Rudy Is Right

Kevin Williamson:

Something's really got a hold on this guy, and it is not an excessive fervor for the American order. Questions about patriotism and love of country are, according to our self-appointed referees, out of bounds, declasse, boob bait for bubbas, etc. Those are questions that we are not allowed to ask in polite society. Why? Because polite society does not want to hear the answers.

Jim Geraghty isn't as emphatic, but he also notices that Obama's "love," such that it may be, tends to the "tough love" variety:

Every Obama speech has a villain, and that villain is often other Americans who disagree with the president. He doesn’t hesitate to paint a very dark picture of the country he leads: citizens who are xenophobic and paranoid about Muslims, abusive police forces unfairly focusing on Muslim communities, a public eager to forcibly deport good Americans who just want to serve their country, and lawmakers determined to deny good education to children.

Maybe Giuliani's language is a bit overwrought or hyperbolic, but is it really that much overwrought or hyperbolic than Obama's description of Americans who disagree with his policies? And if Obama consistently describes so many Americans as so prejudiced and mean-spirited... is Guiliani's conclusion really that outlandish?

No he's right.

The progressives have a lot of problems with America. That is the entire point of their politics: They don't like what America is, and wish to change it.

This is what it means to be "progressive" -- you want to move away from what actually exists.

Conservatives, by and large, defend the current order, because they like it, and do not wish to "fundamentally transform" America.

This is what it means to be "conservative" -- one conserves, or keeps, what already exists.

Progressives play this game where they launch nothing but nasty Marxist Critiques upon America, agitating for the country to remake itself entirely, but want to claim simultaneously: We love America as much as anybody.

Oh you most certainly do not! Definitionally, you do not: One who "loves" with a long list of caveats and criticisms does not love as much as someone who loves completely (or with a much shorter list of caveats and criticisms).

Furthermore, progressives take patriotism itself to be a the sanctimony of the unsophisticated. Or, as Oscar Wilde called it, "the virtue of the vicious."

Progressives, when they're speaking honestly (that is, when they're not speaking in front of TV cameras), love to lampoon their fellow countrymen's unsophisticated, stupid, and obese love of country.

They have in fact defined themselves as being Those who are too smart to buy into this "patriotism" nonsense.

Want proof? When a progressive wants to show off to other progressives and collect acclaim, he let's it rip precisely how stupid he thinks people are who love their country.

Remember this? This is the clip Aaron Sorkin used to sell his show to progressives as Must See entertainment.

I assume Aaron Sorkin knows something about what attracts progressives to a TV show.

Did you guys see Anchorman 2? Not very good at all. What was the major target skewered by that film? Well, according to nasty progressive Adam McKay, they sought to skewer the "phony patriotism" on Fox News and such.

He includes the word "phony," but is are there any expressions of patriotism he'd credit as not phony?

I don't think so. I think he'd say that Marxist critiques of America are the "real patriotism," because real patriotism consists of hating your fellow countrymen's guts and thinking them barely advanced above the Morlocks.

So we keep playing this insipid game, wherein people who actively, loudly loathe the nation mock patriotism when the cameras aren't on them but then when they're speaking publicly want to be credited as "loving America as much as anyone."

And then, of course, establishment sell-out Republicans who are, get this, progressives in all meaningful ways (such as class affinity and class allegiance), swear that their progressive friends/employees/sex partners/side pieces are totally patriotic and that any Republican questioning this is himself Totally Unpatriotic.

Enough of the game. Your entire politics is based upon resentment towards the existing American order and a hatred of current American mores. Get the fuck out of here with your insistence that I credit you as "loving America."

And Obama is the absolute worst. He is explicitly -- he has told interviewers this, and David Axelrod writes about it in his book -- pursuing a "Bulworth" agenda by which he will Tell Americans how wrong they are about virtually everything, and yet the media needs the fainting couch when you point out that one is generally not said to be "in love with" people for whom one has nothing but complaints and critiques.

Fuck 'em all.

posted by Ace at 03:51 PM

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