The Left's Patriotism Gap

Gap? How about "gulf"? How about "yawning chasm"? How about "fathomless abyss to rival the void in Helen Thomas' head"?

Winds of Change reposts an article from last year:

I Started To Write About Veteran's Day...

...and to thank the veterans alive and dead for protecting me and mine.
And worried that what I wrote kept coming out sounding either too qualified or would be interpreted as being too nationalistic.

And I realized something about my own thinking, a basic principle I'll set out as a guiding point for the Democrats and the Left in general as they try and figure out the next act in this drama we are in.

First, you have to love America.

...

I don't get a clear sense that my fellow liberals feel the same way. And if so, why should ‘the folks’ follow them? Why are we worthy of the support of a nation that we don't support? So let me suggest an axiom for the New Model Democrats:

America is a great goddamn country, and we're going to both defend it from those who attack it and fight to make it better.

And for everyone who is going to comment and remind me that ‘all liberals already do that’…no they don't. Not when the chancellor has to intervene at U.C. Berkeley to get ‘permission’ for American flags to be flown and red-white-and-blue ribbons to be worn. Not when the strongest voices in liberalism give only lip service to responding to an attack on our own soil.

Loving this country isn't the same thing as jingoism; it isn't the same thing as imperialism; it isn't the same thing as blind support of the worst traits of our government or our people.

It starts with recognizing the best traits, and there are a hell of a lot of them. They were worth defending in my father's time, and they are worth defending today.

So thanks, veterans. Thanks soldiers and sailors and marines and airmen. Thanks for doing your jobs and I hope you all come home hale and whole, every one of you.

Half of the problem is that lefties are intellectually insecure and have been taught that patriotism is for stupid people. Determined to prove themselves non-stupid through an easy course (not everyone can split atoms, you know), they buy into the various signifiers of a high intellect promoted by their lefty heroes.

If it became Liberally Correct to wave flags and wear flag pins tomorrow -- if suddenly that denoted education, erudition, and progressive virtue -- you'd have seas of red, white, and blue in San Francisco.

Anti-patriots denigrate patriotism as empty-headed jingoism. But most of their antipatriotism is itself empty-headed, a trivial tribal signifier, a vapid fashion accessory informing the world that they are members of the smart set of Sneeches whose bellies defintely do not have stars upon thars.

posted by Ace at 07:10 PM

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