America Is Not The Government

Jonah Goldberg had a nifty column in yesterday’s USA Today on the subject of patriotism as it pertains to Barack Obama’s constant redefinition of the word. I neglected to link it then because I had seen it linked at a bunch of other sites and I figured it was getting plenty of coverage. Well, this morning, Larisa Alexandrovna at the HufflePuff, got wound up about it and posted somewhat of a prolix rebuttal. Mostly, it’s a pseudo-intellectual defense of the same old puffball “dissent if the highest form of patriotism” claptrap I’ve heard for the past eight years from people generally not bright enough to think their way out of a wet paper bag. You’ve heard the argument before and it usually sounds something like “I only criticize my country every single day of the week because I love it so”. That’s nonsense on a stick, but it’s what has passed for patriotism across most of the progressive community at least since George Bush was elected in 2000. Alexandrovna spends most of her time in that neighborhood preaching to the same eager choir who no doubt considers her a top-flight braniac. But that’s the boring part of her essay. The part I want to pluck out of the mire and shine up a little is a very good example of where the left goes very wrong when it thinks about this country.

Here is the bit of Goldberg’s column to start:

Definitions of patriotism proliferate, but in the American context patriotism must involve not only devotion to American texts (something that distinguishes our patriotism from European nationalism) but also an abiding belief in the inherent and enduring goodness of the American nation. We might need to change this or that policy or law, fix this or that problem, but at the end of the day the patriotic American believes that America is fundamentally good as it is.

And Alexandrovna’s reply:

In other words, your government can do no wrong. You must never doubt your government or question its ways. So when my America began to openly torture people and publicly denounced the Geneva Conventions as “quaint,” I should have been waving my little Chinese made American flag while admiring the inherent goodness of my government. According to Goldberg, it is not the defense of the Constitution or the liberty it guarantees or even a simple love of country that makes us patriots. No, for Goldberg and his kind, the “true patriot” must surrender their reason and their conscience, and simply know (without knowing in any meaningful way) that their government can do no wrong.

Goldberg never said any such thing. He never said that the government was perfect nor that you shuld not be skeptical of it. Heck, Goldberg, as a conservative, is orders of magnitude more skeptical of our government than a progressive like Alexandrovna. Clearly Goldberg wasn’t saying that we should not criticize the government. In fact, criticizing the government is implied in the whole “fixing this or that law” part of what he said.

Normally, I’d think she was being dishonest or just dumb, but another thought occurred to me. What if she were being honest and forthright. What if she believed, in her heart, that Goldberg really did say what she thought he said. How could that work?

The only way she can be honest about her criticism is if she’s reading an entirely different meaning into the word “America”. I think that when he wrote “America is fundamentally good”, she read “America’s government is fundamentally good”. She honestly sees no difference between country and government. To her and her progressive comrades, America is her government. The whole reason they have been tearing at the country’s underbelly for eight years is because with George Bush in the White House, America is no longer a good place. It is a force of evil, barely contrained by the Constitution, truly held in check only by their courageous dissent. Their notion of America’s nature changes every time the government changes. That’s why progressives so desperately try to get control of the levers of power. It is only when they are in control that they have any belief at all that Amerca is good. Otherwise, it is an essentially-flawed place full of people who just need the light of progressivism to illuminate their thinking so they’ll vote for just the right government to make America great. No means can be too radical, either. After all, the very survival of America is at stake in their minds. Politics is very, very personal.

That, folks, is the mindset of a people perfectly willing to walk into the arms of a tyrant just because he makes them feel good. That is the mindset of a people entirely comfortable with death threats and violence because, to them, America is in the grips of a nightmare that will only end when the right people are in control.

Alexandrovna’s post is so vituperative because Goldberg uses simple logic to punch gaping holes in her definition of “America”. If our country is greater then those who govern her, then politics doesn’t mean a whole lot at all to the average American. That is the current state of our nation, much to the alarm of progressives everywhere. If I could give Ms. Alexandrovna a piece of advice it would be this: relax and breathe. America has survived much worse and will continue to be great no matter what party occupies the White House or Congress.

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Tags: America, Patriotism, Progressives

Category: The Good Old US of A