Posted on 07/05/2016 7:31:18 AM PDT by Kaslin
Gersh Kuntzman of the Daily News is calling for Major League baseball to permanently ban the playing of “God Bless America.”
While conceding some of its virtues, Kuntzman laments that the classic jingle “embodies” some of “our worst things,” vices like “self-righteousness, forced piety,” and “earnest self-reverence.”
Kuntzman approvingly alludes to a 2013 poll conducted by the author of a book on “God Bless America.” The poll found that 61 percent or so of those asked share Kuntzman’s judgment that the song should go the way of the dinosaur. The real story here, though, is to be found in how those numbers break down:
While only 20.5 percent of those who wish to see the song banned from major league baseball self-describe as “very conservative,” a whopping 84 percent who want the same regard themselves as “very liberal.”
The “very liberal” stand side-by-side with “foreigners,” like Kuntzman’s British friend, who find “the self-righteousness” and “patriotism” of the song “exactly what [to] expect from Americans.”
This is telling.
Setting aside that these judgments reflect a profound, indeed, a scandalous, ignorance of the natures of both piety and patriotism, they are telling in another respect. It’s worth asking:
As Americans prepare to celebrate Independence Day, can, logically speaking, the “very liberal”—i.e. the left—join them in doing so?
Paul Gomberg is one leftist, a philosopher, who resoundingly rejects this as a moral and logical possibility. In his essay, “Patriotism is like Racism,” Gomberg argues for his thesis that the former is as big an evil as the latter.
“Racism” is immoral because it violates the requirement of “moral universalism,” namely, the requirement that our “actions are to be governed by principles that give equal consideration to all people who might be affected by an action.” From this perspective, “all count equally and positively in deciding what to do.”
So, in other words, among the most “fundamental rights” that moral universalism bestows upon individuals is the right to be “treated impartially,” i.e. the right to be treated “without regard to race [.]” Since “racism” consists in treating people partially according to race, it is immoral.
However, Gomberg is quick to note, the right to be treated impartially includes as well the right to be treated without regard to “nationality” and “citizenship.”
This being so, because patriotism is a matter of treating one’s co-nationals and/or fellow citizens partially, like “racism,” patriotism, then, is immoral.
In summary: Morality requires impartiality. Racism and patriotism, though, require partiality. Hence, racism and patriotism are both equally immoral.
Gomberg adds that partiality toward one’s friends and the members of one’s community can also exacerbate social and economic “inequalities.” For example, suppose Joe owns his own business and needs to hire more employees. If he were to hire his “old school chums,” say, and/or residents from his old neighborhood, “the degree of residential and school segregation in most big cities in the United States” would all but guarantee that they would be of the same “ethnic group” as Joe himself. And “given the greater initial disadvantage of most black people in access to capital and business opportunities generally,” the hiring of one’s friends and acquaintances “will tend to maintain or exacerbate poverty in intensely impoverished inner-city black ghettos.”
This is “racism,” for it undermines “human equality.”
Patriotism, though, does the same thing. “People from other countries immigrate to the United States because of international inequality.” Moreover, “international income gaps are vastly greater than domestic racial inequality.” Therefore, “favoritism toward a more prosperous nationality or discrimination against nationals from poor nations contributes to a morally objectionable inequality” that is “no better” than the inequality that is the essence of “racism.”
Gomberg, quite inconsistently, does not criticize as “objectionable” the inherent “inequality” between the families of some and those of others, an “inequality” resulting from the robust partiality of people toward their own families. Yet the reasoning that he uses to condemn partiality toward one’s co-ethnics and co-nationals holds at least as strongly when it comes to familial partiality.
People tend to be more partial to the interests of their own family members than they are toward those of the members of other families. Yet, overwhelmingly, people of all racial backgrounds continue to date and marry intra-racially. So, this partial treatment toward one’s relatives, inasmuch as it translates into partiality toward the members of one’s own race, inevitably leads to inter-racial inequalities.
And inter-racial “inequality” is, according to Gomberg (and the prevailing wisdom of the Racism-Industrial-Complex), “racism.”
If, then, you’re, say, white and you choose to marry and procreate with another white person, you’re guilty of “racism.”
Gomberg doesn’t go there. Most “very liberal” folks won’t go there (at least not yet). The point here, however, is that neither Independence Day nor any other “patriotic” holiday, institution, or tradition can be a cause for celebration by the lights of the Gombergs of the world.
As for the Jack Kerwicks of the world, here’s wishing you and yours a happy and safe Independence Day!
Not really as they are totalitarian.
There are people here hate this country and are unhappy with it.
Then are foreigners like Muslims, who can’t abide America for more or less the same reasons.
Which leads to the old, trite and true adage: love it or leave it!
If you don’t love America, this will never be your country.
As I watched some of the July 4th specials I wondered how many libs would have voted to stay a part of the British Empire if they’d had a voice. After all, they think we’re just one big global community.
is this the girly-man who whimpered and was so scared when he had to fire an AR-15?
I suspect if we were in the EuSSR, our liberals would have overwhelmingly voted Remain.
Nationhood like apple pie and motherhood, is a foreign concept to them.
They’re allergic to patriotism.
I’d like them to change the line about white foam.
Liberal are the reason for America’s loss of liberty; therefore, they are awaiting the next Muslim holiday.
I’ve long believed that when “liberals” invoke patriotism, it is only as a rhetorical device intended to mask their true objectives. It is used as a way to bully political opponents into agreeing with or yielding to some aspect of the liberal agenda, as when they might say that opposing gay marriage is “unpatriotic” or “not who we are as Americans.”
I don’t think the very liberal can celebrate anything about this country.
Liberals consistently are bitter angry people, who are perpetually pissed off about what they perceive as being wrong with this country and our history.
Rather than ever being happy or saying anything about what is positive about this country, they instead are pissed off all the time, and only talk about perceived wrongs, and focus on what is wrong with this country.
Independence inherently requires an “us vs them”.
An honest earnest Liberal rejects such division, setting no “them” to be independent of; to the contrary, any identifiable difference invokes the “us” for Liberals.
A Leftist (who may use the label “Liberal” only as a deception to gain power, then dropping the facade to go full-on totalitarian) identifies “them” as Right-leaning fellow citizens, so is not “independent” due to living among the enemy.
Either way, they cannot celebrate Independence Day as they are not “independent” by any measure meaningful to them.
Celebrating “old, outdated” documents written by a bunch of “old European white guys” doesn’t make any sense but liberals never do anything that makes any sense to normal people, especially normal Americans.
Right you are, if anything they are in mourning because the individual has too many rights.
It appears as though Kuntzmann has gotten over his bout with PTSD. Whew!
I have come to the sad conclusion over a period of the last 3 months that they are hopeless domestic enemies of the republic and there is only one way to deal with it as regrettable as it may be.
Liberals are always angry because that damned square peg will just not fit into that round hole, no matter how hard and how many times they try. Liberty is the round hole, socialism is the square peg.
He most likely never suffered from it.
It all comes down to being ungrateful.
You read Alexis de Tocqueville, the world envied America. She had MANY great attributes. But liberals are spoiled brats. Instead of focusing on the MANY great things of America, they choose instead to focus on the few negatives...OR...PERCEIVED negatives.
It's part of the victim mindset. It's part of greed. It's part of envy.
Conservatives are overwhelmingly made up of Christians. Christians are taught to avoid greed, envy and malice. The very things liberals embrace. Christians view what they have AND this country as a gift from God, thereby requiring their thankfulness.
Liberals have chosen to deny God. If you choose to deny God, either in recognition or deed, than thankfulness is going to be hard to come by.
Granted, not all conservatives are Christians. But, conservatives that aren't Christians still have a better world view and are grateful for what they DO HAVE, versus what they think they don't.
In the end, liberals remind me of the little 7 year old kid, who gets free a scoop of chocolate ice cream and screams "unfair" when he sees someone else with a scoop of vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles on it.
Everything in life for liberals is a temper tantrum.
Temper tantrums run counter to gratefulness and patriotism.
Gersh KUNTzman is the whiny faggot who got a bruised shoulder, nausea, and PTSD from shooting an AR-15.
No, but in the spirit of participation trophies, just so they won't feel left out, we'll create a new holiday specific to them: Dependence Day.
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