My previous post linked to a Peggy Noonan column. The subhead: The surveillance state threatens Americans' love of country.
She's right.
Noonan is one of those who, along with David Brooks and Christopher Buckley (Bill's son), was smitten with Barack Obama in 2008. They presented him as sharp, smart, moderate and just the right color to bring racial harmony to America. Brooks is still smitten but Noonan is backing away. (We never found out what happened to Bill's son.)
Her most recent essay has an interesting insight into something going on in America today. Keep in mind that Obama represents the counterculture of the 1960s. The part that hated the culture and the institutions of the country. They are the ones who spit on Viet Nam vets as they came home, and chanted "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Min, the Viet Cong are going to win" as they rioted for a communist victory in Viet Nam.
They didn't like America. And they went on a long march through the institutions they own today: academia, the media, the press, the "permanent" government.
Pushing back, the rest of the country became more reflexively more pro-country. But that is changing thanks to the Obama administration. Now that the hard core cadres of the Left have captured the Presidency, the patriotism of the Country Class may be turning.
Noonan:
I feel that almost everyone who talks about America for a living—politicians and journalists and even historians—is missing a huge and essential story: that too many things are happening that are making a lot of Americans feel a new distance from, a frayed affiliation with, the country they have loved for half a century and more, the country they loved without every having to think about it, so natural was it. This isn't the kind of thing that can be quantified in polls—it's barely the kind of thing people admit to themselves. But talk to older Americans—they feel they barely know this country anymore. In governance its crucial to stay within parameters, it's important not to strain ties, push too far, be extreme. And if you think this does not carry implications for down the road, for our healthy continuance as a nation, you are mistaken. Love keeps great nations going.
But when love is reciprocated with hate, there is a reaction.
If this country is really Obama's America; if he and the people who elected him are the future of America, I'm glad I'm old enough to be closer to the end than the beginning. My admiration for law enforcement, for the military, for teachers, for trust in the basic justice of the government is disappearing. I may soon end up as part of the NEW American counterculture. After all, if the country under Obama represent the dominant culture, then those of us who were once patriots will now become what they once were.
UPDATE: Thanks Glenn, and welcome Instapundit readers. You may also like Detroit Defaults
UPDATE: Thanks Glenn, and welcome Instapundit readers. You may also like Detroit Defaults
11 comments:
Remember way back when Janet napolitano and DHS listed conservatives, pro-lifers, ex vets, Chritians as potential terrorists. Did that enable NSA to target and scrutinize the phone and computer data of people associated with those grroups?
The key difference: the 'new counterculture' has the guns, and knows how to use them.
"Our leaders, even the worst of them, are not totalitarian."
Horsecrap. The worst of them are sure as hell totalitarian. Just listen to them speak - they don't even try to hide it anymore.
This country is like a vampire in an old Hammer Studios flick. What we once loved has been killed and transformed into something that, while retaining its old face, is corrupt beyond redemption and enjoys hurting us.
Hard to love a lie that's trying to destroy you.
It's hard for me to describe the feelings I get when I read Noonan these days--it's kind of a combination of amusement and disgust. Since it's nearly impossible to take the actual content of what she writes very seriously, her main usefulness since '08 has been to act as a sort of gauge of Beltway cluelessness. To say her credibility is in ruins is an understatement.
"Learning to hate America" seems a little hyperbolic--until I consider that America is slowly but surely becoming a progressive paradise. Human nature is constant and universal, and the Constitution the way the Founders envisioned it has been the best framework in history for dealing with it. I wonder if we've drifted too far away from the life raft to make it back safely.
It is the "Invasion of the Body Snatchers".
The "pod people", aka Progressives, have a hive-mind, and blindly follow the collective.
It is up to the "Kevin McCarthy's" of the country to fight back, and put things right.
Poor Peggy. Another boomer navel-gazer who made the judgement error of her professional career.
Obama was an empty suit in 2008 for anyone with life experience and level head to see.
Peggy is a member of the DC elite and wanted to continue to get invited to lunches and writing gigs.
Why should I care what she writes now. What is this piece in- WAPO? Parrot cage lining, along with NYT. Cant remember last time I bot the paper version years ago, and wont open a link out of disgust now.
Subscription declines, ad revenues and stock price drop proves I am not alone.
I hope the Prism Program wakes up all of the sleeping Americans. I cannot imagine supporting Prism's spying on everything I do in the name of security. America is becoming 1984!
This sudden loss of "love" is amusing. My love of country was destroyed in childhood. I was a thirteen-year-old atheist (in 1968) whose classmates' older brothers were being drafted and then killed or wounded in Vietnam. And, each school day, we stood beside our desks (no opting out back then) and recited the Pledge of Allegiance (to a friggin' flag). And, nearly every evening, some federal government asshole would speechify about how well the (undeclared) war was going or about our new wonderful Great Society (that even a Democratic Senator, Daniel Moynihan, argued against).
What I've found strange over the years is that so many people have faith in the government. They think it's another religion that shouldn't be questioned or challenged. If we don't want to live like the "citizens" of 1984, we'll need many heretics.
I think we need to differentiate between our cuntry, and our present government. I still love my country, but I cant stand our present government.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: But it ain't all buttons and charts, little albatross. You know what the first rule of flying is? Well, I suppose you do, since you already know what I'm about to say.
River Tam: I do. But I like to hear you say it.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: Love. You can learn all the math in the 'Verse, but you take a boat in the air that you don't love, she'll shake you off just as sure as the turning of the worlds. Love keeps her in the air when she oughta fall down, tells you she's hurtin' 'fore she keens. Makes her a home.
River Tam: Storm's getting worse.
Capt. Malcolm Reynolds: We'll pass through it soon enough.
- - - - -
I think that the progressive's lack of love for the country is why they can't hear her stirring. The sleeping dragon is shifting, and it's about to awaken.
The right thinks that the left is stupid. The left thinks that the right is evil.
The left uses that to justify all the horrible things they do to the right -- they deserve it, they are evil. The problem is, the right destroys evil. It's what happened to Hitler and Tojo. When the right decides that the left isn't stupid and is in fact evil... it will be an ugly day.
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