These arguments over our past are really over the present — and especially the future.Just like their racialist nonsense, the historical nonsense is only there to help them gain power. If the people think our Founders got it pretty much right, then it's going to be hard to convince voters to give the Secular Left the massive authoritarian power they crave and need in order to "fundamentally remake" America, as Obama said.
If progressives and socialists can at last convince the American public that their country was always hopelessly flawed, they can gain power to remake it based on their own interests. These elites see Americans not as unique individuals but as race, class, and gender collectives, with shared grievances from the past that must be paid out in the present and the future.
Dittos for the attacks on Catholicism. This echoes how and why lefties throughout time, from the socialists, the Nazis, the communists and assorted fascists attacked the Catholic Church. They need the foundations of society in rubble so they can remake it into the utopia they have created in their minds.
Perhaps the proper counter-argument to the howling of the Secular Left is to point out that it's all about power. If historical ignorance or outright lies help them gain power, so be it. If it takes race-baiting, fine. If it means brainwashing our children in schools run by the State, then that's the way it goes.
You can't make an omelette without breaking eggs.
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But it was tragically flawed, it required our bloodiest war and two constitutional amendments to fix it. You can also argue that some of America's greatness germinated from that flaw. One of the reasons the founding fathers thought so deeply and trenchantly about freedom was that they had a crystal clear view of what happened when you lost it.
ReplyDeleteWhat was going on in Africa in the 1770s? How about the Ottoman Empire? India?
ReplyDeleteSorry, I'm not buying it. Our Founding Fathers were the best of the lot in the 1770s. They got it right while everyone else was still screwing up.
The Ottoman Empire is a fairly low bar, is it not? And the question raised wasn't about the greatness of the founding fathers, but rather whether the country was 'hopelessly flawed.' I would say hopeless was too strong, but tragically fits I think, and again there was a sense of this even in the founders own writings.
ReplyDeleteHere is Jefferson:
"And can the liberties of a nation be thought secure when we have removed their only firm basis, a conviction in the minds of the people that these liberties are of the gift of God? That they are not to be violated but with his wrath? Indeed I tremble for my country when reflect that God is just: that his justice cannot sleep for ever..."
A low bar? Seriously? The Ottoman Empire was a top-of-the-line model for its time.
ReplyDeleteIf you don't like them, feel free to choose from among the Aztecs, the Incas, whatever it was on the Indian subcontinent and, of course, the Grand National Champions of Slavery, the Africans.