Norman Lear: Patriot [CBD]

When you've lost Norman Lear, is there anything left to say?

For the youngsters out there, Lear was a hard-core leftist during the culture wars of the 70s and 80s, and founded an organization called "People For The American Way," which was a typical (but unfortunately successful) leftist organization that pretended to educate and inform, but was, in reality, a front for the progressive movement of the 1980s.

Everybody knows me to be a progressive or a liberal or lefty or whatever. I think of myself as a bleeding-heart conservative. You will not f-- with my Bill of Rights, my Constitution, my guarantees of political justice for all. But does my heart bleed for those who need help and aren't getting the justice that the country promises them and the equal opportunity the country promises? Yes. I'm a bleeding heart, but I think myself to be a total social conservative. The people who are running just don't seem to have America on their minds, not the America I think about. When I was a kid we were in love with America. As early as I can remember, there was a civics class in my public school. And I was in love with those things that guaranteed freedom before I learned that there were people who hated me because I was Jewish. I had a Bill of Rights and a Constitution, those words out of the Declaration that protected me. And I knew about that because we had civics in class. We don't have that much in the country anymore. So before World War II or shortly after, we were in love with America because we understood what it was about and that's what we were in love with. I believe everybody's patriotic today. Everybody loves America. But I don't need their flag plans to prove it. I'd like to go back to civics lessons.

Sure, it's a bit incoherent, and his roots in 1930s socialism are showing....but so is his love of America.

posted by Open Blogger at 12:02 PM

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