C’MON, AMERICA! SNAP OUT OF IT!
Reading a lot of blog posts and newspaper columns today, (while also observing various comment sections in the rightosphere), one wonders who died and where’s the funeral.
Is today the 4th of July? Or did a bunch of impostors dressed up like Americans infiltrate our country to put on a massive pity party?
The most optimistic nation in the history of the planet appears to be in a funk on this, a day that above all days, should be a celebration of that optimism and and a thanksgiving for all that has been bestowed upon us by history and providence.
Instead, we have gravely long faces spouting nonsense about a politician in Washington who doesn’t much like that history and wishes to alter the experiment in representative government that has survived a helluva lot more serious threats than some ex-state senator whose claim to fame before achieving office was that he was a failed community organizer who could deliver a speech as long as a teleprompter was in front of his face.
This is a day to remember how impossible it is that we are even having this discussion as a free people. This is a day to remember the incredible odds our founders overcame to defeat the superpower of their day on the battlefield, unite the most disparate and quarrelsome of peoples, write a document that became the model form of government for the world, and went on to conquer a continent, raise a civilization from nothing, and create a nation more free, more dynamic, more powerful, than any other nation in the history of civilized man.
In the history of civilized man.
Are we remembering that today? Nope. Instead, we get crap like this:
If that America is truly no longer relevant, then let us at least spend this Independence Day mourning its death. Weep when you hear the “Star Spangled Banner,” because the broad stripes and bright stars are now tattered and torn. If it still breathes, however, then let us mend it back to strength. Let us be bold in our endeavors, firm in our beliefs, steadfast in our resolve. Let us remember the words of Thomas Paine, who exhorted a people not to revolt, nor to wage war, but to act. The pamphlet urged independence, it’s true. But independence was a means to an end, the last resort of a people whose government wouldn’t listen. The problem wasn’t the crown or parliament, but how the two managed the affairs of the colonies.
Or this tripe:
We are seeing even those small marks of personal pride and independence — the freedom to rev up the engine on a Friday night — taken away. The muscle cars, under the diktat of the president and head of General Motors, are simply being eliminated and replaced by Yugo-style cars. The common retort to my lament is that such a boost to the male ego is silly in light of global warming and the greater good. What I find alarming, though, is that today’s generation submits to such authority.
And what about those from the upper-middle classes who had dreams of becoming doctors, executives, or entrepreneurs? As our president defies history and the Constitution by firing executives, citizens applaud.
It’s a refrain that many on the right are singing today. “All is lost! Woe is us! Obama has destroyed America!”
If you actually believe that Barack Obama could “destroy” what 233 years of blood, sweat, and tears have built then I suggest you find a country more to your liking. I hear France will take just about anybody - especially those willing to wave a white flag at the drop of a hat.
Obama and the democrats will not destroy the United States. Just as Bush and company couldn’t destroy the US as charged by the left. It is a silly, stupid, exaggerated, notion advanced by ignoramuses and not worthy of citizens who reside in a country that survived the occupation of foreign troops, a civil war, and a host of well meaning fools like progressives who believed government was “perfectible,” right wing fanatics who believed the black man wasn’t equal to the white man, radicals of every shape, size, and stripe, and a peanut farmer from Georgia who almost blew up the planet with his naivete and stupidity.
Obama has ignorantly nationalized the auto industry. He has rewarded failure in the financial industry. He is seeking to reduce us to paupery with his spending schemes. And he wants to stick his nose into every nook and cranny of the economy, dictating how much people can earn, and what industries will be winners and losers in his brave new world?
But if you don’t know by now that America is more than Wall Street, more than Washington, D.C., more than the centers of media, entertainment, “green” technologies, unions, liberals, socialists, and incompetent politicians, then you really have no clue what America is all about.
America is an idea. No matter what Obama does - ignorantly or deliberately to change it - he cannot alter the fundamental truths of America nor can he change what should be in each and every one of our hearts; the steadfast, optimistic belief in ourselves as an exceptional people that there is nothing we cannot accomplish if we put our minds to it.
Holy Christ people! Are you saying that you don’t have the same will to succeed as the guys who leveled mountains, bridged mighty rivers, and threw thousands of miles of steel across a continent to connect us by rail? Do you seriously believe that the spirit that animated personalities like Washington, Lincoln, King, and Reagan is lost, that Obama killed it?
Speak for yourselves. Don’t count me in with those who throw up their hands in despair and whine about Obama being a communist (he’s not) or even a socialist (he’s not - he’s a liberal) and that he wants to use illegal aliens to build a permanent Democratic majority. The challenges posed by an Obama presidency are normal political challenges, not a reason to start a war or revolution except in our own minds.
Obama cannot alter the America that lives in our minds and hearts. In the end, each of us defines America in our own way and we imbue that vision with our own experiences, our own worldview. Try as he might, that America is safe as long as we keep it alive with our words and deeds.
Interfering with the free market will not destroy America. Cutting defense spending will not destroy America. Cap and trade may grievously hurt the economy but it won’t destroy America. National Health Insurance may change our relationship with government but it will not destroy America.
The only person capable of destroying America is you - murdering your own personal dream of what America means to you. So quit your bellyaching and get to work. There’s a lot to do in order to shape America into your vision of what she should be.