The Recant of Patriotism

During a fiery debate with 19th century British statesman and Prime Minister John Russell, the Tory Sir Francis Burdett objected to some sentiments from the other side that he called "the cant of patriotism."

Russell immediately retorted, "There is something worse than the cant of patriotism; that is the recant of patriotism."

But there is something worse yet than the open recant of patriotism, and that is the recant of patriotism by stealth.

The murderous terror attacks of 911 and the resulting surge in American pride have left our friends on the far left fairly apoplectic with frustration at the "cant of patriotism" with which they find themselves surrounded.

Former '60's radicals, now tenured professors with hair sprouting out of their ears, retreat into the musty, ivy-choked halls of post-modern academia in confusion over the sight of American flags flying from student bicycles and automobiles.

Liberal talking heads and elite writers of editorials look on with impotent horror as years of Hate America First indoctrination of the unwashed masses crumbles into dust and mingles with the twisted remains of the World Trade Center towers.

The intelligentsia as a group howl with self-righteous rage when their expressed anti-American sentiments in the classrooms and op-ed pages are met with almost universal condemnation, and are bewildered that anyone would dare criticize them, believing in some twisted way that the first amendment guarantees them - the elite - to speak without fear of others exercising their own first amendment rights to call them on it.

"Swans" magazine offers a good example of self-righteous indignation when the recant of patriotism is met with open disapproval. This is a magazine that publishes authors who believe that the United States got just what was coming to them on September 11th, along with such brilliant observations as the following, from Stephen Gowans:

"Did George W. Bush act quickly to take advantage of the September 11th attacks? Are future attacks something he might not be altogether displeased with? Strange as it sounds, the answer to both questions may be yes."

"Strange", indeed. But when this leftist, anti-American hogwash is rightfully answered with disdain, the editor smugly informs the readership that such "hate mail" will deleted unread, and laments, with much rending of garments and gnashing of teeth:

"Any dissent, any disagreeing opinion or any other, different opinion or endeavor to place these horrendous attacks in a wider context is immediately construed as inappropriate, unpatriotic, dangerous, apologetic, and the like. Those who can remember (or who read history books) William Randolph Hearst and the Yellow Press in the late 1800s, the muzzlement of the anti war movement following Pearl Harbor (and the incarceration of Japanese-Americans), or McCarthyism, will not be excessively surprised by those reactions."

So while their own "dissent" (Read: Hate-America-Firstism) is self-righteously characterized as placing events in a "wider context," any negative reaction to that "wider context" is compared to McCarthyism and the incarceration of Japanese Americans during WWII.

So much for differing opinions.

An acquaintance of mine makes the following observation:

"The one thing that the left cannot handle is open and free exchange. That's why they have to shout down speakers, steal newspapers, and engage in strict speech control on college campuses. When folk can speak freely, they (the left) lose."

And in the wake of the 911 attacks that drew America into war, more folk are speaking freely than ever before, and the bemused left is losing big-time.

At least those on the extreme left are losing. Their disgusting ideologies are so obviously born of hatred for their own country that they are even willing to rationalize and excuse the murder of 5,000 innocents. But the anti-war facade has been ripped away from the anti-America monster. The extreme leftists have forfeited any claim to moral justification with their recant of patriotism in the wake of 911.

But there is another contingent of leftists who have gone underground, recognizing that the recant of patriotism that has been de rigueur since the 60's now serves only to expose them to an aroused and awakened America as the frauds that they are.

This recant of patriotism by stealth manifests itself in the post-modern relativistic view that the very concepts of right and wrong, good and evil, are nothing more than cultural constructs, open to varying interpretations - philisophical gobbledygook that nontheless provides stealth leftists the basis on which to redefine "patriotism" in such a way as to suit their own failed ideology.

The recant of patriotism disguised as the patriotism redefined, or some loftily sophisticated "new patriotism", allows the leftists to wave the flag right along with us of the unenlightened mob, because it allows them to assign their own meaning to that which the flag represents and thereby concurrently dissasociate themselves from the less sophisticated definition of "patriotism" that has, for the past 225 years, served true American patriots so well.

Well, it ain't gonna fly, bubba. The new, redefined "patriotism" is nothing more than the recant of patriotism in drag. Must one be a patriot? No. This is, after all, America, where even those who hate us are tolerated, and protected. Protected, that is, except from the freedom of other Americans to despise them for their perfidy