{"id":1610,"date":"2004-11-25T10:05:35","date_gmt":"2004-11-25T14:05:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/nateptest\/2004\/11\/25\/take-that-indulgent-ones\/"},"modified":"2004-11-25T10:05:35","modified_gmt":"2004-11-25T14:05:35","slug":"take-that-indulgent-ones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/2004\/11\/25\/take-that-indulgent-ones\/","title":{"rendered":"Take that, indulgent ones!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a name='a817'><\/a><\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t normally find Tom Friedman&#8217;s column in the Times worth reading.&nbsp; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/11\/25\/opinion\/25friedman.html?partner=nytrss\">But today&#8217;s bears examination<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at<br \/>\na time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can<br \/>\nenjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. Yes, I<br \/>\nwant to be Tom DeLay. I want to wear a little American flag on my lapel<br \/>\nin solidarity with the troops, while I besmirch every value they are<br \/>\ndying for&#8230;.<\/p>\n<p>If I can&#8217;t be The Man, then I at least want to be the owner of a<br \/>\nHummer &#8211; with American flag decals all over the back bumper, because<br \/>\nHummer owners are, on average, a little more patriotic than you and me.\n  <\/p>\n<p>Yes, I want to drive the mother of all gas-guzzlers that gets so<br \/>\nlittle mileage you have to drive from gas station to gas station. Yes,<br \/>\nI want to drive my Hummer and never have to think that by consuming so<br \/>\nmuch oil, I am making transfer payments to the worst Arab regimes that<br \/>\ntransfer money to Islamic charities that transfer money to madrassas<br \/>\nthat teach children intolerance, antipluralism and how to hate the<br \/>\ninfidels. <\/p>\n<p>And when one day one of those madrassa graduates goes<br \/>\noff and joins the jihad in Falluja and kills my neighbor&#8217;s son, who is<br \/>\nin the U.S. Army Rangers, I want to drive to his funeral in my Hummer.<br \/>\nYes, I want to curse his killers in front of his mother and wail aloud,<br \/>\n&#8220;If there was only something I could do &#8230;&#8221; And then I want to drive<br \/>\nhome in my Hummer, stopping at two gas stations along the way.\n  <\/p>\n<p>If I can&#8217;t be any of these, then I want to be just a simple blue-state<br \/>\nred-state American. I want to take time on this Thanksgiving to thank<br \/>\nGod I live in a country where, despite so much rampant selfishness, the<br \/>\npublic schools still manage to produce young men and women ready to<br \/>\nvoluntarily risk their lives in places like Iraq and Afghanistan to<br \/>\nspread the opportunity of freedom and to protect my own. And I want to<br \/>\nthank them for doing this, even though on so many days in so many ways<br \/>\nwe really don&#8217;t deserve them.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I don&#8217;t normally find Tom Friedman&#8217;s column in the Times worth reading.&nbsp; But today&#8217;s bears examination. But most of all, I want to have the gall to sully American democracy at a time when young American soldiers are fighting in Iraq so we can enjoy a law-based society here and, maybe, extend it to others. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":709,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[46],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1610","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politicks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5G3PH-pY","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/709"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1610"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1610\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1610"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1610"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/natep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1610"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}