While I understand the intention of what you're saying, you're still attempting a definition of the term "anti-American", which needs no definition as the term should be rejected as a whole.

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pc86 37 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

I mean, to pick what is perhaps the easiest example, wanting to abridge speech is anti-American by its very definition.

It is possible to have a thing that is anti-American. So I'm not sure what good it is to reject the term altogether.

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rickdeckard 29 minutes ago | parent | next [-]

It could e.g. be "anti-democratic" by a universal definition of democracy and civil liberties which no single country then gets to fork and redefine...

	▲	8note 3 minutes ago \| parent \| next [-]
		its encoded in the US constitution, so its anti-american. it can be anti-other things too, but its certainly anti-american
	▲	smallmancontrov 9 minutes ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Let's suppose you had your way and the cultural concept of America as a set of ideas and values related to democracy were erased. Would the universal non-national concepts of democracy and civil liberties have been able to inspire Mike Pence to stand up to Donald Trump on January 6th?

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Joker_vD 25 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Ah, I see, it's the same as "un-American", only without being a word too onerous to use (yet) due to obvious historical implications.

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parineum 37 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

Not really. America stands for something, they wrote a whole document about it.

There is a big difference between being "American" and being something like "German" because Germany has existed for so long as different governments and the thing that ties it together is not an ethos, but an ethnicity. Being American is different, there's no ethnicity that makes one American, there is only it's ethos. The ideals written in the declaration of independence are American values.

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8note a minute ago | parent | next [-]

Germany specifically hasnt existed for very long. its a younger country than the US, but it was made to combine people of an ethnicity

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rickdeckard 21 minutes ago | parent | prev [-]

And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country:

The group elected to lead and represent this location also represent ideals and values, so THEIR ideals and values become inseparable of the location they were elected to represent.

For a certain period in the mid-1900s, "German values" meant something different than it did before and after, because Germany was represented by a different leader...

	▲	parineum 17 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		> And that's the weak link of tying ideals and values to a location like a country My entire post is about exactly how this is not the case, American values are defined in a document[1]. [1]https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcrip...