Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, formerly a KGB agent, eschews American exceptionalsim, writing in yesterday's New York Times Op-Ed page that we're all created equal.
Funny he should mention that -- in 1776, Americans were the first ones in history who ever bothered to write that down.
While we all have our faults, I'd hate to think that many of us would take seriously the cant emitted by the descendant of the Russia Okhrana, the Czarist Secret Police (founded 1565, the same year as St. Augustine).
America is exceptional -- our ancestors emigrated from eery country in the world, seeking to make a better place and a better life.
ON the other hand, Russia is the source of many of those immigrantws, many forced out in anti-Semitic pogroms, apparently including at least one of my Polish ancestors (in 1888).
While the Czars and Stalin killed tens of millions, we were preserving, protecting and defending human rights, including the rights of ethnic and religious minorities, including Supreme Court decisions like Chambers v. Florida (1940) and West Virginia Board of Education v. Barnette (1943).
While Russia was perfecting the gulag, we were perfecting the civil rights lawsuit, with Thurgood Marshall going from a young NAACP lawyer escaping from Houston, Texas in a car trunk to a Supreme Court Justice laying down the law of the land.
What minority group in Russia can claim such a record?
Certainly not GLBT people, whom Putin and neo-Nazis and their allies in Russia have legislated against in 2013.
Again, America is not perfect, but we are exceptional, as demonstrated by the progress in our own town of St. Augustine. In 1566, the first anti-Gay hate crime in North American history was committed here. In 2005, a federal court ordered rainbow flags to fly here in honor of Gay Pride. In 2012 and 2013, our itty bitty cities of St. Augustine and St. Augustine Beach passed GLBT rights protections.
Try doing that in dictator Putin's Russia -- you would go to jail for flying the Rainbow flag, or for advocating the extipration of anti-Gay discrimination.
No comments:
Post a Comment