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Anti-Americanism

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Anti-Americanism has less to do with the policies and actions of the United States and more with what the United States is or what it stands for. ~ Paul Hollander
We are told that it's this form of fundamentalist religion represented by this Wahhabi-influenced Islamic, if you will, ideology or view that has created, if you will, a seedbed for people to become violent, to become anti-American, and to do the kinds of things that we call "extremism" now. Is that true? I don't think it has to do with Islam. ~ Mai Yamani
By being anti-American, one adheres to a prejudice. ~ Andrei S. Markovits
Anti-Americanism remains not only acceptable in many public circles, it has even become commendable, indeed a badge of honor, and perhaps one of the most distinct icons of being a progressive these days. ~ Andrei S. Markovits
The principal function of anti-Americanism has always been, and still is, to discredit liberalism by discrediting its supreme incarnation. To travesty the United States as a repressive, unjust, racist—almost fascist—society was a way of proclaiming: look what happens when liberalism is implemented! ~ Jean-François Revel

Anti-Americanism, also known as Americanophobia or anti-American sentiment, is the dislike, fear, or hostility toward the United States of America, the American people and their culture, U.S. business practices and technology, or the policies of the U.S. government.

Arranged alphabetically by author or source:
A · B · C · D · E · F · G · H · I · J · K · L · M · N · O · P · Q · R · S · T · U · V · W · X · Y · Z · See also · External links

Quotes

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They are escaped convicts. His Majesty is fortunate to be rid of such rabble. Their true God is power. ~ Oliver Sharpin
United States, out of North America! And most important, United States, out of mind! ~ Ward Churchill
I hate Americans; I hate America. ~ Ariana Grande
Many American liberals... think anti-Americanism is the surest sign of progressive beliefs. ~ Amir Taheri
America represents herself as a Christian nation. ... They profess to be a friend and defenders of all peace-loving and freedom-loving people. The only people we really see that they want to be friends of are themselves and their kind. They are really sincere when they say that they are freedom-loving people. Above all, the White man the world over wants to be free to rule and dominate the aboriginal people. ~ Elijah Muhammad
Americans... are our enemies. ~ Haunani-Kay Trask
The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it. ~ Haunani-Kay Trask
The United States is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. ~ Giannina Braschi
Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up. ~ Jean-Francois Revel
Among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as the same enemy. ~ Dennis Prager
God bless America? No, no! No, not God bless America! God damn America! It's in the Bible! ~ Jeremiah Wright
The Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. ~ Boutros Boutros-Ghali
Every Muslim, from the moment they realize the distinction in their hearts, hates Americans, hates Jews and hates Christians. For as long as I can remember, I have felt tormented and at war, and have felt hatred and animosity for Americans. ~ Osama bin Laden
The ruling to kill the Americans and their allies, civilians and military, is an individual duty for every Muslim who can do it in any country in which it is possible to do it. ~ Osama bin Laden
The Islamic nation will carry out its duty. I am confident that Muslims will be able to end the legend of the so-called superpower that is America. ~ Osama bin Laden
Don't bring up your sons to detest the United States... Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans. ~ Robert E. Lee
I hates the Constitution, this 'Great Republic', too! I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do. I hates the Declaration of Independence, too! ~ James Innes Randolph
What does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean... that you’re opposed to freedom of speech?... That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?...that you hate all Americans?... To call someone “anti-American”...is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists. ~ Arundhati Roy

A

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B

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  • It would be some time before I fully realized that the United States sees little need for diplomacy; power is enough. Only the weak rely on diplomacy. This is why the weak are so deeply concerned with the democratic principle of the sovereign equality of states, as a means of providing some small measure of equality for that which is not equal in fact. Coming from a developing country, I was trained extensively in international law and diplomacy and mistakenly assumed that the great powers, especially the United States, also trained their representatives in diplomacy and accepted the value of it. But the Roman Empire had no need for diplomacy. Nor does the United States. Diplomacy is perceived by an imperial power as a waste of time and prestige and a sign of weakness.
  • We are not hated for who we are. We are hated for what we do. It is not our principles that have spawned pandemic hatred of America in the Islamic world. It is our policies.
  • When they laid down their arms, we murdered them. We lied to them. We cheated them out of their lands. We starved them into signing fraudulent agreements that we called treaties which we never kept. We turned them into beggars on a continent that gave life for as long as life can remember. And by any interpretation of history, however twisted, we did not do right. We were not lawful nor were we just in what we did. For them, we do not have to restore these people, we do not have to live up to some agreements, because it is given to us by virtue of our power to attack the rights of others, to take their property, to take their lives when they are trying to defend their land and liberty, and to make their virtues a crime and our own vices virtues...

    I think awards in this country at this time are inappropriate to be received or given until the condition of the American Indian is drastically altered. If we are not our brother's keeper, at least let us not be his executioner.

    • Marlon Brando, speech for the Academy Awards protesting the treatment of American Indians, written by Brando, as it appeared in the New York Times (30 March 1973).
  • The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.
  • The United States is the Darwinist capital of the capitalist world. A head afraid is a head haunted. A head haunted is a head hunted. Run for your life. Run from the guillotine to a head hunter who saves your head and raises your salary — so you’ll be caught in the red of the fish-market buying gadgets to distract your fragile imagination that is cut in the red market of blood—running and escaping — running again — changing your resume to update the fear you feel of being unemployed tomorrow — in the streets — and from there to welfare — and from there to begging.
  • I'm amazed that there is such misunderstanding of what our country is about, that people would hate us. I am like most Americans. I just can't believe it, because I know how good we are, and we've got to do a better job of making our case. We've got to do a better job of explaining to the people in the Middle East, for example, that we don't fight a war against Islam or Muslims. We don't hold any religion accountable. We're fighting evil. And these murderers have hijacked a great religion in order to justify their evil deeds. And we cannot let it stand.
    • George W. Bush, remarks in a press conference, after questions by Ken Walsh of U.S. News & World Report (11 October 2001), as recorded in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: 2001, Book 2 (2004) Government Printing Office, p. 1226

C

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  • This country is big-time pig time... Change the bald eagle to a big bowl of macaroni and cheese. A big bowl. 'Cause everything in this country is king size, extra large and super jumbo. Especially the fucking people! Have you seen some of the people in this country? Have you taken a good look at some of these big, fat motherfuckers walking around? Big fat motherfuckers! Oh, my God. Huge piles of redundant protoplasm, lumbering through the malls like a fleet of interstate buses. The people in this country are immense. Massive bellies, monstrous thighs, and big fat fucking asses! Next time you're in the vicinity of one of these creatures, stand there for a minute and observe. And if you stand there for a minute you'll begin to wonder, "How does this woman take a shit?" How does she shit? And more frightening still, how does she wipe her ass? Can she even locate her asshole? She must require assistance. Are paramedics trained in this field?

D

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  • How does the rest of the world perceive America... We're the nation that stood by and didn't lift a finger when the Iranian public was protesting their government. We voiced no support and did not try to help in any significant way, and the protest was soon quelled. We're the nation that drew red lines in Syria and watched them being crossed without a whimper. We're the nation that only uttered a few lukewarm words as Putin invaded the Crimea and the Ukraine. We're the nation that traded five of the world's most dangerous terrorists for one American deserter. We're the nation that gave away the store to insure that Iran can finance its terrorist attacks and be assured of having a nuclear device in a few years... A note to our enemies. You think you know America, but you only see the tiny, inept, incompetent, cowering political tip of a very big, very capable iceberg. You don't know the Heartland where the people are fiercely independent and willing to defend this nation with their bare hands if that's what it takes. You don't know the steel workers in Pittsburgh with muscles that could break a man's neck like a twig. You don't know the swamp folks in Cajun country that can wrestle a full-grown alligator out of the water. You don't know the mountain folks in Appalachia who can knock a squirrel's eye out from a hundred yards away with a small caliber rifle. You don't know the farmers, the cowboys, the loggers and the seagoing folks. You don't know the truck drivers, the carpenters, the mountain men who live off the land, the hard rock miners or the small town cops who keep the peace in the rowdy border towns. No, you don't know America.
  • Well, brother, I don't mind that. It's a good place. When you are asked, you just say he was going, he said, to America." He put the revolver to his right temple. "You can't do it here, it's not the place", cried Achilles, rousing himself, his eyes growing bigger and bigger. Svidrigaïlov pulled the trigger.

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F

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  • After two years of traveling almost exclusively to Western Europe and the Middle East, Poland feels like a geopolitical spa. I visited here for just three days and got two years of anti-American bruises massaged out of me. Get this: people here actually tell you they like America -- without whispering. What has gotten into these people? Have all their subscriptions to Le Monde Diplomatique expired? Haven't they gotten the word from Berlin and Paris? No, they haven't. In fact, Poland is the antidote to European anti-Americanism. Poland is to France what Advil is to a pain in the neck. Or as Michael Mandelbaum, the Johns Hopkins foreign affairs specialist, remarked after visiting Poland: "Poland is the most pro-American country in the world -- including the United States."

G

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  • America is a mere bully, from one end to the other.
    • Thomas Gage, as quoted in Paul Revere's Ride (1995), by David Hackett Fischer, New York: Oxford University Press, p. 31
  • My father had served with great honor and courage in the Second World War. He fought for a country that was not only great, but good. It had its flaws and had some imperfections. It was the original sin of slavery which you know which we hadn't completed extirpated because we still had racial injustice in the 50s and 60s and 70s. We had only recently abolished, formally abolished segregation. So I was aware that uh, America had its flaws and defects in its history. But I also believed in the country and believed in its principles. That's the way I was brought up and so I was shocked when I found people who were just openly, vociferously anti-American, condemning not only America's sins but America itself, condemning its principles and pointing in some cases to communist regimes like Cuba as being superior.
  • If I had to choose between life in the Soviet Union and life in the USA, I would certainly choose the Soviet Union.
    • Graham Greene, attributed by Parade magazine (29 October 1967), p. 2. Reported as unverified in Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations (1989).
  • If 9/11 can be construed as the exemplar of anti-Americanism at work, does it make much sense to imply that all anti-Americans are complicit with terrorism?
  • Revolution will be a tangible demonstration before all the Americas that peoples are capable of rising up, that they can rise up by themselves right under the very fangs of the monster.
  • Our every action is a battle cry against imperialism, and a battle hymn for the people's unity against the great enemy of mankind, the United States of America.

H

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  • A friend last weekend said he thought the story about the University of New Hampshire's website publishing a bias-free language guide, which declared that use of the word 'American' is 'problematic', was a hoax. Of course, it was real.
  • Unlike back in ‘68, “I hate America” is now “organised”. Not organised in the leftist sense, I mean organised in the Ben and Jerry’s sense. Attractively-packaged, nice tasting, creamy, chocolaty, cookie-dough anti-Americanism that clogs the arteries and numbs the brain. Fashion trumps sophistication. America’s insignia are ubiquitous — from Ralph Lauren jumpers to Primal Scream album covers to the end of a flaming match in the Arab Street, looking modish even when being burned. I’ve seen kids on TV in Osama bin Laden t-shirts and New York Yankees’ baseball caps (Hello? You don’t see the irony?). I’ve watched young British men in the nondescript north-of-London town of Luton clad in “New York” sweatshirts holding up banners of the extremist Islamic group al-Muhajiroun. Our rebels are American. So are our anti-Americans. Michael Moore is one of America’s biggest exports. America makes anti-Americanism profitable for America. What a country! ... America is not the panacea, nor is it the devil. Our problems are generally our problems. The world would do well to be a little more like America, a tad more insular, self-involved.
  • It almost seems that nobody can hate America as much as native Americans.
    • Eric Hoffer, as quoted in "Thoughts of Eric Hoffer, Including: 'Absolute Faith Corrupts Absolutely'", The New York Times Magazine (25 April 1971), p. 25
  • Anti-Americanism has less to do with the policies and actions of the United States and more with what the United States is or what it stands for.
  • The American Left’s affair with fundamentalist Islam is essentially a love-fear relationship. The Left loves Islam’s hatred of America and its desire to radically change this country, but the Left also fears what militant Muslims are capable of, especially if they turn their murderous rage on their so-called friends. So the Left, like Neville Chamberlain with the Nazis, walks a tightrope, appeasing Muslims at every turn, offering excuses for Islamic violence, and hoping Muslim fundamentalists won’t bite the hand that feeds them their excuses... Islam has announced again and again that it despises the values, culture, and traditions of America. The American Left does too. Consistent with the Arabic proverb that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, the American Left has formed an alliance with fundamentalist Islam... The American Left’s affair with fundamentalist Islam is essentially a love-fear relationship. The Left loves Islam’s hatred of America and its desire to radically change this country, but the Left also fears what militant Muslims are capable of, especially if they turn their murderous rage on their so-called friends. So the Left, like Neville Chamberlain with the Nazis, walks a tightrope, appeasing Muslims at every turn, offering excuses for Islamic violence, and hoping Muslim fundamentalists won’t bite the hand that feeds them their excuses.

K

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  • Thus are assaults on patriotism failures of character. They are made by privileged people who enjoy the full benefits offered by the country they deride and detest, but they lack the basic decency to pay it the allegiance and respect that honor demands. But honor, of course, is also an object of their derision... In the long and deadly battle against those who hate... and hate America in particular, we must be powerfully armed, morally as well as materially. To sustain us through the worst times we need courage and unity, and these must rest on a justified and informed patriotism.

L

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  • Look at Vietnam, look at Lebanon. Whenever soldiers start coming home in body bags, Americans panic and retreat. Such a country needs only to be confronted with two or three sharp blows, then it will flee in panic, as it always has.
  • In today's wars, there are no morals. We believe the worst thieves in the world today and the worst terrorists are the Americans. We do not have to differentiate between military or civilian. As far as we are concerned, they are all targets.
  • The call to wage war against America was made because America has spear-headed the crusade against the Islamic nation, sending tens of thousands of its troops to the land of the two Holy Mosques over and above its meddling in its affairs and its politics, and its support of the oppressive, corrupt and tyrannical regime that is in control. These are the reasons behind the singling out of America as a target. And not exempt of responsibility are those Western regimes whose presence in the region offers support to the American troops there. We know at least one reason behind the symbolic participation of the Western forces and that is to support the Jewish and Zionist plans for expansion of what is called the Great Israel. Surely, their presence is not out of concern over their interests in the region.
  • After our victory in Afghanistan and the defeat of the oppressors who had killed millions of Muslims, the legend about the invincibility of the superpowers vanished. Our boys no longer viewed America as a superpower. So, when they left Afghanistan, they went to Somalia and prepared themselves carefully for a long war. They had thought that the Americans were like the Russians, so they trained and prepared. They were stunned when they discovered how low was the morale of the American soldier. America had entered with 30,000 soldiers in addition to thousands of soldiers from different countries in the world... Any effort directed against America and the Jews yields positive and direct results, God willing. It is far better for anyone to kill a single American soldier than to squander his efforts on other activities.
  • Madam, don't bring up your sons to detest the United States government. Recollect that we form one country now. Abandon all these local animosities, and make your sons Americans.
    • Robert E. Lee, advice to a Confederate widow who expressed animosity towards the northern U.S. after the American Civil War, as quoted in The Life and Campaigns of General Lee (1875) by Edward Lee Childe, p. 331. Also quoted in "Will Confederate Heritage Advocates Take Robert E. Lee’s Advice?" (July 2014), by Brooks D. Simpson, Crossroads, WordPress. This quote is sometimes paraphrased as "Madam, do not train up your children in hostility to the government of the United States. Remember, we are all one country now. Dismiss from your mind all sectional feeling, and bring them up to be Americans."

M

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  • The administration has said that Iraq has no right to stockpile chemical or biological weapons, mainly because they have used them in the past. Well, if that's the standard by which these matters are decided, then the U.S. is the nation that set the precedent. The U.S. has stockpiled these same weapons and more for over forty years... The truth is, the U.S. has set the standard when it comes to the stockpiling and use of weapons of mass destruction... When a U.S. plane or cruise missile is used to bring destruction to a foreign people, this nation rewards the bombers with applause and praise. What a convenient way to absolve these killers of any responsibility for the destruction they leave in their wake... Whether you wish to admit it or not, when you approve, morally, of the bombing of foreign targets by the U.S. military, you are approving of acts morally equivalent to the bombing in Oklahoma City.
  • America represents herself as a Christian nation. ... They profess to be a friend and defenders of all peace-loving and freedom-loving people. The only people we really see that they want to be friends of are themselves and their kind. They are really sincere when they say that they are freedom-loving people. Above all, the White man the world over wants to be free to rule and dominate the aboriginal people.

N

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  • They have back-stabbed us.
    • Văn Thiệu Nguyễn, as quoted in Việt Nam. Cuộc chiến 10.000 ngày. Tập 8 - Hòa bình.
    • Original Vietnamese quote: Họ đã đâm sau lưng chúng tôi.

P

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  • [A]nti-Americanism derives simply from our being a colossus that bestrides the earth. This resentment may be incurable. But much anti-Americanism derives from the role U.S. political, economic, and military power has played...
  • It is small surprise that among tyrannical regimes and their defenders, America and Israel are so often identified as the same enemy. This is not merely a consequence of America's standing along behind Israel; the United States has aided various Arab countries very generously, and it has on some critical occasions backed Arab regimes, such as Nasser's Egypt in 1956 and Saudi Arabia in 1981, against Israel. The hostility is aroused largely because America and Israel represent democracy, equal rights for women, a higher quality of life, and a willingness to confront despotism. That is why the two non-Muslim countries that have suffered the heaviest lossest from Islamic suicide murderers are Israel and the United States... Israel remains and embattled democracy in the midst of authoritarian states, and the birthplace of the kibbutz to which tens of thousands of youth from around the world have turned for a living lesson in human equality.

R

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  • Much has been said about the shocking 'militarization' of the police, and how this seemed to many like a provocation. Police in Ferguson were encased in armor that one veteran remarked was heavier than anything he wore in Iraq, and now the cry has gone up. Demilitarize the police! Take away their MRAPs, their forest camouflage, and all the paraphernalia of intimidation that accompanies them into battle. Representative Alan Grayson introduced legislation, shortly before Ferguson exploded, that would have ended the Pentagon program which funneled this gear into local police departments, but it was voted down. Several newer versions are in the works, and a good thing too, but this is attacking the symptoms rather than the disease. The disease is imperialism, otherwise known as U.S. foreign policy. The underlying condition is the American empire, an international regime of terror and exploitation which cannot be expected to treat its own citizens much better than it treats its overseas subjects. How on earth did we ever expect otherwise?
  • Try to tell a Russian housewife, who trudges miles on foot in sub-zero weather in order to spend hours standing in line at a state store dispensing food rations, that America is defiled by shopping centers, expressways and family cars.
    • Ayn Rand, The New Left: The Anti-Industrial Revolution (1971).
  • For this "Fair Land of Freedom" I do not give a damn! I'm glad I fit against it, I only wish we'd won, and I don't want no pardon for anything I done. I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic", too! I hates the Freedman's Bureau and uniforms of blue! I hates the nasty eagle with all its brags and fuss, and the lying, thieving Yankees, I hates them wuss and wuss! I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic", too! I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do. I hates the Declaration of Independence, too!
  • There is a big difference between being anti-American and being critical of the United States. Once again, critiques are appropriate and necessary, provided that they rest on facts and address real abuses, real errors and real excesses, without deliberately losing sight of America's wise decisions, beneficent interventions and salutary policies. But critiques of this kind, balanced, fair and well-founded are hard to find, except in America herself: in the daily press in weekly news magazines, on television and radio, and in highbrow monthly journals, which are more widely read than their equivalents in Europe... Strangely, it is always America that is described as degenerate and 'fascist', while it is solely in Europe that actual dictatorships and totalitarian regimes spring up.
  • Recently, those who have criticized the actions of the U.S. Government... have been called “anti-American.”...The term “anti-American” is usually used by the American establishment to discredit... its critics. Once someone is branded anti-American, the chances are that he... will be judged before they are heard, and the argument will be lost in the welter of bruised national pride.
    But what does the term “anti-American” mean? Does it mean... that you’re opposed to freedom of speech?... That you have a quarrel with giant sequoias?...that you don’t admire the hundreds of thousands of American citizens who marched against nuclear weapons, or the thousands of war resisters who forced their government to withdraw from Vietnam?...that you hate all Americans?
    This sly conflation of America’s culture, music, literature, the breathtaking physical beauty of the land, the ordinary pleasures of ordinary people with criticism of the U.S. government’s foreign policy (about which, thanks to America’s “free press”, sadly most Americans know very little) is a deliberate and extremely effective strategy.
    To call someone “anti-American”, indeed to be anti-American, (or... anti-Indian or anti-Timbuktuan) is not just racist, it’s a failure of the imagination. An inability to see the world in terms other than those the establishment has set out for you... If you don’t love us, you hate us... If you’re not with us, you’re with the terrorists.

S

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  • They are escaped convicts. His Majesty is fortunate to be rid of such rabble. Their true God is power.
  • I was seeking to explain anti-American movements that had erupted in South Korea in the 1980s. I was interested in explaining why South Korea, once considered a best friend and ally of the United States, had embraced anti-American rhetoric and movements during its pursuit of democracy. My research found that the movements had inherently been related to the politics of national identity, since with the anti-American rhetoric dissidents had sought to challenge the authoritarian state's definitions of nation and national identity.
    • Gi-Wook Shin, "Acknowledgements", Ethnic Nationalism in Korea (2006), Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, p. xi.
  • Anti-Americanism from abroad would not be such a problem if Americans were united in standing up for their own country. But in this country itself, there are those who blame America for most of the evils in the world. On the political left, many fault the United States for a history of slavery, and for continuing inequality and racism. Even on the right, traditionally the home of patriotism, we hear influential figures say that America has become so decadent... If these critics are right, then America should be destroyed. And who can dispute some of their particulars? This country did have a history of slavery and racism continues to exist. There is much in our culture that is vulgar and decadent. But the critics are wrong about America, because they are missing the big picture. In their indignation over the sins of America, they ignore what is unique and good about American civilization.
  • Americans are the friendliest people you will encounter, but they have few friends.
    • Dinesh D'Souza, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 1: Why They Hate Us

T

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  • We need to think very, very clearly about who the enemy is. The enemy is the United States of America and everyone who supports it.
  • This country wasn't built on moral fiber. This country was built on rape, slavery, murder, degradation and affiliation with crime.

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  • We are told that it's this form of fundamentalist religion represented by this Wahhabi-influenced Islamic, if you will, ideology or view that has created, if you will, a seedbed for people to become violent, to become anti-American, and to do the kinds of things that we call "extremism" now. Is that true? I don't think it has to do with Islam. I don't think it has to do with any form of this Islamic interpretation. Of course there is a problem with dogma. But I think the problem lies with the political systems that use religion.
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