The Blame-America-First Crowd

Townhall.com ^ | March 19, 2007 | Michael Barone

[neverdem]

"They always blame America first." That was Jeane Kirkpatrick, describing the "San Francisco Democrats" in 1984. But it could be said about a lot of Americans, especially highly educated Americans, today.

In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

Where does this default assumption come from? And why is it so prevalent among our affluent educated class (which, after all, would seem to overlap considerably with the people being complained about?). It comes, I think, from our schools and, especially, from our colleges and universities. The first are staffed by liberals long accustomed to see America as full of problems needing solving; the latter have been packed full of the people cultural critic Roger Kimball calls "tenured radicals," people who see this country and its people as the source of all evil in the world.

On campuses, students are bombarded with denunciations of dead white males and urged to engage in the deconstruction of all past learning and scholarship.

Not all of this takes, of course. Most students have enough good sense to see that the campus radicals' description of the world is wildly at odds with reality. But this battering away at ideas of truth and goodness does have some effect. Very many of our university graduates emerge with the default assumption thoroughly wired into their mental software. And, it seems, they carry it with them for most of their adult lives.

The default assumption predisposes them to believe that if there is slaughter in Darfur, it is our fault; if there are IEDs in Iraq, it is our fault; if peasants in Latin America are living in squalor, it is our fault; if there are climate changes that have any bad effect on anybody, it is our fault.

What they have been denied in their higher education is an accurate view of history and America's place in it. Many adults actively seek what they have been missing: witness the robust sales of books on the Founding Fathers. Witness, also, the robust sales of British historian Andrew Roberts's splendid "History of the English-Speaking Peoples Since 1900."

Roberts points out almost all the advances of freedom in the 20th century have been made by the English-speaking peoples -- Americans especially, but British, as well, and also (here his account will be unfamiliar to most American readers) Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. And he recalls what held and holds them together by quoting a speech Winston Churchill gave in 1943 at Harvard: "Law, language, literature -- these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice and above all a love of personal freedom ... these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples."

Churchill recorded these things in his four-volume history of the English-speaking peoples up to 1900: the development of the common law, guarantees of freedom, representative government, independent courts.

More recently, Adam Hochschild, in his excellent "Breaking the Chains," tells the story of the extraordinary English men and women, motivated by deep religious belief, who successfully persuaded Britain to abolish the slave trade and then slavery itself. Their example was followed in time, and after a bloody struggle, by likeminded Americans. The default assumption portrays American slavery as uniquely evil (which it wasn't) and ignores the fact the first campaign to abolish slavery was worded in English.

The default assumption gets this almost precisely upside down. Yes, there are faults in our past. But Americans and the English-speaking peoples have been far more often the lifters of oppression than the oppressors.

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech last week. What is profoundly wrong is that too many of us are operating off the default assumption and have lost sight of who our real enemies are.

[kipita]

What they have been denied in their higher education is an accurate view of history and America's place in it. Many adults actively seek what they have been missing: witness the robust sales of books on the Founding Fathers.

Exactly!

[Lorianne]

Since our society isn't absolutely PERFECT we have no right to criticize anyone else. That's the prevailing logic on the left ... instead of the slippery slope, it's the steep slope.

The perfect is the enemy of the good.

[HisKingdomWillAbolishSinDeath]

The devil is always raging because he is beyond redemption, and knows his days of running roughshod over God's creation is just about over. Believe me, if you were in his shoes you would be very upset too. Just be thankful your not.

[Vanders9]

I'm minded of a story about a debate that raged in the correspondance pages of the Times newspaper in London many years ago, the subject of which was "what is wrong with the world"? Somehow this thing kicked off, and someone replied to it, and then lots and lots of people did...and the whole thing ran for months and months before the editorial staff decided to wind it up. Lots and lots of suggestions were made but the simplest and most profound came right near the end, when the noted (catholic) christian author, GK Chesterton wrote in. He said:

Dear Sir,
On the subject of "what is the matter with the world", I am. Yours, GK Chesterton.

Humanists have this in common. They spout out (rightly) that there is "something wrong with the world" (you dont have to be a genius to figure that one out) but then they always add "and its THEIR fault" - and for THEIR substitute neocons, whites, blacks, liberals, christians, moslems, jews, the military-industrial complex, men, women, gays, straights or whatever.

Christianity is the only faith in the world which looks at the world and says: Its MY fault. I'M to blame. My sin, my pride, my greed, my rebellion has brought us to this pass. Not exclusively of course. Probably if you are a serious Christian much less than most, but that's not the point.

The really hypocritical thing is that humanists are fond of accusing Christians of beating themselves down with guilt-inducing self-condemnation! And yet, they indulge in the kind of self-flagellation this article shows far more than anyone!

Sure the evil we do spreads out, like ripples in a pond, but at the same time people have to take some responsibility for their own situations. Africa is a mess at the moment largely because of the decisions of Africans in the post-colonial era. That's not to say that the colonial powers handled it perfectly, nor that we shouldn't try to help them now, but Ill be hanged if I am going on some mass collective guilt-trip my whole life for their benefit, which is what the left seems to want us to do. Guilt is a terribly destructive emotion. It's not good for the one feeling it and it's not even good for the recipient, as it enables them to finger point without addressing their own shortcomings.

[tkathy]

Blaming America for the ills of the third world is intellectually dishonest.

Most of us white Americans are descendents of the brutalized underclasses of Europe and Britain.

Most of us white Americans (both north and south for those yankee haters here) are descendents of the brutalized underclasses of Europe and Britain and, once under freedom, worked hard and prospered.

The democrat socialist elites have become the oppressors similar to the oppressors of Europe

[kipita]

Christianity is the only faith in the world which looks at the world and says: Its MY fault. I'M to blame.

and it's everone else's fault as well because they are to blame as no one can be perfect individually but togehter many misfits fit together very well.

Africa is a mess at the moment largely because of the decisions of Africans in the post-colonial era.

I tend to think Swaziland and Zimbabwe represent pre-colonial Africa and just about all of the other countries are better due to the colonial era.

[gulfcoast6]

In steps the ACLU, YOUR tax supported lawyers.

[Tolik]

Michael Barone:

...In their assessment of what is going on in the world, they seem to start off with a default assumption that we are in the wrong. The "we" can take different forms: the United States government, the vast mass of middle-class Americans, white people, affluent people, churchgoing people or the advanced English-speaking countries. Such people are seen as privileged and selfish, greedy and bigoted, rash and violent. If something bad happens, the default assumption is that it's their fault. They always blame America -- or the parts of America they don't like -- first.

...Very many of our university graduates emerge with the default assumption thoroughly wired into their mental software. And, it seems, they carry it with them for most of their adult lives.

The default assumption predisposes them to believe that if there is slaughter in Darfur, it is our fault; if there are IEDs in Iraq, it is our fault; if peasants in Latin America are living in squalor, it is our fault; if there are climate changes that have any bad effect on anybody, it is our fault.

What they have been denied in their higher education is an accurate view of history and America's place in it.

...Roberts points out almost all the advances of freedom in the 20th century have been made by the English-speaking peoples -- Americans especially, but British, as well, and also (here his account will be unfamiliar to most American readers) Canadians, Australians and New Zealanders. And he recalls what held and holds them together by quoting a speech Winston Churchill gave in 1943 at Harvard: "Law, language, literature -- these are considerable factors. Common conceptions of what is right and decent, a marked regard for fair play, especially to the weak and poor, a stern sentiment of impartial justice and above all a love of personal freedom ... these are the common conceptions on both sides of the ocean among the English-speaking peoples."

...The default assumption portrays American slavery as uniquely evil (which it wasn't) and ignores the fact the first campaign to abolish slavery was worded in English.

The default assumption gets this almost precisely upside down.

Yes, there are faults in our past. But Americans and the English-speaking peoples have been far more often the lifters of oppression than the oppressors.

"There is something profoundly wrong when opposition to the war in Iraq seems to inspire greater passion than opposition to Islamist extremism," Sen. Joseph Lieberman said in a speech last week. What is profoundly wrong is that too many of us are operating off the default assumption and have lost sight of who our real enemies are.

Nailed It!
Moral Clarity BUMP !

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[Edgerunner]

AMEN!

[Billthedrill]

The principal reason this is so attractive to a self-described class of intellectuals is that self-criticism is deemed a sign of broad-mindedness and broad-mindedness is supposedly a signal characteristic of that class. Unfortunately self-criticism is, by now, just as reflexive and unthinking as the support for U.S. policies that is still commonly characterized as "mindless."

And that explains why the passion against Iraq so far exceeds the passion against Islamist oppression within that class - it's reflexive and not overly intellectually taxing. It is easier and far more advantageous to be thought of as a free thinker than it is to actually put in the work to be one, and to take the consequences for uttering an unpopular opinion. And anti-Bush, anti-Americanism is if nothing else exceedingly popular.

Equally mindless is the element of group identification that dictates what you must think if you're going to be considered a member of the group, and this is equally prevalent on the right side of the political spectrum. It tends to be a little less fraught with consequence on the right, at least at the moment - a Christopher Hitchens may be anathemitized and evicted from the popular left for adhering to ideals that the left claims nominally for its own - human rights, for one. But one may be equally anathematized, say, for expressing pro-gun-control sentiment in the company of other conservatives. (Such persons should be shot in the kindliest and least judgmental manner possible, IMHO.)

There certainly is a core of stubborn, free-thinking conservatives (and no, that is not a contradiction in terms) within academia at the moment. The tenure committees haven't quite flushed the academy of such people in the Long March Through The Institutions and they aren't going to. But it's going to be a long, long couple of generations.

[ReleaseTheHounds]

Yup, Barone nails it...

Here's a link to a new documentary coming out that might be of interest to your respective PING lists: http://www.indoctrinate-u.com/intro/

This is the kind of politically incorrect film that will struggle to attract an audience (and theaters that might show it), so they are asking people to view the trailer on the web and, if interested, sign up for an email notice if there are enough interested interneters in the area to convince theaters to give the film a showing. It's going after the Indoctrination Policies that go on around American universities. Hopefully, it will get some people talking and, more important, thinking about the lack of diversity and growing intolerance on American university campuses.

[gonzo]

"...Very many of our university graduates emerge with the default assumption thoroughly wired into their mental software. And, it seems, they carry it with them for most of their adult lives..."

I was four out-of four liberals when my kids got out of college. Fifteen+ years later, three an a half are back on the right side.

One still thinks algores-global-warming is real ... not for long, though ............. FRegards