WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE YOUR COUNTRY?

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On July 5, 1852, Frederick Douglass, a runaway slave and one of the greatest orators and statesmen in American history, gave a speech at an event commemorating the signing of the Declaration of Independence. "This Fourth of July is yours, not mine. You may rejoice, I must mourn…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July?...To him, your celebration is a sham;…your denunciation of tyrants brass-fronted impudence; your shout of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are to him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy -- a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States, at this very hour.”

 

Ouch.

 

Rudy Guiliani stepped in it recently. He said the President doesn’t love America. Sharply criticized, he only said what many think: Only 54 percent of voters believe Obama is patriotic. Is it possible an American President, even a committed leftist, might not love his country? Maybe. His favorite thing to do in front of foreign audiences is apologize for his own country. Yet, he’s also called America the one “indispensible nation” and once stated that nowhere else could a man with his story rise to his position.

 

Perhaps out of guilt for excesses like spitting on Vietnam vets and sending care packages to the Viet Cong, the left is ever sensitive to this criticism. They are vulnerable and they know it. In “25 Quotes that Prove Liberals Don’t Love America”, John Hawkins quotes reliable crazies like Ward Churchill, who advocates America be nuked, but also mainstream liberals like John Kerry, who once said, “I get always a little uptight when I hear politicians say how exceptional (America is)”. There is also a resurgence of America-hating radicalism on college campuses. The UC Irvine student government recently tried to ban all national flags. And when one conservative tried to get American flags put in classrooms at the University of Central Florida, progressive student groups denounced it, saying the flag stood "for violence, oppression and the rise of fascism."

 

William Galston, a Wall Street Journal columnist too clever by half, answered Giuliani by quoting conservative icon Edmund Burke: “To make us love our country, our country ought to be lovely.” Then came the usual tripe about it being patriotic to criticize your country. But in loving or hating America, what does that even mean? What is “American”? The founders thought long and hard about the constitution and formed it around Enlightenment and Biblical concepts. Like what? 1. God-given, irrevocable Natural Rights. 2 Equal protection under the law. 3. Federalism. 4. Checks and balances because men are not angels. 5. Capitalism and property rights.


The canon of the left is the exact opposite:  1. Rights are bestowed by government. 2. Law should favor the underclass. 3. Anti-federalism: Strong central government. 4. Executive branch supremacy. 5. Capitalism should be restrained and wealth redistributed. Do liberals think America is lovely? If so, what exactly do they love?

 

But one clever commenter posed a few questions like these: What if we loved our wives like Obama loves America? What if we: 1. Joked to her friends that she’s put on some weight recently. 2. Those girls who beat her up in high school? She must have provoked them. But good news! You found them all on Facebook and told them you apologize. 3. Tell her she didn’t really clean the house; it was Mr. Clean and those scrubbing bubbles that did the real work. 4. Tell her you love her so much, you want to completely transform her.


Woodrow Wilson was the first president to openly criticize the restrictive and “inefficient” constitution. Obama lamented that the constitution is a charter of “negative liberties”, which unfortunately doesn’t specify what government must do for people. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg suggested Egypt reject the American Constitution as a model and embrace one like South Africa’s, which guarantees everything from food and housing to a healthy environment.

 

Galston was right about one thing, however. It is not patriotic to never criticize your country.This started as a simple “Liberals Hate America” piece. Then a thought occurred: What if Omnipotentblog was Russian? I would wish Putin a painful illness, something with boils and explosive diarrhea. I would acknowledge my country’s long history of tyranny and corruption. But despite 90% of Russian men being drunk at any given time of the day, I would still love my country and its people. I would wish the best for it. Is this the key to understanding the “patriotism” of the left?

 

During that same speech in 1852, Frederick Douglass expressed great hope that slavery would soon die. And later, after the Dred Scott decision forced the repatriation of escaped slaves, he said this: “I base my sense of the certain overthrow of slavery, in part, upon the nature of the American Government, the Constitution, the tendencies of the age, and the character of the American people…. I know of no soil better adapted to the growth of reform than American soil. I know of no country where the conditions for affecting great changes in the settled order of things, for the development of right ideas of liberty and humanity, are more favorable than here in these United States.” In 1851, Douglass had been persuaded that the “eternal principles,” the “saving principles,” in the constitution were real “and I defy the presentation of a single pro-slavery clause in it”. A strong believer in property rights, he also rejected as “arrant nonsense” the conflation of abolition and socialism. Expressing faith in America’s deeper, yet unrealized goodness, he rejected the popular notion of moving blacks back to Africa. Slaves were American. And nowhere else on earth could they flourish under the timelessness of that “glorious document”.

 

Perhaps the litmus test of patriotism is wherein one believes the rottenness lies. Does America need a shower and a haircut or gender reassignment surgery? Do we move onward to form a “more perfect union” or do we need to burn it down and start over? Maybe you believe America is morally comparable to Nazi Germany. If so, maybe you could check out one of the lovely socialist paradises around the world like Venezuela. But bring some toilet paper because they tend to run out.