By Michael J. Smith on Tuesday July 1 05:09 PM
Senator Obama strongly approves of patriotism. It's
an interesting text, and very much what we've come to expect of Obama: the product
of a highly intelligent, reflective individual determined to leave no platitude un-repeated. You can almost see the two sides of his nature taking turns being on
top, as one sentence succeeds the last.
Usually I hate Talmudic posts that reprint the text, with the blogger throwing in an occasional catcall from the peanut gallery, but Barack is such a remarkable and unusual talent, and his twists and turns have so much dramatic interest,
that it seems right to depart from standard procedure:
We reflect on these questions because we are in the midst of a presidential election, perhaps the most consequential in generations....
Here of course we have a central Democratic Party trope -- last unveiled in the
Most Important Elections Of Our Lifetime, two years ago. This observation is aimed at all the useful liberal idiots who may have started to waver in their faith as Barack has plunged rightward since winning the nomination. If you love your children and grandchildren -- vote for me! Even though I'm a fink!
But here's Thoughtful Barack again:
After all, throughout our history, men and women of far greater stature and significance than me have had their patriotism questioned in the midst of momentous debates. Thomas Jefferson was accused by the Federalists of selling out to the French. The anti-Federalists were just as convinced that John Adams was in cahoots with the British and intent on restoring monarchal rule. Likewise, even our wisest Presidents have sought to justify questionable policies on the basis of patriotism. Adams' Alien and Sedition Act, Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus, Roosevelt's internment of Japanese Americans - all were defended as expressions of patriotism, and those who disagreed with their policies were sometimes labeled as unpatriotic.
In other words, the use of patriotism as a political sword or a political shield is as old as the Republic. Still, what is striking about today's patriotism debate is the degree to which it remains rooted in the culture wars of the 1960s - in arguments that go back forty years or more. In the early years of the civil rights movement and opposition to the Vietnam War, defenders of the status quo often accused anybody who questioned the wisdom of government policies of being unpatriotic.
Well, that got my attention. especially the sword-and-shield thing. Whose motto was that? Let me see... ah, well, who remembers? But then, in a classic on-the-one-hand, on-the-other-hand move, our man goes on:
Meanwhile, some of those in the so-called counter-culture of the Sixties reacted not merely by criticizing particular government policies, but by attacking the symbols, and in extreme cases, the very idea, of America itself - by burning flags; by blaming America for all that was wrong with the world; and perhaps most tragically, by failing to honor those veterans coming home from Vietnam, something that remains a national shame to this day.
Scorecard: the promoters of the Vietnam War were guilty of "questioning" people's patriotism. But the other side attacked the very idea of America itself, burned flags, spit on returning soldiers, etc. I think the counterculture lost this round, don't you?
Thoughtful Barack comes back -- temporarily:
[T]he anger and turmoil of that period never entirely drained away. All too often our politics still seems trapped in these old, threadbare arguments - a fact most evident during our recent debates about the war in Iraq, when those who opposed administration policy were tagged by some as unpatriotic...
Wait for it --
... and a general providing his best counsel on how to move forward in Iraq was accused of betrayal.
Spitting on the flag again! They just can't stop doing it!
Shifting into lyrical mode again:
I remember, when living for four years in Indonesia as a child, listening to my mother reading me the first lines of the Declaration of Independence - "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal. That they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." I remember her explaining how this declaration applied to every American, black and white and brown alike; how those words, and words of the United States Constitution, protected us from the injustices that we witnessed other people suffering during those years abroad. That's my idea of America.
The guy is good, isn't he? But here's what comes next:
As I got older, that gut instinct - that America is the greatest country on earth - would survive my growing awareness of our nation's imperfections
Uh-oh. When the "greatest country on earth" shows up, it's time to duck and
cover. And indeed:
... [P]atriotism is... loyalty to America's ideals... It is the application of these ideals that separate us from... Iraq, where despite the heroic efforts of our military, and the courage of many ordinary Iraqis, even limited cooperation between various factions remains far too elusive.
I believe those who attack America's flaws without acknowledging the singular greatness of our ideals, and their proven capacity to inspire a better world, do not truly understand America.
He lost me with our "singular greatness". I really couldn't read on. Oh, yeah, I know, his
defense attorneys -- and they are legion -- will say this is what you have to do in order to be elected. To which I can only respond: In that case, I can't begin to care who gets elected.
So Obama is "not anti-war." I was always taught that in English a double
negative added up to a positive.
