22 September 2001

Patriotism

My friend Evelynne -- who has been kind enough to be our sole guest blogger on occasion here -- just wrote a lovely entry describing her patriotism. I wish she hadn't announced it the way she did, describing it as "hopelessly corny," because it wasn't that at all. It was one of the most eloquent personal statements of patriotism I've seen among online bloggers. Not RELUCTANT patriotism, mind you, but PATRIOTISM. It may sound corny to the America-Bashers, but not to this fellow patriot. I fully endorse it.

I've long been a student of the natural-right principles of the American Founding. It's been more than a passing academic interest. I happen to think those principles are right, that the principles laid out in the Declaration and other documents of the Founding reach across all times to all people, to paraphrase Lincoln roughly. That's why I spend so much of my time considering contemporary politics, and the extent to which we depart from the principles of the founding (be it in constitutional law or otherwise) and natural right.

But whatever our departures from those principles (current disregard for the tenth amendment is one of many examples) -- or even the early compromises with those principles (slavery) -- we've always recognized those principles, and have tried to uphold them, and have often fixed past mistakes (slavery again). We have not always been perfect -- but the system has allowed us our imperfections and somehow preserved liberty better than any other system yet tried anyplace else.

That's why the events of 11 September 2001 hurt so much -- because the political principles that have defined us, a peace-loving people, were directly attacked. Many peace-loving innocents were killed and their families wrecked, all because our Declaration, and everything that flows from it, still stands as a monumental challenge to the destroyers of the world. Oh sure -- there are people (many of whom honestly seem attention-deprived), who will blame American "Imperialism" and "Globalization" and "Inequities of Wealth" and Israel (the Jews are always at fault, to some people) and other fanciful causes. But those things aren't the causes. Most people who are not blinded by their ideologies and prejudices understand that.

I suppose that's why I am proud when I see ordinary people feeling hurt also, and putting out their flags, and wondering what they can do individually. They sense the meaning of 11 September, even if they do not get online and write essays about it as well as Evelynne. Indeed, they understand far better than so many of the America-Bashing self-fashioned "intellectuals" that I've lately purged from my regular reading. That Americans are able to come together at such moments -- despite our political differences -- is one of the rarities in the history of the world. It's not corny to note the nobility of such moments, or to get a little choked up over them as Evelynne describes.

Like Evelynne, I'm tired of the America-Bashing fringe. I'm tired of their lofty denunciations of America whatever the subject, sometimes after a few hours of research on the internet, if even that long. But I've already mentioned that. What I haven't mentioned (though it's apparent to the critical readers who visit this site) is that I have adopted Tom Radcliff's outlook towards them:

This is not a friendly, academic disagreement--people who choose differently are my enemies, and I am their enemy. I spent the last decade of the Cold War arguing with people who I thought were honestly misguided. I was wrong to give them the benefit of that doubt--I gave them far more credit than they were due. Today, now that the massive propoganda machine of the Soviet Union is gone, the voice of the Left is virtually silent on its own role in supporting the dying stages of the Russian Empire, an empire that was killing and torturing up to the bitter, bitter end.

The people who said, "The Soviet government has a perfect right to exist AND LOOK AT WHAT TERRIBLE THINGS THE AMERICANS ARE DOING OVER HERE!" were engaged in a war of distraction, a concerted attempt to move the focus of debate to a completely irrelevant issue.

I further share Tom's later assertion: "[W]hen comparing Militant Muslims with the West, anyone who says, 'The Americans are just as bad' is either inexcusably ignorant or a raving moral lunatic."

In the last week and a half, I've stopped bothering to read so many of the ramblings of people who have written or implied the silliness Tom describes, and who have butchered other topics through ignorance or intellectual laziness. In retrospect, I'm not sure why I spent so much time reading so many online journals as opposed to non-primary sources anyway. I've been spending much more of my time reading and analyzing and writing here and elsewhere in my areas of expertise -- and it's been enlightening not to mention fulfilling. This website has grown more serious, which is also fulfilling (and maybe enlightening to others). And even the dissertation no longer feels like an albatross, but like the important contribution to the study of American political though that a dissertation in my field of study is supposed to be.

I'm suddenly much more motivated in longtime areas of interest -- many areas related to the attack of 11 September. Maybe it's reaction to the attack. Maybe it's simple patriotism. I'm not sure. But it feels right.

[Posted @ 07:06 PM CST]