One Nation Under Obama
Barack Obama has kicked off his “Patriotism Tour” with a speech that is designed to depict the candidate as a thoughtful man who has meditated long and hard upon the history of our country and the meaning of patriotism. In fact, it reveals him for what he is: a knee-jerk Marxist who has swallowed hook-line-and sinker the academic left’s reinvention of America and its contempt for what the rest of us would call patriotism. It also reveals an inane duplicity that I had hitherto thought impossible in anyone not named George Bush.
Senator Obama is well aware that the patriotism issue does not favor his side. His transparent lack of patriotism is made even more glaring by his wife’s flippant dismissal of her nation’s virtues—until, of course, the arrival of her husband on the national political scene—and by Wesley Clark’s ham-fisted dismissal of Senator McCain’s military service. Most Americans, including many who loathe John McCain almost as much as I do, do not like to hear attacks on the military record of men who have served their country in war and who have been tortured by their country’s enemies.
In something of a jam, then, Obama has gone on a tour whose title is less reminiscent of a military campaign than of Madonna’s “Blond Ambition” tour. He begins with the familiar leftist platitudes about the American Revolution. The tough New England yeomen who left their homes in 1775, according to this myth, were not fighting “on behalf of a particular tribe or lineage, but on behalf of a larger idea. The idea of liberty. The idea of God-given, inalienable rights. And with the first shot of that fateful day – a shot heard round the world – the American Revolution, and America’s experiment with democracy, began.” Etc. etc. They must have been reading "The Declaration of Independence"--or, rather, they must have been the true author's of the screed that Jefferson signed some 15 months later.
Obama does well to ignore the real men who fought at Lexington, because they were on a mission to prevent the British authorities from seizing the weapons they had stockpiled in anticipation of the outbreak of the revolution they had been plotting. Even the gun nuts at the NRA would probably not like to defend a band of reactionary farmers who were prepared to fight to restore their traditional liberties. They might even have said their chartered liberties, though today we would invoke the constitution and not our states' colonial charters.
Perhaps we should not blame the Senator too much for his ignorance of any American history that cannot be reduced to ideological slogans about equal rights. He is a victim of his education. Who was there, either at Columbia or at Harvard Law, who did not believe this booshwa? But his professors, at least, would not disguise the fact that they hated the real America represented by either Yankees or Southerners or that they rejected the whole notion of patriotism as Neanderthal. When Alisdair MacIntyre even raised the question in the title of his essay, “Is Patriotism a Virtue?,” he was defying the academic establishment.
Then what, for this “man of mixed race, without firm anchor in any particular community, without even a father’s steadying hand,” is patriotism, since it obviously cannot be the pre-rational love of blood and soil? The answer is that “it is this essential American idea – that we are not constrained by the accident of birth but can make of our lives what we will.” Among these accidents of birth, of course, are such trivial details as who our parents are and in what country we are born. From Obama’s point of view, his Kenyan father should have just as much right as he does to be elected President.
So then, does patriotism mean turning our backs on our families and our people to march boldly into a future determined by ideological abstractions? Apparently. “Patriotism is always more than just loyalty to a place on a map or a certain kind of people. Instead, it is also loyalty to America’s ideals – ideals for which anyone can sacrifice, or defend, or give their last full measure of devotion.” Note the “always.” A dumb WASP who loves the country his ancestors fought and died for cannot even be regarded as a lower kind of patriot. Rather, he is one of those retrograde social elements that Marx and Engels wanted to wipe off the map of Europe.
Like every other unreflective leftist in the world, Obama knows he is on the right side of history. This means, among other things, that he knows what conservatives and Christians believe better than they do. You must have all had the experience. Backed into a corner, the leftist always says, “a real conservative would support a ban on killing seals,” or “a real Christian would see Gay Marriage as an affirmation of the institution of marriage." For this reason, Obama cannot cut any slack to us knuckle-dragging chauvinists and insists that all of us “can agree that no party or political philosophy has a monopoly on patriotism.” Just as mere Christians cannot have a monopoly on Christianity, and just as (so he has also declared) we could not make an abortion policy on the basis of one faith or of all faiths, so people who love their country have no monopoly on patriotism . Quite simply, Christians and conservatives do not have a perspective on anything, because there is only one legitimate point of view—the point of view of Barack Obama and the rest of the anti-American Marxist Left —that needs to be considered.
In the real United States of America, where patriotism was still a virtue and where people were expected to know their country’s history, Obama would never have made it to the Illinois legislature. In Reconstructed and occupied USA, it will be amazing if he is not made dictator for life.
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African-Americans who attend Latin Mass? That must be a significant demographic.
I would like to have a vote on who is more stupid and offensive, the hysterical and dyslexic bigot Horace Grady on this thread or the hysterical and bigoted anti-racist Shahin on my previous piece. Since South Africa was a "racist" regime, he is arguing, that justifies the ANC's terrorism. May I suggest to Shahin that he go to South Africa and do a little humanitarian aid to the re-oppressed natives. But he should make sure that his parents have tickets bought in advance so that when they go too tell his murderers they forgive them, they can have the 14 day advance price. Go way, both of you, and play with people your own age.
In what sort of laboratory do they manufacture people like HG? He is like one of those zombies imagined by Louis Farrakhan or the editors of Commentary, a living refutation of every claim to superiority advanced by Western man. The best part is his manners. He blunders onto the website of a magazine that was fighting the immigration battle before he was born and now wants to lecture its editors on the threat of Third World immigration. The worst part of this is that here at home I do not have the capacity to edit my column and must get up and go to the office. My Lord, what we have fallen to in this country. And what a choice we have between the Shahins who hate us because we are European and the the Gradys who hate everything because they love nothing, not even the Great White Race which they disgrace.
By the way, I think I know the black Latin Mass Catholic MGB was describing, and there are several in my own parish. Human life is strange and cannot be reduced to one dimension, whether it is race, nationality, religion, or even intelligence. Poor Mr. Grady has a family somewhere, probably, and friends and perhaps even harmless interests like illustrated novels or building model cars. As a wise man once wrote:
When the felon's not engaged in his employment/Or maturing his felonious little plan,/His capacity for innocent enjoyment/Is just as great as any honest man...When the enterprising burglar's not a burgling,/Or maturing his felonious little plan,/He loves to hear the little brook a-gurgling/As much as any honest man/...
My two columns on political questions that involve race are an illustration of why it is virtually impossible to discuss such matters today. On the one hand, we are assailed by globalist-leftists who want us to shed tears over the fate of colonial Africans whose conditions have been vastly worsened by national independence. On the other hand, we have the marginalized young men who want to strike out at anyone who will not support their own liberation movement--whose members it is more polite not to describe. As Sam Francis--far from being sensitive on any of these issues--used to say, we can only discuss race, immigration, etc., if "we keep the brownshirts out." As an amateur student of anthropology, I am familiar with the phenomenon of the peripheral male, but it is a sad thing to contemplate in our own people.
Dr. Fleming, in my experience those you describe are people who would have been participating in civil rights protests a few years ago to enforce equality on other people, and turn white supremacists only after they are personally affected in some way.
Dr. Fleming I don't remember Shahin, but Horace Grady is offensive enough for me. Thank, and God bless you for discouraging his ilk from poluting your website. It amazes me how people cannot distinguish between a reasonable candidness towards obvious racial differences on one hand; and outright bitter hatred of all but one's own kind on the other. Or maybe they can distinguish. They know you are of the former persuasion, and they descend on this site in order to convert you and recruit you to the latter one.
Pardon my French. but I see little difference in character between Yankee egalitarians and Yankee white supremacists. They are both self-centered, short-sighted, hypocritical, and abstraction-mad. The only difference is the latter can't afford safe neighbourhoods and private schools.
#58 "...They are both self-centered, short-sighted, hypocritical, and abstraction-mad. The only difference is the latter can’t afford safe neighbourhoods and private schools." -Clyde W.
Yes the latter, the abstraction-mad must *imbalance in that direction for their release of endorphins, the brain's natural painkillers...to compensate them for finding out their short-sighted, & hypocritical leaders fed them to the dogs.
We all need [thanks God and mother Nature] our natural processes such as endorphin release - some of us being aware of it, as well as the need for civilization - don't get as sadly bamboozled as the abrstractionists.
What's the best reason to be a conservative - we say bite the bullet, don't eat it imagining it's a biscuit. In other words wipe the clouds [abstractions or pretty lies] from your eyes - it ain't so bad out here, then. If enough of you idiots will STOP doing that bogus stuff. They're already planning your next war - since it feeds you that imagery you crave.
"I can well understand conservatives who will not vote for McCain. I cannot understand how anyone claiming to be a conservative could even consider voting for such a leftist charlatan as Barack Obama."
No one in any of my social circles has had the audacity to admit to me that he voted for McCain in the primaries or intends to vote for Obama in the general election. I am told one of my cousins supports the latter, but I have not even seen that fellow in about three years.
An Obama presidency will easily seal the fate of the rapidly degenerating U.S.A., which given the harm we have spread to the world since rebelling against the British crown would be a welcome end, except that in this case it represents a total devastation of the general population rather than a simple political upheaval.
May God have mercy on my children, that they be born and raised on foreign soil.
@58: Not every white supremacist is descended from old-stock New England Puritans--or, arguably, even has any meaningful ancestry. Dr. Fleming writes of Mr. Grady that perhaps he "has a family somewhere, probably," but nowadays you can never frankly be sure. There are many in my generation who do indeed have families and even well-meaning and hard-working yet completely deracinated families. It is that latter that is the key to understanding this all. Most young, white Americans do not have a real community in which to seek refuge. (I seriously doubt anyone here would suggest that West Coast strip malls and suburbs actually resemble real towns or places.) If they are lucky, they've got their parents' culturally sterile McMansion and a little cash. To be caught dependant on this tenuous lifeline is a dangerous thing especially given the volatility of the present economy, and white nationalism, perverse as it may be, at least has the attraction of appearing to take action about a very serious problem, and as the memory of Hitler fades into the past it can scarcely be discounted as "spent."
In the 1960's Catholic and Jewish children rebelled against their upbringings and became Marxists. In the 1980's they became disgusted with SDS and joined the GOP as [literal] neo-conservatives. The present leftist resurgence clearly lacks the thrust and substance of 1960's radicalism and may just represent a last gasp after all. In the next few years we may well see an increasing number from my generation succumb to the White Nationalist virus. The present state of affairs and the inevitable harm our incumbent leaders will do point in that direction.
Frightening times indeed. Choose your poison.
I have never understood what was "left" about Obama--I am always puzzled by the way it is used by conservatives. Jean Jaures E.P. Thompson for that matter Arthur Scargill count as left-- take them or leave them. Dr. Fleming is much more on target when he compares Obama to the loathsome Madonna (Blonde Ambition), in fact it is the best characterization of the Obama campaign I have come upon. The detestable cohort that Dr. Fleming describes as anti-American Marxist Left I believe are better viewed as moral narcissists (to crib Robert Penn Warren's phrase) --largely Northerners and descendants of the racist northern abolitionists -- who as Warren observed (and as Dr. Fleming I think observes) believe they hold the key to the "treasury of virtue".