The Progressive's editor's non-patriotism
Thursday, July 03, 2008
The left wing buttheads who run The Progressive magazine have their HQ in Madison, shocking I know. Their Whiner-in-Chief managed to puke this bit of dog vomit out before running back to his medicine cabinet for a double dose of turbo anti-depressants. Fisking blade attached.
By Matthew Rothschild, July 2, 2008
(In memory of George Carlin.)
It’s July 4th again, a day of near-compulsory flag-waving and nation-worshipping. Count me out.
Spare me the puerile parades.
Because the freeing of an entire nation from Royal tyranny is hardly worth commemorating
Don’t play that martial music, white boy.
Because except for ending slavery, Nazism, Fascism, Japanese Imperialism and Soviet Communism, War has never solved anything. Kudos to the Protest Warriors.
And don’t befoul nature’s sky with your F-16s.
How contemptuous you are of those who protect your right to snivel.
You see, I don’t believe in patriotism.
What about the tooth fairy?
It’s not that I’m anti-American, but I am anti-patriotic.
Love of country isn’t natural. It’s not something you’re born with. It’s an inculcated kind of love, something that
is foisted upon you in the home, in the school, on TV, at church, during the football game.
Yet most people accept it without inspection.
No Douche most people accept it because America and it's citizens who have gone before us have earned that respect. You can whine all you want about the horrors of American hegemony, any sentient being whose brain is not befouled with Progressive ideology can see what a force for good we have been and continue to be.
For when you stop to think about it, patriotism (especially in its malignant morph, nationalism) has done more to stack the corpses millions high in the last 300 years than any other factor, including the prodigious slayer, religion.
And obviously the Bush crime family has so distorted our values that feeeling patriotic about this America is akin to Satan worship.
The victims of colonialism, from the Congo to the Philippines, fell at nationalism’s bayonet point.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't we help them recover from Spanish colonialism as a US Territory and the grant them independence in 1946, and even left the country when they asked us to in the '90s.
World War I filled the graves with the most foolish nationalism. And Hitler and Mussolini and Imperial Japan brought nationalism to new nadirs. The flags next to the tombstones are but signed confessions—notes left by the killer after the fact.
And somehow you can equate three tyrannies we destroyed with the free democracy that took them out.
The whole world almost got destroyed because of nationalism during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The whole world almost got destroyed because our young, charismatic, muppet of a Democrat President decided to go face to face with Kruschev and convinced Kruschev that Kennedy was out of his league. Does that remind you of anyone there Mr. Rothschild?
The bloody battles in Serbia and Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s fed off the injured pride of competing patriotisms and all their nourished grievances.
And then those evil patriotic Americans came in and stopped all the massacring.
At times, the appeal to patriotism may be necessary, as when harnessing the group to protect against a larger threat (Hitler) or to overthrow an oppressor (as in the anti-colonial struggles in the Third World).
But it is always a dangerous toxin to play with, and it ought to be shelved with cross and bones on the label except in these most extreme circumstances.
So if a group of messianic, obscurantist religionists declared war against everyone who doesn't accept their God and began a world-wide campaign of killing non-believers, that wouldn't qualify for a call to patriotic arms Matt?
When Americans retort that this is still the greatest country in the world, I have to ask why.
Are we the greatest country because we have 10,000 nuclear weapons?
No but the fact that we have managed to avoid using them is a great country factor.
No, that just makes us enormously powerful, with the capacity to destroy the Earth itself.
And the restraint not to.
Are we the greatest country because we have soldiers stationed in more than 120 countries?
Well that is simply a gross exaggeration, unless you are counting Marine Guards at Embassies
No, that just makes us an empire, like the empires of old, only more so.
Not an empire, unlike the empires of old. I guess progressive disease precludes an understanding of the difference between taking goods by force and trading for them to the advantage of both. That is the horror of American empire.
Are we the greatest country because we are one-twentieth of the world’s population but we consume one-quarter of its resources?
Nope, but we are great because we use those resources to create amazing medicines and scientific advances that extend the lives of everyone on earth.
No, that just must makes us a greedy and wasteful nation.
No that makes you a dim and silly man.
Are we the greatest country because the top 1 percent of Americans hoards 34 percent of the nation’s wealth, more than everyone in the bottom 90 percent combined?
No but we are great because we don't (always) punish the successful and redistribute their earnings.
No, that just makes us a vastly unequal nation.
And shockingly you are unable to comprehend that all people are completely unequal. Seriously dude, some people are smarter, taller, prettier than others. You don't want equal opportunity, you want equality of outcome. That is a wonderfully socialist idea you have there. Why don;t you just migrate to one of the many socialist paradises all around the world. Oh yeah that's right there aren't any.
Are we the greatest country because corporations are treated as real, live human beings with rights?
WTF are you talking about? Jesus you really ought to vie thee to Castro's embodiment of all you desire.
No, that just enshrines a plutocracy in this country.
No that just allows the successful to be rewarded and the unsuccessful booted. Horrifying, I know.
Are we the greatest country because we take the best care of our people’s basic needs?
No, actually we don’t. We’re far down the list on health care and infant mortality and parental leave and sick leave and quality of life.
Compared to who? You are just making shit up at this point you bitter, little man.
So what exactly are we talking about here?
To the extent that we’re a great (not the greatest, mind you: that’s a fool’s game) country, we’re less of a great country today. Because those things that truly made us great—the system of checks and balances, the enshrinement of our individual rights and liberties—have all been systematically assaulted by Bush and Cheney.
From the Patriot Act to the Military Commissions Act to the new FISA Act, and all the signing statements in between, we are less great today.
From Abu Ghraib and Bagram Air Force Base and Guantanamo, we are less great today.
From National Security Presidential Directive 51 (giving the Executive responsibility for ensuring constitutional government in an emergency) to National Security Presidential Directive 59 (expanding the collection of our biometric data), we are less great today.From the Joint Terrorism Task Forces to InfraGard and the Terrorist Liaison Officers, we are less great today.
Admit it. We don’t have a lot to brag about today.
But we have you and the Obama to redeem our dirty souls and America's too.
It is time, it is long past time, to get over the American superiority complex.
It is long past time to get over the Blame America complex. I suggest you have a nicely medicated Independence Day,
I will enjoy celebrating my guilt-less, all-American brand of patriotism.