How did we allow criticism to be equated with hate and treason?

[skepticscott]

Parents should love their children more than anything else in the world. A loving, caring parent would do anything for their children and would willingly die to protect them. But does that love mean that a parent should never criticize them or tell them when they’ve behaved badly? Does it mean that they should never punish them or make them own up to their actions?

Which parent shows their child love, the one who sets no rules of behavior and lets them do as they please without comment or criticism, or the one who firmly, even harshly, tells them when they have done wrong and insists that they acknowledge their misdeeds and take responsibility for them? The latter, wouldn’t you say? Why then is the same attitude towards one’s country treated as an unpatriotic act of treason and hatred?

Which kind of parent are you? Are you the kind who dismisses your child’s wrongdoings as amounting to nothing? Or are you the kind who believes firmly that they should know the difference between right and wrong and that they should be held accountable for conduct that violates the standards you and society have put in place? Are you the kind who, when the teacher calls or the police come to the door, insists that it must be a misunderstanding, that it couldn’t have been your child who did whatever it was, that someone else must be responsible, or lying, or out for revenge, that what happened really wasn’t a big deal and that kids will be kids? Or are you the kind who insists that your child stand up and say “Yes, I did this. I’m sorry, I take responsibility and I will do whatever is necessary to make it right and to be sure that it doesn’t happen again.” ? When your child complains that exposure of their wrongdoing and the punishment you have dictated will make them look bad in the eyes of their peers, do you relent and say “OK, forget it then”, or do you tell them that this is all part of learning to behave properly?

And what kind of citizen are you? Do you expect less from your country than you would from your child?

[Selatius]

1. It's intellectual laziness compounded by monetary greed.

There's a saying that it's terribly difficult to get a person to understand something if his paycheck depends on him not understanding it. In terms of war, quite a few people have been made millionaires and far beyond that in terms of war profiteering. We call it the "military-industrial complex" after Eisenhower coined the term.

As you could guess, you have a few people in America with a lot of power who push for war for personal gain, either through profits derived from high viewer ratings (push to war in Iraq) or through war contracts (Halliburton, Blackwater, etc).

As long as war is profitable, wars will continue to be waged. To defeat it, you must take the profit out of war. Otherwise, your children will be slaves to a brutal, violent regime that will sacrifice their lives for more money and geopolitical power.

[pscot]

2. If your "kid" happens to be a Republicon politician

constructive criticism may lead to phone taps, a rigged trial and a prolonged stay at an undisclosed federal facility.

[villager]

3. We started to "allow" it, in earnest, when St. Ronnie became Presidency

And everybody played along -- including, it would appear, the "Democratic" congress of the time (which is to say, the hard questions were too far and too few in between, and came too late...)

Since Americans perceived themselves as making money in that era -- per Selatius' post above -- few real questions were asked.