Posted on 02/06/2013 12:48:18 PM PST by Zionist Conspirator
One of the highlights of the 1961 inauguration of President John F. Kennedy, 52 years ago, was a poem by the beloved Robert Frost. That morning I had watched the new vice-president, Lyndon Johnson, leave his home down the street and a bit later watched Frost read the poem on television that snowy day, looking at the same snow outside my window a few miles away.
The poem was entitled, “The Gift Outright,” and it began:
“The land was ours before we were the land's.
She was our land more than a hundred years
Before we were her people. She was ours
In Massachusetts, in Virginia,
But we were England's, still colonials….”
That poem could not be read today and if it were the result would be attacks, condemnation, and derision.
Why? Let’s count the reasons:
--The poem defines the birth of America as based on a gift. Today it would be said to be based on theft. --A gift from whom? The implication is from God. To claim such a thing would be seen as hubris and dangerous non-atheism.
--It claims the land during the colonial period belonged to the colonialists whereas it is assumed now that it belonged to the “Native Americans” and thus such a statement is racist.
--It identifies America with people from England which would be the kind of racist, chauvinist thinking that could not be more derided. After all, what about the slaves as well as the Native Americans?
The fact that Frost was basically correct, that America in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries arose from English settlers, that it belonged as a nation to those who became Americans, that it shaped those people in a positive way, and that the founders (who Frost is echoing in the poem) saw things in a similar way, are all deemed irrelevant.
But how can America exist as a legitimate nation if Frost’s view is condemned, even if one takes into account the country’s later direction and development?
This discussion reminds us that the hegemonic elite in the United States today has largely achieved something never done elsewhere: it has convinced itself and a large portion of the country’s youth that America’s whole history is evil. There is one other country (I'll mention below) that has far more logically convinced most of its people to believe just one part of its history is evil. See if you can guess.
I don’t want to exaggerate here. Obviously not everyone feels that way and equally this sentiment is not applied to all things. In his second inaugural speech, President Barack Obama put forward contradictory ideas. On one hand, he tried to bridge the gap by saying that the founders were merely outdated and that he had now assumed their mantle. On the other hand, he played subtly on the evil rich white male heterosexual slaveholder theme.
So they succeed in having it both ways: America was a great idea but the way it was organized is obsolete; America has a terrible bloodstained history because it is so innately corrupted. Either way it has to be fundamentally transformed. During the last century a portion of the intelligentsia in all developed states has always been eager to condemn its own country, but more likely--and sometimes justifiably--for its current policies rather than its entire history and far more likely a small minority of people and not a large portion of the entire population.
The patriotic trimmings when invoked by those in charge nowadays seem cynical afterthoughts for political advantage rather than sincere sentiments. This is especially true in many classrooms which are shaping the next generation. It is no accident that one of the main textbooks used was written by a genuine Communist. The left-wing fringe rhetoric of the 1960s has now become the new normal.
The main theme is that America has been unfair, racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, a bully in the world, an oppressor of its own working class, etc. And of course it stole the land from the original inhabitants.
That country certainly sounds like a disaster. Why did its people even bother to continue such a failed experiment? Clearly it must be fundamentally transformed, no doubt.
And yet the French don’t say: How terrible is our country based on a thousand years of feudalism—nobility grinding the peasants’ faces in the mud, the bloody revolution, 25 years of aggressive war by Napoleon, decades of revolution and repression, the collapse of four republics, humiliating defeats in war, collaboration in World War Two, a colonial empire, and imperialist wars in Algeria and Indochina. They don’t say we are evil; our system is rotten; our souls deeply corrupted; we need fundamental transformation. Even if you downgrade the extent to which this image of guilt and shame has pervaded American intellectual, cultural, and even political life of late, as one looks around the world it seems as if Americans can say, “We’re number one” when it comes to self-hatred.
While Europeans are aware of their colonialist past, their guilt trip is far more limited. Why is that? On the surface, they have America and Israel to claim as real villains—scapegoats whose condemnation banishes European guilt-- but there is more to it than that.
One thing is that the United States can be said to be, in Marxist terms, a settler colonial society. But Latin American societies are based on far more deliberate and systematic genocide of the original inhabitants. Specific tales can be told of specific, usually small-scale massacres in America or the exile of the Cherokee. But in Spain’s colonies in the new world, there were deliberate massive killings, including—unlike the United States—of those who never attacked the Europeans or even fought wars against them.
Similarly, African history is marked by tribal warfare, displacement, and even genocide. While in Asia, the Japanese perpetrated horrors on China, for example, second only to those of Hitler and Stalin in Europe but can barely be made to offer perfunctory formal apologies. While one can find atrocities on the American side in the Philippines around 1900 or in Vietnam there’s nothing comparable. And such deeds were never matters of national policy. Oh, there was the internment of Japanese citizens in World War Two.
Regrettable but to be honest understandable at the time.
Indeed, leftists (including those pretending to be liberals) routinely rationalize cultures and societies built on far more repressive, racist, undemocratic behavior which continues down to today. Perhaps that, too, is part of the answer. Criticism of one's own society is encouraged; criticism of others is deemed racist.
Examining Europe more closely, Austria and Italy feel that they were victims, not allies, of Hitler’s cause. Russia is not repentant about Communism’s mass killings and repression, though of course it has been much discussed. France doesn’t consider itself born in sin despite the suppression of other nations within it (whatever became of the Burgundians, the Bretons, the Normans? How about the brutal massacre of the harmless Cathars?) or its colonial behavior. As a result, today a Socialist government doesn’t hesitate to send an expeditionary force to bomb rebels in Mali, and unilaterally to boot, without any of the Obama Administration obsession with multilateralism.
The French tend to bury the collaborationist past in World War Two. Belgians don’t shed tears over their country’s terrible behavior in the Congo, perhaps the world’s single worst record of bloody colonialism. For Europeans, war and conquest are seen as more normal even if the view is that they have outgrown such things today. Americans often seem to find conflict to be unnatural and in the well-ordered society they wouldn’t exist, everyone would be rich and happy. Thus, at least as its being presented today, conflict is a matter of mean, selfish people who just don’t have the right ideas.
True, European ruling classes have in some cases lost confidence in their own civilization but they don’t gnaw at themselves.
So what’s different about America on this point? I am trying out some preliminary ideas.
--America was a democracy and thus evil deeds cannot be put off onto an aristocracy or monarchy that no longer exists.
--Other countries just came into existence and there they were! Some countries were the products of conscious nationalist visions. But the United States arose from a political and philosophical concept: how can one build a country that is a sustainable republic where citizens are treated as equal. Thus, it can be judged on whether it has met that goal.
--America’s success at integrating other groups and freedom has created internal points of criticism. There are large minority groups which aren’t afraid to speak out and complain about the past. Indeed, members of the “majority” who do so are amply rewarded.
--Americans have a problem with integrating history into their thinking. The narrative of other countries is accepted and seen as a whole. The United States is much younger than most and has focused so much on change it is hard for most people to see their national rootedness.
--Because it always looked more inward than other countries, focused on prosperity and had a relatively easy geostrategic situation, Americans never even considered world conquest and when the country had the opportunity to do so after 1945 acted with incredible modesty and constraint. Today, that sentence would be mocked but it is nonetheless true. Perhaps there is a parallel to antisemitism in which the failure to behave as other nations have done makes everyone all the more suspicious that one is plotting behind the scenes. --Of course, the above points may be too over-thought and the easier explanation is simply a cynical, deliberate indoctrination to turn Americans against their own country and history. But then one still has to explain why this hasn’t happened elsewhere.
It is normal to refuse to endlessly dwell on one’s own guilt and shortcomings. People want to feel good about themselves and their country. Rulers usually—unless they are in the midst of fundamentally transforming the country (ah, there’s a clue)—don’t want to admit the evil-doing of predecessors with whom they feel a strong continuity.
One might say, as noted above, that America conquered the original inhabitants. But if one goes back far enough that can be said of virtually every country. America had slavery but so did other countries, albeit mainly outside their own borders so it was less visible. There are differences but not as large as they might originally appear to be.
The one potential exception is Germany, which is still facing its national socialist past as a factor that does affect its behavior. Yet I don’t think Germans believe that this era reflects a fundamental flaw in their national character or which pervades their history. And, again, the United States never had anything equivalent.
Part of the problem is the misunderstanding—often deliberate—of American history. Yes, there was slavery but it was repugnant from the very start to many Americans, even including slaveholders among the founders. Not just the Civil War but the political history of the United States from 1820 to 1861 revolved largely around battle over this issue. The correct way to view this history is not that America was guilty of the fundamental sin of slavery but that America had a great struggle over the issue and ultimately resolved it properly because of the strength, powerful concepts of democracy and equality, and conscience built into its system.
Perhaps the internal drive to delegitimize America is precisely because patriotism is a strong force in American life that must be overcome by those who would transform the country’s thinking. Certainly, the United States has taken a lead in international affairs in the last sixty years but frankly it did a pretty good job dealing with very tough situations and no-win alternatives.
In William Shakespeare’s play, “Julius Caesar,” Mark Antony gives a brilliant speech which well sums up how those who slander America misrepresent its history:
“The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.”
And who today seek to be America’s undertakers?
You're right. I don't.
Doesn't mean you're wrong; just that I can't quite get it.
The undermining of America by the Marxists began in the 1920s and they were firmly entrenched in media and academia by the 1930s, where they have remained and grown tremendously in strength and influence. After WWII the U.N. was to be the organizational force of this New World Order and it was so structured by FDR's hand-picked man, proven Communist Agent Alger Hiss. Hiss and the U.N.
Several generations of American kids have been carefully taught to loathe their own country. I saw on Fox News just this morning that a new on-line history course approved for 825 school districts in Texas (of all places!) depicts the original Boston Tea party as a terrorist act!
You said you’re scared to death of your government, which is of course good and right and proper, now put your brain in the monolith space. Stop thinking of the government as separate, it’s America, and you’re scared of it. That one little dividing line you erect in your brain that helps you keep the concept of the government separate from the concept of the country is the only thing that keeps you from thinking the country is evil. Erase that line and you’re just like the elites.
And we all do it periodically. Some of us have certain separations we’re good at maintaining but there’s always some we can’t handle. Ever complain about America’s behavior on Black Friday? Ever stop to think that only about 10% of the country actually goes shopping on Black Friday so it’s really not America as a country going all bargain crazy? Really any time you’ve ever complained about our culture as a whole you’re doing the same thing, taking the actions of what’s probably a small chunk of America and casting it as the whole country. I do it and I’ve actually spent time studying this phenomenon so I should know better. But I still have a human brain and it still gravitates to monoliths.
Once we began aborting our own babies in 1973 at the rate of 1.5 million per year, we lost the ability to stand on the high ground.
We no longer had the moral authority to fight back.
That’s what happened.
In 1965, we changed the immigration rules and started letting in millions of third worlders who were only here for money and/or to escape the hellholes they came from. They had no desire to be Americans in the way that European immigrants of the past did. We encouraged them not to assimilate. We catered to them and their demands never to be “offended.” This is a big reason, perhaps the main reason, for the changes the author speaks of. But it is the elephant in the living room that no one wants to discuss.
But this is a little off:
While Europeans are aware of their colonialist past, their guilt trip is far more limited. Why is that? On the surface, they have America and Israel to claim as real villains—scapegoats whose condemnation banishes European guilt-- but there is more to it than that.
One thing is that the United States can be said to be, in Marxist terms, a settler colonial society. But Latin American societies are based on far more deliberate and systematic genocide of the original inhabitants. Specific tales can be told of specific, usually small-scale massacres in America or the exile of the Cherokee. But in Spain’s colonies in the new world, there were deliberate massive killings, including—unlike the United States—of those who never attacked the Europeans or even fought wars against them.
The strange thing is that it doesn't "banish European guilt." Blaming somebody else may have the psychological effect of making it easier to go on living by scapegoating somebody else, but the people in Europe who are most against the US or Israel still feel pretty guilty about their imperialist past, at least in Northern Europe.
And I'm not sure about the rest which seems to be manipulative, distorting history to lead readers to the opinion the writer decided on in advance. Latin Americans (many of whom are of Indian descent) would look at this differently, as might North American Indians.
PS: Nothing about Lew Rockwell? Every day they tell why they think the United States (the government at least) is awful and evil.
“We no longer had the moral authority to fight back.”
You’re right; we export the evil by setting up puppet governments that try break up cultures with “women’s rights” (not in the generic sense, but strictly in terms of child-murder). The puppet government in Afghanistan is required to have a certain number of female members; we don’t even allow that nonsense here.
12 YEARS OF GODLESS, HUMANIST GOVERNMENT SCHOOLING!!!!
It’s a long existing problem the sane adults in this country had better solve while there MAY still be time.
To leave things as they are is to invite another, more tyrannical Obama into our lives.
It will NOT be pretty!!
Answer: They are almost all educated by a system that has been taken over by Marxists and other social;ist variants. They no longer learn about the founders except that they were eeevil white, slave owning rich guys.
My take is that the Left is as Puritan as the originals once were, they simply deny it. Thus, you have a Marxist worldview allied to a religious fervor that sees all “imperfections” in this country as something to be purged from humanity, by force if necessary. Leftists remind me of Shia’s who physically scold themselves with whips until they bleed, but because they have no true religion to teach them that all earthly things are imperfect, they never really learn. Consequently, they try again and again to perfect the imperfectable, causing more problems.
My take is that the Left is as Puritan as the originals once were, they simply deny it. Thus, you have a Marxist worldview allied to a religious fervor that sees all “imperfections” in this country as something to be purged from humanity, by force if necessary. Leftists remind me of Shia’s who physically scold themselves with whips until they bleed, but because they have no true religion to teach them that all earthly things are imperfect, they never really learn. Consequently, they try again and again to perfect the imperfectable, causing more problems.
They don't believe any such thing - because they don't believe anything at all.
Conservatives have an absolutely deadly blindness problem to what they are up against. Conservatives think for themselves, and they project this upon an enemy who doesn't. The very essence of collectivism is not thinking for oneself, not believing in anything at all, except what you are told to believe - and dropping that for something else on a dime when you are told to.
Collectivists hate America because that is wha they are told to do. Each one of them would march alongside Marines fighting communism and show the utmose courage in standing up for freedom, too - IF that's what the collective told them to do.
Collectivists have abandoned their souls. They have refused the very meaning of life itself. They use all of their intelligence and loyalty and heart and love to obey, obey, obey the collective - that is their only focus, their only God.
Collectivists are morally and spiritually depraved to a level that most people cannot even grasp - and they use that blindness to great advantage. That Democrat mom walking down the street with her child is NOT a loving mother - she is obeying collectivist orders to wear those clothes, walk in that place at that time, and treat her breeding offfering to the collective in a certain way - and she is doing it.
You think I exaggerate? Then explain - really explain - Obama's and Hillary's popularity.
Without this explanation, you can't.
Except, for the most part, the people who were promoting and doing these sleazy things are the very people who now bemoan our national history.
It was liberals who involved us in Viet Nam. It was liberals who accused Nixon of doing what their own leaders routinely did. It was liberals who directed and managed the CIA. Ivy League-educated liberals
And it is Ivy League-educated liberals who claim that the country is unworthy today.
Thus, it is self-hatred -- predicated on an arrogance that they are the only ones who count. <
An attitude that is endemic among liberals...
“Why should the United States be considered the most evil country in history, and by its own elites?”
Because America has been the greatest hope for Freedom that the planet has ever hosted. America worked. America was right. That drives them CRAZY.
Many or most of the sixties radical feminsists grew up in upper middle class or well to do homes. They were born with many more advantages than the great majority of the males they maligned. Some of the most rabid, anti-American rhetoric oozed out of the radical feminists movement along with tremendous hatred of men. They managed to infect millions of the succeeding generations of females that life was horrible for them despite having more material advantages than any group of women in the world. Why they hated/hate the country that gave/gives them so much is a mystery to me.
Are you sure you're on the right forum? Start naming all those evil things.
It's an Anglo-Saxon "thing". The Brits preceded the US into self-hatred.
It's success that's being sneered at. Ayn Rand termed it "the hatred of the good for being good".
FEMA training in 2001 explaining that the Founders were terrorists
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=oGZjR9NIHJk
Accept the possibility the instructors words are taken out of context.
Now consider the vaguest uttering of a public figure that might be construed as racist/islamophobic/pro-life or homophobic and tell me how much time passes before apologies are rendered.
The video of that class is dated 2001. It’s been around the block a couple of times and I don’t remember hearing a FEMA apology or a clarification about it, yet.
American Loathing 101 is taught everywhere our domestic enemies drag their reptilian tails.
“Then why don’t the liberals hate Armenia and Ethiopia? Why just the USA?”
Because it is the Christian civilization in the USA (and at one time Europe) that stands in their way.
There isn’t time to name ALL the evil things. Here’s a few goodies though:
project paper clip
Viet Nam (wouldn’t have been evil if we’d actually wanted to win, but we didn’t, and getting into a war you don’t want to win is probably the most evil thing you can do)
at least half a dozen times we inspired people to revolt against their government and doing nothing to back them (again the whole not wanting to win thing)
backing the Shah
backing Marcos
backing Duvalier
we backed a lot of really bad people during the Cold War
And that’s just the 50s, 60s and 70s. We haven’t even gotten into “Iranian Moderates”, abandoning Afghanistan to a decade of chaos after helping kick out Russia, Clinton’s adventure with Haitian dictators, and Obamacare. Our government’s done a lot of evil.
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