I admit it; I’m terribly behind on my reading. As I plow through my inbox, I’m finding that there is an awful lot of notice being paid to the leftists who find themselves in an emotional and logical quandary about the country in which they live. (Look closely and you’ll notice I didn’t say “their country”, and with good reason: They clearly do not consider it so.) Example, McQ [1]:
Someone named Joe Cole [2] has managed to communicate his utopian disappointment in an op-ed. He begins by relating a terrible choice with which he was faced while accompanying his family to a baseball game:
But when the announcer declared that a choir would be singing “God Bless America” (which supplanted “Take Me Out to the Ball Game” for seventh inning stretches after 9/11), I faced a dilemma: Should I stand with my family or remain seated to protest the gratuitous patriotic cheerleading?
…
I read about the genocide against Native Americans and the enslavement of Africans, and learned how, even in current times, the U.S. armed and supported oppressive dictatorships from Southeast Asia to Latin America to the Middle East. The knowledge gave me headaches that crying didn’t relieve, but I kept reading. And because school, church and government had covered over all the blood and injustice with pretty patriotic myths about a Good America blessed by an ethnocentric god, my youthful disappointment and anger blazed even hotter.
Key words: “youthful disappointment”. How difficult it is to have your unsupported fantasies dashed. But note the loaded words and the contextless narrative he’s put together to support his disappointment.
I in fairness, I attribute that in large part to inexperienced writing. But even his choice of loaded phrases, can’t hide what drives his comments…
Once when I was a graduate student in philosophy at Duke, someone on my Durham summer league softball team inquired what I was doing for Independence Day.
“Asking forgiveness for a nation built on slavery, genocide, and war,” I replied.
Our 40-something pitcher, who worked for the phone company and had taken me fishing a few times, glared at me. “If you hate America so much, why don’t you just leave?”
“Because I want to watch this system burn.”
Personally, I refuse to regard such an idiot as a “patriot”. Rather, I would refer to him as a borderline psychopath. I would remove the ‘borderline” and add the word traitor, were his saving graces not his laziness and lack of courage in his convictions. He’s never bothered to act on his twisted mentality. It’s much easier to sit back, and enjoy the amenities that our way of life has afforded him… all the while complaining about it, and denigrating the achievements of the country, and the culture, that has provided him with so much.
One of the commentators to that thread, comes up with something that I find I must disagree with, stoutly.
Life isn’t politics, politics isn’t life.
I suggest, that out here in the real world the opposite is true. I have said it on this site often enough that longtime readers will know my response before I write it, but here it is:
The opposite is true; One’s politics are the reflections of one’s most intrinsic values.
Billy Beck [3], noting the post, says:
It should never have to come to that, Eric. In a time and place where political principles are not in dispute (which is the ideal of “unity” originally set out in American politics, although we all know how racially defective it was), nobody would go about their lives with any political touchstone constantly at hand. Human action would be aimed at all kinds of other ethical goals. (This general premise is implicit in “the pursuit of happiness”.)
For whole generations now, however, the central political antagonism in this country — indeed the whole world — has been between collectivism and individualism. The former is diametrically contrary to American ideals, and more: it necessarily makes all personal values political. This is why the assertion — “Life isn’t politics, politics isn’t life” — is wrong, now. More and more, politics is life, less and less as metaphor and more and more in actual, factual reality. What do you think the fight over health care, for only one glaring example, is about?
The thing is, it did come to that. The ideas and ideals that this country, and this culture was founded in, as in freedom, and individualism, are under attack as never before. For the early part of this country’s existence, those principles were not in dispute, and as such the country had a chance to get itself going, while its political machine ground away on comparative minutiae.
Were our intrinsic values not in dispute as they are today, our political machine would still be traveling on, arguing on such small matters. But at a more basic level, that lack of dispute, over our fundamental beliefs, far from disconnecting our politics from those beliefs, rather solidifies the connection.
Put another way; A lack of a political dispute surrounding those fundamental beliefs would be an indication that the intrinsic values of all concerned were in unity. What I’m suggesting is, I don’t think you can disconnect our politics from our intrinsic value system regardless of whether those values are in dispute or not. Like it or not, man is a political animal. Politics, like it or not is the method that has developed in every culture, (Including the mini-culture of our families, for example) to express, and maintain our most closely held values.
To partially illustrate this, consider the specter of war, …which is, as the euphemism goes, politics expressed by other means… and for the moment, for the most part I am speaking irrespective of country… what else but a very personal, intrinsic value, would cause someone to risk their life in such a venture? What is it that such individuals as where our uniform(s) seek to protect by their actions? Is it land? Is it a corporate name? No. The fighters seek to defend the culture they come from, and it’s values. Which, in turn, is precisely why the left of today’s America holds such dislike (dare I say, hate) for our military. The military is standing up for values that the left does not share. they will tell you, of course, that they are against fighting of any nature. But the number of military actions under Bill Clinton was higher than in any time in our history, including the current president. Clearly, their argument is not against violence and against the military per se’, but rather the values that they are seeking to defend.
(Of course, this part of the discussion makes the assumption that the individuals in uniform have not been conscripted, or co-opted in some fashion, such as a communist state, let’s say. )
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Which, to tie it all back to the topic of the post , is precisely why Cole finds himself so conflicted. He’s being asked by societal convention to stand up for values he doesn’t share. But, as the saying goes, don’t question his patriotism. The mere mention of such lack, will likely cause the subject become uncharacteristically violent in spite of his protests against others being violent. (Chuckle)
With all this established, I could very easily get into a discussion about immigration, versus shared values, and the effect all that will have. But I think the implications are fairly clear on that point without my diving into it.
Addendum: (Bit, following Billy’s Reply)
Politics is the overweening preoccupation of this country now where it wasn’t for long periods of American history during which free people produced as no one ever had before in human history, and the good reason for why it shouldn’t be that way is that the unself-conscious application of freedom is always an easier and better way of life than constantly having to fight for it.
Hmmm. Ya know, in a backhanded sort of way, I’m encouraged that such a debate exists, rather than us going to socialism by way of mere capitulation by either the ballot, or the sword. Perhaps we stand a chance, after all. There are, apparently, some willing to take the fight yet. But not enough to keep the fights from being as figuratively bloody as they’ve gotten.
And look… we agree…I can’t argue that on the whole, having it come naturally, as opposed to having to fight for it would be the preferable path. It might have rendered our past more productive, and significantly less (literally) bloody, particularly as regards to our own civil war.
That said, history speaks to the issue clearly; The reality is that Freedom has always had to be fought for, even before our country existed… and in more than just military means. There is always resistance to someone else’s freedom. (Note the word use, here) We humans have to fight for it, because there’s always somebody willing to take it away.
Freedom has always had to be fought for…because there’s always somebody willing to take it away.Jefferson recognized this, when he allowed a revolution every ten years or so would be a good thing. It’s not much of a stretch, to suggest that that fight gets carried on, every time there’s an election…. and I wonder if that not precisely what the founders in mind, and specifically what Franklin was thinking, when he wondered if in voting, we could keep this republic, as opposed to allowing it to slide into a pure Democracy, which would clearly put our country at the mercy of such as Cole, or Erb.
We have a military, which has the express purpose of defending our freedom from external enemies. We have a ballot box, with the express purpose of defending our freedom from internal enemies. Granted, in fact more than granted, that the ballot and its purposes can be corrupted. On the other hand, that’s why we have elections fairly frequently. So can the military be corrupted in it’s purposes, for that matter. But there it is.
It’s that whole scene, that has me at the ballot box every time there’s an opportunity…. I’m busy plugging holes in the dike, myself. That’s a fight I don’t see myself ever giving up on. I recognize the danger that you’ve repeatedly pointed out over the years about using the ballot box to inflict my view on somebody else. But usually the somebody else is trying to inflict a lack of freedom on me and mine. I consider that to be the greater danger, and that danger multiplies when I’m not in the fight.
Indeed, I suppose that the reason that it has come to this point as you mention…
The point, however, is how seriously it’s come to dispute, and for how long, in a nation erected on the principle of freedom.
…is that so few are willing to stay in the fight; the numbers of people at the ballot box for even the major elections, are abysmal anymore. If there are so few people willing to fight to keep their freedom, is it any wonder that those willing to take it away from us have made such inroads?
It means that we can enjoy, for instance, “The Sound of Music” instead of having to put up with Michael Moore.
Damn it, Billy… now I’m flashing on the Great Rotundo trying to cover “The Lonely Goatherd”. Arrrgh.