Le Sabot Post-Moderne

Left on the 4th of July

Some groups are so ridiculous and outré that they defy parody. This thought kept recurring to me today during my weekly jaunt around the left-wing media. Lefties puff with righteous indignation whenever someone questions their patriotism. They know it's an electoral weakspot for them. But their visceral dislike of patriotism seems to be overpowering. It's self-defeating, but they cannot help themselves.

I turned on the local NPR twice today while in my car. The first program was a tour of American history. It jumped directly from slavery to the American slaughters in the Spanish-American War to persecution of the Wobblies. That's a balanced and patriotic overview. In the afternoon, they did a special on rape in the US miitary.

Mother Jones's patriotic fare is an article detailing the 'bad' wars America has fought through the years, They Died For Their Country :

"It's tempting to assume that all the sacrifices of our soldiers are worthwhile. But mere courage guarantees no inherent moral rightness: German and Japanese soldiers fought bravely in World War II. The September 11 hijackers were willing to surrender their lives to murder 3,000 innocent people. . ."

The crapulous Michael Moore's 4th of July message links to Gloria Steinem Among Gitmo Protestors.

Here is TomPaine.com:

"Much of American history, like that of other nations, has been predicated on raw power wrapped in claims of supremacy over other cultures and nations. And it has been sustained in its practices by two elementary ideas. You are either for us or against us. The nation is bound by the unity which sees and organizes threats to itself."

This was written in response to Bush's call for letters to show our support for the troops. Lucky troops.

The Nation is especially venomous. In business since 1865, the statement they thought best summed up America on the 4th was Frederick Douglass with True Patriotism:

"Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms of the old world, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the every-day practices of this nation, and you will say with me, that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival....

The Nation also gathered Leftist thinkers to answer the question "What is Patriotism?" Here are some of the answers:

"We take patriotism to mean love of nation and the loyalty that follows. My country right or wrong. Even as an abstract idea, it is hard to see how thinking people justify blind loyalty. And considered historically, patriotism is plainly dangerous, helping to unleash military rampages in the name of nation and obliterating the essential democratic capacity to assess concrete and particular interests. The ubiquitous loyalty to nation-state is puzzling."

-Richard A. Cloward
Columbia University School of Social Work

"Today our most relevant American patriot might well be Thoreau, who, a hundred years ago, said, "I am a citizen of the world first, and of this country at a later and more convenient hour."

- William Sloane Coffin
Minister, president, SANE/FREEZE advisory board

"What is more difficult is to give patriotism a positive content in America at this time. . . The disquieting popularity of Desert Storm with the people confirmed an ugly streak that cannot be explained away as media manipulation. It is one more reminder that the dispossession and destruction of the Indian peoples of North America is not a matter of history, buried in the past. The massacre of the Iraqis fed the same political imagination that was threatened by the "savages" in the wilderness. Patriotic energy is required if we are overcome such a bloody legacy. . .It is doubtful whether, even if we could come to face our past as honestly as, say, the Germans have faced the horror of the Holocaust, there would be much occasion for reaffirming a nationalist pride as the basis of a reformed patriotism."

- Richard Falk
Professor, Princeton University

"Patriotism in its most common usage is best defined as the last refuge of scoundrels, who label every infamy and abomination as patriotism."

- Howard Fast
Columnist, The New York Observer

"The word 'patriotism'--which I associate to blind love of country--does not echo in me. But feminism made me an American. Let me explain. . . I felt the struggles between capital and the individual as I had not since childhood--how long its history, and how alive it is in this country. It's the live quality of the struggle that I prize. The thing that makes me feel American."

- Vivian Gornick
Author; reporter

"It's a peculiarly ambivalent institution, this Fourth of July party of ours--part observance, part parody. A couple of years ago, when flag burning was the idiotic issue of the moment, a friend brought his own flag to burn. Some thought it was a fine way to mark the Fourth; others demurred. That ambivalence is symbolic of my own mixed feelings about the attitude or set of attitudes we call patriotism. I can invoke the usual heroes from the left's pantheon--Tom Paine and Sojourner Truth, Gene Debs and Jeannette Rankin--and for their sake proclaim myself a patriot. Or I can summon up the monstrous crimes committed in the name of flag and country and denounce patriotism as the root of much of the world's evil."

- Erwin Kroll
Editor, The Progressive

Even when one does find an honest expression of love for America, it's rarely for America as she is. Almost inevitably it's a love for what America could be if only she would follow the 'Progressives.'

Can we NOW stop pretending that the Left loves America, too?

Posted by Discoshaman at juillet 4, 2005 10:26 AM | TrackBack