Posted on 07/04/2014 5:06:29 AM PDT by Kaslin
You wouldn't think, five years into the Obama presidency, that so many liberal Americans wouldn't like America.
A new Pew survey found that 44 percent of Americans don't often feel pride in being an American, and only 28 percent said that America is the greatest country in the world. Respondents who "often feel proud to be American" were overwhelmingly conservative (from 72 percent to 81 percent depending on the kind of conservative). A majority (60 percent) of "solid liberals" said they don't often feel proud to be an American.
The polling data only proves what has been obvious for a while.
Georgia Rep. John Lewis recently said that, "If the Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would probably never make it to the floor for a vote."
Lewis is right. If it came before the Congress today, it wouldn't pass. You know why? Because we passed it 50 years ago. The GI Bill wouldn't pass today either, because that was enacted in 1944. If, somehow, we had Jim Crow today, the American people -- and Congress -- would vote to abolish it in a landslide.
In fairness, Lewis was primarily condemning congressional gridlock, not GOP racism.
Primarily.
A legitimate hero of the civil rights era, Lewis has adopted the liberal habit of suggesting that his political opponents have a burning desire to return to the era of Jim Crow. At the 2012 Democratic convention, for instance, he gave a thundering speech that equated a vote for Mitt Romney with going back to the era of segregation.
Contrary to what you hear daily on MSNBC, Republicans don't want to force Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen. Tim Scott or any other African-American to the back of the bus.
Lewis isn't the only leading Democrat incapable of giving the American people some credit. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in the Hobby Lobby case, Hillary Clinton insisted we are following in the footsteps of anti-democratic Middle Eastern theocracies. According to Clinton, the majority on the court were like Iranian mullahs, behaving "in ways that are disadvantageous to women but which prop up them because of their religion, their sect, their tribe, whatever." The shocking, inarticulate stupidity of this analysis is only outdone by the stunning ease with which Clinton offered it.
She's not alone, of course. To listen to some of the hysterical responses to the court's decision, you'd think the government in Washington is the only thing thwarting the desire of millions of businessmen to drape their female employees in burqas.
This glib anti-Americanism manifests itself most readily when issues of race and gender are in the headlines, but it hardly ends there. MSNBC host Chris Hayes celebrated soccer's growing popularity in the U.S. because it strikes a blow against "anti-soccer trolls" who believe in American exceptionalism. "Part of embracing a truly worldwide competition," Hayes cheered, "is accepting the fact the U.S. cannot simply assert its dominance. Turns out we have to play just like everybody else."
It's ironic. In 2009, conservatives (myself included) pounced when Barack Obama seemed to dismiss American exceptionalism as an empty platitude. "I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama explained, "just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
By this standard, American exceptionalism isn't exceptional, it's a vague and meaningless form of national self-esteem, rather than a complex concept describing the uniqueness of the American founding and American character.
Liberals quickly and angrily defended Obama, saying none should dare question his patriotism, and of course he believes America is special. In May, Obama took another stab, telling West Point graduates that he believes in American exceptionlism "with every fiber of my being." But he immediately qualified what he meant by insisting that "What makes us exceptional is not flouting international norms and the rule of law; it's our willingness to affirm them through our actions."
Translation: We prove we're exceptional by playing just like everyone else - just like playing soccer!
Why liberals have become so comfortable running down America is no doubt complicated, but I think one part of the answer is obvious. Liberals tend to equate patriotism with the government. Obama was supposed to usher in a glorious new era of European-style big government. He's failed, though alas not entirely. But in the attempt he aroused a populist movement -- the tea parties -- full of people who wore their traditional patriotism on their sleeves and tricorn hats. The forces of American exceptionalism proved formidable, taking advantage of our exceptional constitutional structure to thwart European social democracy.
And liberal resentment over that fact is palpable.
I’d like to see Colombia beat Brazil.
They’re stretching.
“If you go back to the phony victims, Sacco & Vanzetti, the war on WASPs goes back close to a 100 years. Those two lost the battle, but the rads won the war.”
Oh, sure; McKinley was killed by an anarchist foreigner. Fifty years ago the anti-establishment freaks really started winning political power.
Very well said
Leon something or other, yeah. He mistakenly blamed Emma Goldman for the murder which got her in a mess of trouble. My grandfather was amazed to find out I had a book on “Red Emma.” I’m fascinated by the anarchism movement. Going from believing all the lies about their non-violence to being wised-up about all their very real and true murders. Emma Goldman, Vanzetti and Alexander Berkman had other blood on their hands. Vanzetti murdered a priest in the Midwest on his trip to Mexico to avoid WWI.
Most of what I know about anarchists is from the Spanish Civil War; they served as the communists’ useful idiots in the first year, then their leadership was killed (a la “night of the long knives”) and their members forced into the communist units. The left’s morale never recovered from that (as the anarchists were the purest representation of their ideals), and they quickly lost ground after that.
I understand the concept, and with the Obama regime in power I can respect it. When people rail against the government controlling their lives, they are echoing an anarchist sentiment that was born of mistrust of ruling elites. The black-clad people protesting the WTO in Seattle may be ungovernable, but today that seems like a noble concept.
Maybe “Progressives” would be happier in Viet Nam, the country they wished to protect from American soldiers;
or maybe even Cuba.
IMHO
They can go there for all I care. Hell would even be better
I understand what you are saying. And it’s interesting what you say about the SCW. To be honest, I don’t have enough heart to start studying that war with its abominiable atrocities. I should have started on it at a much younger age.
The trouble with anarchism is that it always, always, always devolves into pointless violence and horror.
BINGO They see themselves further up the evolutionary ladder. Enlightned (like their god-king Xerxes/Obama)
“To be honest, I don’t have enough heart to start studying that war with its abominiable atrocities. I should have started on it at a much younger age.”
It was a fairly short (three years) local war; to me it has relevance today because of the alignment of forces (which is repeating itself now in our country).
“The trouble with anarchism is that it always, always, always devolves into pointless violence and horror.”
As does communism; any movement can be misled into chaos.
German exceptionalism is not in its soccer team. It is the SLK in my garage.
Beautifully put!
And the fact that it IS in your garage is evidence of American exceptionalism as well.
Good point; goes all the way back to the printing press...
Not so much.
The Media get most of the blame for this. They convinced the low-information crowd that Obama was 'wonderful', intelligent, even 'clean', and spent an inordinate amount of time decrying anyone who said otherwise.
They packaged the fable like any other product, and donated infomercial time in their frenzy to emplace someone they made, polished, and edited, carefully constructing an image to sell to the American People like so much soap.
They were wildly successful, but when their product wasn't delivering, had to double down and tell America that things were getting better, (look at the Stock Market, pumped full of quantitative easements--it set another record!), and stripped "news" of anything but an echo-chamber wad of talking points, rehashed and restated, all there to maintain their access to the power they had enthroned.
The voters, poor suckers, didn't stand a chance.
Sure, they might be unemployed, but things were getting better, right..right? After all, they said so on TeeVee.
Yeah, they couldn't buy as much food, but inflation was almost nonexistent, right? It said so on the TeeVee.
Unless, of course, you were listening to those nasty extremists at FOX, who really were only "fairly balanced", and not extremists at all. But only extremists would listen to extremists, so the suckers shied away and kept licking it up.
I'm not ashamed of Americans.
Disappointed, perhaps, that those who could be following what is going on and coming over from the dark side in droves if they knew, refuse to invest the effort in paying attention to their country they invest in the pap and pablum of modern television 'entertainment', heavily seeded with political correctness and agenda driven babble.
The same people who can cite sports statistics ad infinitum can't tell me who their US Senators are, claiming, of course, that politics is 'just too involved, too complicated to keep up with'.
We still have the best country on the planet, despite the media, their minions, the crooks in DC and elsewhere who are screwing the American People like a cheap trick. We have the most resilient people who have endured incredible usurpations of power, the interference with their God given Rights, the confiscation of their wealth through means seen and unseen, and have yet to revolt.
More are becoming aware, slowly, but surely. More are finding the spine they thought had atrophied into goo, and are standing up to the Liberal/Marxist/Islamist onslaught that has mistaken compliance thus far with complacency or approval.
I firmly believe the day will dawn when the tables are fully turned, when we return to being a moral and just country, when people are judged by their character and their achievements, and not the superficiality of appearance or behaviour, and when those who mold opinion for the masses and manipulate the minds of youth and adult alike for ill will be stripped of their position, fame, and wealth for the egregious violation of the public trust by the selfsame public they manipulated for personal gain and reflected ersatz glory.
I must admit, mine has been seriously diminished since the first Tuesday in November 2008.
Love the good.
Reagan said that Americans always get what they want, eventually. I don’t believe Americans want what Obamalamadingdong has done to the country.
It can be changed.
Georgia Rep. John Lewis recently said that, “If the Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would probably never make it to the floor for a vote.”
As it’s currently written, the CRA shouldn’t have been passed even back then. It went too far by giving government more control over private businesses, and now we’re to the point where business owners are constantly having to prove their innocence in regards to racism.
Last year, I recorded a “Capitol 4th”, I think it was called, which was about the 4th of July celebration in Washington D.C. on PBS and it sure looked to me like the crowd was about 99.9% white and I don’t think that that is anywhere near what the make-up of the city is.
So, yeah, I’d say a huge constituency of Obama supporters who are other than white seemed to pass on celebrating July 4th in this nation’s capitol and I wonder what that might presage about our future because, if you don’t love your country, why would you ever sacrifice to preserve and protect it.
I refuse to celebrate the men who fought in the Intl Brigades as heroes, even whilst I loath Franco. Neither sides were heroes: either Stalins or Hitlers dupes, cheerboys for totalitarianism.
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