Yeah. Wear this.
Posted on 07/23/2015 2:17:15 PM PDT by IChing
Entities have identities. To identify a nation, or anything else, is to define it. That is, it must have specific limits — one must be able to tell what it is, largely by ruling out what it is not, implicitly and explicitly. In the case of a country, there must be territorial boundaries. It also has have additional characteristics to distinguish it from other countries.
That’s where America went wrong, and dead-ended. In trying to be all things to all people everywhere around the globe (not so much a place, necessarily, but an idea, of limitless opportunity and diversity), we have dissolved ourselves right out of existence. Paradoxically, we’ve reached our limit on the timeline of history by not observing the limits which would allow us to continue as a nation.
It seems to the point where any person anywhere on the planet may be declared to be “in the true spirit of what it is to be an American,” while anyone else who might dare to question that claim is suspected of a hate-crime.
When everything is up for grabs, you do not have identity. You have an imaginary, formless jump-ball with no surface rubber or skin, a dry vapor, on a court with no boundaries in a game with no rules. Chaos.
We have elected leaders who see the very idea of border and interior immigration enforcement as either immorally oppressive, or an undesirable impediment to commerce and to generational transfer-payments (or all of the above), and so they refuse to enforce immigration law to the point where our territorial identity has about vanished.
These same leaders give speeches in foreign lands, proclaiming themselves foremost to be citizens of the world. The overall message is that national identity and integrity/sovereignty is something to be eschewed, in favor of a pan-global universalism wherein the United Nations is the governing body, and anyone holding out loyalties to a particular nation is a backward bigot.
Our eventual demise was baked into our founding documents from the beginning, really. The Enlightenment gave us: “…all men are created equal.” Nowadays, it’s all people (women too). Therefore, everyone on the planet has just as much right as anyone else to proclaim themselves citizens of wherever. The concept of American identity, then, becomes more and more meaningless, because if everyone everywhere has equal opportunity and identity, then comparatively no one really has any actual opportunity, nor any particular identity which can be verified. Why bother, then, with borders or distinct cultures?
In the early-stage Enlightenment decades during and after America’s founding, the men who made the rules still firmly believed in racial hierarchy and ethnic nationalism, despite their professed egalitarian ideals. For better or worse, all white men were ostensibly deemed to be created equal; black men were not really considered men, in the same way that a donkey is not a horse, even though the two share enough DNA to be able to produce offspring — which is a mule, not a horse. I’m just stating facts here, regarding history, biology, identity, and our founders’ beliefs.
My, how things have changed. Over time, equality and representative democracy mean everyone can vote, and just keep voting themselves more rights and more stuff, virtually to the point of “voting for a living.” Conservatives and progressives alike accept and cherish the stated ideal of the Declaration of Independence, and we’ve watched it all hurtle toward the obliteration of all boundaries and limits. Staggering debt means nothing, because it’s reached the point of being mathematically impossible to ever pay off. Responsibility? For chumps.
So we’re alive in the time of the unraveling of the national sweater our grandmothers knit to protect us from the elements. And we haven’t yet found it worthwhile to knit anything new to replace it — it’s like we’ve gone nudist colony, in the cultural sense. We’ve swallowed the Enlightenment idea that we won’t need a sweater to protect us from moral hazards, because after all, if everyone’s equal, everyone’s entitled to whatever territory and redistributed property, and so on.
It was a nice sweater while it lasted.
We do need new layers of skin and social fabric, to protect us and give us a distinguishable identity. On the infinitely broad timeline of history, it will emerge to be seen where and how the lines and layers are drawn, constructed, and defended, and what name we will give the new entity.
The emperor needs some clothes. Any ideas?
Truth in a nutshell
So basically you’re ready to give up?
Tar and feathers.
More seriously, the question of deluded do-gooder using useful idiots, or secret foreign agent/Manchurian Candidate is becoming increasingly important.
Time to form The New American Republic....
LOL’d at tar & feathers ;-)
<>Our eventual demise was baked into our founding documents from the beginning, really.<>
BS. The author is wrong to blame The Enlightenment and founding document.
His views on equality are sophomoric and misleading as well.
Yeah. Wear this.
PLease explain why you say that. For that matter, it may be argued by some that universalism and the erasing of borders, etc., is a desirable goal in keeping with Enlightenment philosophy.
"America isn't a nation, its an idea"
Altruistic foolishness and still articles of faith among many republicans.
The democrats? They wear their hate for this country on their sleeve.
WE codified for US ... "all men are created equal" and WE fought and strove FOR that truth
The world liked the words, adopted the words but not the truth and principle, declared THEMSELVES equal to US (by using the equality phraseology) and thereby muddied our own waters
stupid and evil politicians and sociol engineers helped their cause along, destroying our unique identity and leaving us with a tattered fabric
THAT'S what I got from the article
You really missed the point. The Constitution itself has been “amended” so much that has become the chief tool of the egalitarians. Have we been barking up the right tree?
Exactly!
Bookmark
I really missed the point?
So, you’re ready to (Obama)-can the US Constitution because it’s now “the chief tool of the egalitarians”?
If you find any new and better clothes, better than our Constitution, then let me now.
But for now - you’re a troll.
That comment only applies to perhaps the last twenty maybe thirty years. In fact America did not ‘go wrong’. The commies managed to take over the universities and sell a generation of spoiled kids the idea that everything about America was wrong.....and it continues a pace.
<> it may be argued by some that universalism and the erasing of borders, etc., is a desirable goal in keeping with Enlightenment philosophy.<>
It can be argued only by those who don’t know what they’re talking about
Do enlighten us all, then
Instead of name-calling, you could offer an argument to rebut the point made about the founding docs. I’m serious, I’d like to hear why The Enlightenment is not the basis for the unraveling of our national sovereignty, the family, patriarchy, and so on.
No, you cite evidence of Enlightenment thinkers in support of “universalism and the erasing of borders, etc., (as) a desirable goal.”
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.