Today, the central threat to the continued existence, let alone health, of the nation is the decimation of meaning in citizenship that has followed the persistent denial of an essential American identity by both the modern Left and Right. Both peddle an ahistorical lie which abetts the trajectory of disunity and destruction: that no common history, culture, or language is required to be an American. Both have conflated these standards with racial discrimination, where no such connection is self-evident. These days, one cannot venture to define what it means to be an American—beyond the vague willingness to contribute to the economy—without enduring unfounded charges of “bigotry.”She mentions "the Frankfurt School," criticism of which is -- I read earlier this week -- considered anti-semitic. But it's not criticism of Jews per se, or Judaism, it's criticism of a set of ideas. That should be fair game.
Identity best can be understood as the unspoken knowledge of self which is sensed commonly. Its implicit character makes it a bit slippery, but that does not reduce its potency.
The American identity emerged from a shared history. This history is tied up in the habits and principles of ordered liberty, privacy, equality before the law, agrarian grit, self-reliance, Christian charity, British common law, devotion to family, and self-governance through civil society. But is rooted most strongly in the fact of common heritage. Consanguinity is one of the central pillars of any regime, including ours. America, more than any other nation, has a foundation capable of unifying diversity of origin, religion, and blood.
Likewise, the basic idea that America's ideals are good and should be applied to everyone has lately become criticized as a sort of racism. Because America has (allegedly many) social privileges enjoyed by whites, supporting America (or Western civilization generally) is said to be a kind of white nationalism. Aspiring to eliminate racial distinctions is supposedly a way of reinforcing them, if only by hiding them.
So possibly this essay is heavily coded racism and prejudice. Or possibly she's right.
Patriots must unabashedly assert that American identity is real, that it is good, and that we, the people, collectively get to decide who may partake in our American dream according to our cultural preferences. We can honor American artists and heroes, local and national, and prioritize them over more postmodern, deconstructionist options. We can assert, loudly, that our American Founders were good men, and that what they built was entrusted to a good people.You'll have to decide for yourselves.
2 comments:
That someone calls an idea racist, or anti-semitic, or white-nationalist is no longer a reliable indicator of anything other than the hatred of the accuser. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Projection is so common that it requires some response to accusations, but we should do as little as possible. A polite factual response is it. they are not rational, they are fighting their own demons.
All culture and identity is founded on shared history, real or imagined. However, what set American culture apart from this was how much we were willing to hold those as less important than shared beliefs and ideals. Though I love many quintessentially American things, I would not like to see our definition of culture intertwine with those too thickly. I thought Obama's comment that he loved America in much the same way that Greeks loved their nation to be an appalling misunderstanding of America. It's not about hot dogs and Pilgrim hats and baseball, much as I love all three. In other countries, that sort of thing is mostly all they've got. We try to wrest our focus from such to more difficult and abstract ideas here.
John Wayne's song to patriotism always struck me as odd.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuteyiYN6js
It's a set of physical descriptions, which are accidents. America might have been anywhere. While these things he mentions are beautiful, they are glories of God, not of America.
What makes America beautiful and great is the right to bear arms; freedom of thought, of speech, of association, of protest. It's the idea that government exists to defend the people's rights, and for no other reason at all. It's the idea that any government that stops defending the people's rights can be thrown off and replaced with a better one, at any time.
It's not the place, and it's not even the particular history. It is the ideas, and the culture that built up around defending those ideas. That's what we are. That is what we ought to love.
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