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My Country, Right Or Wrong

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JOHN REINIERS

In My Own Words

Published: July 12, 2008

George Bernard Shaw noted that "Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy." A bit harsh perhaps, but then he was an ardent socialist spokesman who believed in equal pay for everyone and rescinding the private ownership of property. He was an icon for the "new left."

The words of Commodore Stephen Decatur, hero of both the Barbary wars and the War of 1812, would probably be a proper starting point for this discussion. In a toast, he exuberantly said, "Our country ... may she always be right, but right or wrong, our country!" Democrats are generally still critical of Decatur's "irrational exuberance" over America.

They are somewhat reluctant to stick up for America if a Republican president or Congress took action that they believed to be wrong. But note Decatur's qualifier, "may she always be right." It really is the statement of an idealist, not a warrior. Someone who hopes our country will always be right and noble. This isn't some jingoist beating his chest.

But nowadays, Democrats believe our country is always wrong. Starting with the Reagan Administration, they, along with academia, and the media have effectively convinced Europeans and the Middle East to also loathe America.

One simple way to demonstrate the difference between the parties would be patriotic symbolism. During Bill Clinton's presidency, rabid Republicans would still wave flags on July 4th, wear flag pins, sing "America the Beautiful" and generally get exercised over patriotic themes. It had nothing to do with Clinton; it was all about America.

On the other hand, Sen. Barack Obama refused to wear the flag pin "because as we're talking about the Iraq war, that became a substitute for ... true patriotism ..." (He really was making a statement to his base.) But then suddenly in 2008, the pin was back. Time magazine said, "How long it will stay there is anyone's guess." Democrats shun patriotic symbolism. On the other hand, liberals will burn or urinate on the flag to symbolically demonstrate their love for our country.

I didn't realize it when it was happening, but I now know this country's defining moment of change – an epiphany for the left – was the counter-culture movement of the 1960s. Conservatives and "old Democrats" became dirty words, when a remarkable confluence of innumerable societal changes – hippies, beatniks, Haight Asbury, Woodstock, psychedelic drugs, marijuana, women's rights, sexual mores, freedom of personal expression, materialism, alternative lifestyles, communes, free love, the anti-war movement (fittingly described on T-shirts as "Make love – not war"), flag desecration, etc. became the cultural norm for Democrats. The list is endless.

This counterculture movement redefined the Democratic party and changed the nation forever. This was the political incubation period for the divisiveness we now experience. From the '60s on, our country has been depicted by the "new left," as a series of failures – either in domestic affairs or foreign policy. Somewhere along the way, I ceased being a Democrat – but it wasn't an epiphany for me. It was a slow process. It just felt uncomfortable being identified with this new phenomenon. All my family had been old-style Democrats.

But think of the majority of Americans now, who were born, came of age or immigrated after the counter-culture. They don't know what our country was like before this movement. This is the way it has always been for them. In fact, Hillary Clinton recently proposed a $1 million memorial to Woodstock, where America was introduced to drugs, nudity and free love. The "weed" smoke was so thick at times, it was hard for photographers to get decent film. She made this proposal when it was clear Obama was winning the nomination and she had to appeal to the left again. All that stuff of the '60s is still alive and well. It has moved on to "patriotic" appearances in Europe by entertainers and authors, and anti-American Hollywood movies for the approval of European audiences who loathe America.

The "new" patriotism probably started with Jane Fonda who formed an anti-war touring show to counter Bob Hope's USO show for the troops. She toured college campuses, went to Paris to meet with the enemy Viet Cong, and then went to Hanoi with columnist Joseph Kraft to demonstrate against America. She was photographed sitting on an anti-aircraft battery that was used to shoot down American aircraft. She made several broadcasts on communist radio; later accused the American military of torture and causing destruction "as serious as the bombing of Hiroshima." She called tortured returning POWs "hypocrites and liars." (Sure. John McCain was the picture of health when he returned.)

And to prove that new "patriotism" is alive and well, Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., like Fonda, and while the Iraq war was going badly, held a press conference to compare our military with Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and the Khmer Rouge. In all fairness to Durbin, when John Kerry testified before the Senate in1971 about Vietnam, he spoke of Americans who had "raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires ... to human genitals ... razed villages in fashion reminiscent of Genghis Khan ... ravaged the countryside..." And "in fashion reminiscent of" Kerry in 1971, he said on CBS television in 2004, while running for president, "American soldiers were going into the homes of Iraqis in the dead of night, terrorizing kids and children, you know, women..."

Fonda, Durbin and Kerry are but the tip of the Democrat patriotic iceberg. Influential Columbia University Journalism professor Todd Gitlin succinctly described their attitude thusly in 2003: "The case against patriotism was not an abstraction ... The most powerful public emotion in our lives was rejecting patriotism." This is a man who tells us that "the very essence of American policy in the War on Terror is monumental arrogance." (Then what was the "essence" behind the 9/11 attack by Muslim terrorists?)

This is the "new patriotism," which has stood the test of Democratic time since the '60s.

John Reiniers, a regular columnist for Hernando Today, lives in Spring Hill.

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