Whenever I listen to a controversial US debates about politics and somebody is criticizing another one’s belief I often hear the phrase/argument “oh this doesn’t sound very american” even in presidential debates.
I never heard this in a german, spanish or british debate.Why is it use so often? It sounds very awkward, uneducated and fluffy to me
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“That is not in accordance with our national values,” is a common political statement everywhere. 🙄
It might be a New World thing because I’ve definitely heard it in controversial Canadian and Australian political discussions.
I could be mistaken, but wasn’t “Britishness” also a huge part of the Brexit debates when all that was going on?
To badly quote Margaret Thatcher “Europe was Created by History, America by Philosophy”.
There are a few shared philosophical values that are at the core of being American, regardless of the other political opinions that we may hold. The fastest way to delegitimize a political opponent is to show that they violate one of these core principles. That is what that claim attempts to do. As you noticed though it is used often which basically robs it of all true meaning unless you can clearly demonstrate said violations.
It depends. It’s often a dog whistle for “this person doesn’t share our values” where “our” and “values” are seldom articulated. It’s sometimes a hand-wavey way to cast aspersions on someone’s character, rather than challenging the things they say.
The long form version of that is “this isn’t compatible with our shared values as a country”.
Sometimes that may really be applicable (if an opponent is a advocating for undemocratic policies or for a country diametrically opposed to the US and its way of life), sometimes it’s just a cheap political attack (banning/legalizing owning dragons is un-American!).
Do you have an example of this?
We’d need to see examples of what it’s being used in response to. It’s almost guaranteed that the prompt is something that goes against the principles/mores of our founding values, or what is considered “American” today.
It’s not a cultural or ethnic thing, it’s usually shorthand for saying something that sounds counter to our values as laid out in the US constitution, or the values of an open, pluralistic democracy,
Someone will object that someone’s views are “very unAmerican” or something like that.
Do you have examples?
I’ve never heard anyone saying this.
When a political candidate clearly has no regard for the Constitution and the priniciples in that document then we describe them as unamerican.
I think the reasoning is obvious.
I always hear it associated with Police. Because there isn’t a good reason to endorse the cops, their proponents need to fall back on whatever they can.
Because America is held together by civic nationalism which is basically shared philosophy, ideals, and lore.
> Why is it use so often?
How often do you think its used?