americans, we were one of the first (if not the first) to recognize the US as a free country. We have a bond of friendship going back to colonial times, New Amsterdam. Even now parts of NY are named after Dutch cities etc.
On the 16th of November 1776, the Dutch were the first foreign country to salute the American Flag. On 19 April 1782 John Adams was received by the States General in The Hague and recognized as Minister Plenipotentiary of the United States of America. The house that Adams purchased in The Hague became the first American embassy in the world.
I have had American friends growing up, I have had American servicemen as neighbors, we have opened our home to an American family when a US school visited our area to give a dancing show. My best friend in the world is an American.
That you read things into my posts that are not there is your problem not mine. It is your disrespecting me rather than me disrespecting the US people because that is all in your mind IMHO that is the issue.
