Lies

Lies:

The famous historian Howard Zinn (hat tip Arts & Letters Daily) demonstrates why the Left will never capture America's heart. The Democratic party is constantly having to fight against the perception that its leaders are not patriots and do not love their country. It has to do that because its leaders read, and cite approvingly, people like Howard Zinn.

For example, he seems to believe that this principle:

If we as citizens start out with an understanding that these people up there—the President, the Congress, the Supreme Court, all those institutions pretending to be “checks and balances”—do not have our interests at heart, we are on a course towards the truth.

...leads naturally to this one:

And then come the countless ceremonies, whether at the ballpark or elsewhere, where we are expected to stand and bow our heads during the singing of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” announcing that we are “the land of the free and the home of the brave.” There is also the unofficial national anthem “God Bless America,” and you are looked on with suspicion if you ask why we would expect God to single out this one nation—just 5 percent of the world’s population—for his or her blessing.

The first principle is that we ought to understand that politicians, as a rule, are liars and scoundrels who do not have our best interests at heart. That far, he is entirely correct.

The second principle is that we ought not, therefore, to love our nation or believe that she enjoys a special mission in the world. That is wrong.

In a sense, everyone ought to love his nation regardless of where he is born. This is because it is as natural to love your country as it is natural to love your mother. It arises in the soul reliably and properly. That is another way of saying that the failure to love your country is an unnatural corruption.

What you do when you find that your beloved nation is in the wrong, as she sometimes will be -- or usually will be, if we are speaking of a nation like South Africa instead of America -- is desire, and work for, her correction. You must not stop loving her; you must love her the more fiercely. You are fighting demons for her soul. Demons can only be driven back by faith, hope and love.

Chesterton explained patriotism in this way:

The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things.

The patriot, like Zinn, can also say that Congress is filled with worthless scum -- but once Davy Crockett was there. He can say that Washington remains a stinking swamp in spite of more than two centuries' attempts at draining it -- and yet remember that it was named for Washington. He can further remember that Washington was a slave-holder -- and yet look with awe on his politics, his ethics, and his magnificent life.

The error of not loving what you chastise leads you to chastise far more harshly than is warranted. Zinn is guilty of this at every level, and it corrupts his scholarship and his work. Because he can point to a material interest apart from the claimed reason for a war -- say, the interest of United Fruit in Cuba in 1898 -- he believes that the claimed reason was a simple pretense. United Fruit did not raise the Rough Riders, and had no power to do so. It could not summon cowboy from Montana and student from Harvard and Yale, old friends from Scotland, policemen from New York, miners and prospectors, and such men as Theodore Roosevelt described:

The temptation is great to go on enumerating man after man who stood pre-eminent, whether as a killer of game, a tamer of horses, or a queller of disorder among his people, or who, mayhap, stood out with a more evil prominence as himself a dangerous man—one given to the taking of life on small provocation, or one who was ready to earn his living outside the law if the occasion demanded it. There was tall Proffit, the sharp-shooter, from North Carolina—sinewy, saturnine, fearless; Smith, the bear-hunter from Wyoming, and McCann, the Arizona book-keeper, who had begun life as a buffalo-hunter. There was Crockett, the Georgian, who had been an Internal Revenue officer, and had waged perilous war on the rifle-bearing "moonshiners." There were Darnell and Wood, of New Mexico, who could literally ride any horses alive. There were Goodwin, and Buck Taylor, and Armstrong the ranger, crack shots with rifle or revolver. There was many a skilled packer who had led and guarded his trains of laden mules through the Indian-haunted country surrounding some out-post of civilization. There were men who had won fame as Rocky Mountain stage-drivers, or who had spent endless days in guiding the slow wagon-trains across the grassy plains. There were miners who knew every camp from the Yukon to Leadville, and cow-punchers in whose memories were stored the brands carried by the herds from Chihuahua to Assiniboia. There were men who had roped wild steers in the mesquite brush of the Nueces, and who, year in and year out, had driven the trail herds northward over desolate wastes and across the fords of shrunken rivers to the fattening grounds of the Powder and the Yellowstone. They were hardened to the scorching heat and bitter cold of the dry plains and pine-clad mountains. They were accustomed to sleep in the open, while the picketed horses grazed beside them near some shallow, reedy pool. They had wandered hither and thither across the vast desolation of the wilderness, alone or with comrades.

Such a body did not come together for United Fruit. How, then?

They came for America, and for Roosevelt. Well they might come for Roosevelt! To the New York policeman, he was their former commander; to the men of Harvard and Yale, a fellow student; to the British, an old friend; to the hunters, one of the pre-eminent of their class; the cowboys knew of his youth spent in the West, where he exposed himself to every hardship of the labor as well as any of them, and hunted rustlers by the rivers. No one doubted his love or his respect for them, their country, or their cause.

Theodore Roosevelt was able to do what can never be done by Zinn nor any of Zinn's students. He was able to enact genuine, progressive reforms on a huge scale. He could do this because he was able to win the loyalty and open admiration of the men of the nation. He could do that because he was himself a natural and heroic man.

Zinn would have you believe that the Rough Riders were -- as he feels that you are -- dupes of liars in politics owned by manipulating corporations. All those strong men who had survived the terrible wilderness, those tamers of horses, policemen and college men and noblemen alike: he feels they were fools, and fooled. He must feel this way, because he has no room in his heart for that natural and motivating love of country that a good man must feel. He cannot understand it, and therefore it cannot factor in his calculations.

Yet he has hope, if only people can be awakened to the fact that politicians lie. His hope is this: he imagines a weaker America, and he is glad to imagine it.

It is only Zinn and his ilk who are weakened by his arguments. He has no loyalty to the ideals and love that motivate true-hearted men, and therefore he can neither understand them nor move them to action. Not one man who follows him will ever inspire the loyalty of the people as Roosevelt did, because none of Zinn's students will offer loyalty or love in return. They do not love the men, and they do not love the nation.

Zinn can scorn America, but he cannot praise her, and therefore he cannot change her. Roosevelt could not merely praise her, but correct her. That is the power that comes of love, even to strive with demons.