Victor Davis Hanson has an uneasy feeling over the recent “patriotic” pronouncements from the left.
The point? I distilled from the press coverage and the crowds and the punditry Tuesday that for all too many suddenly a vote for Obama redeems America. Now, to paraphrase Michelle Obama, for the first time in their lives they are apparently proud of the United States. (Had we not had the financial meltdown in mid-September, and had Obama stayed three points back in the polls, would millions have stayed soured on America and now in sullen silence licked their wounds?).
So I am surprised that suddenly the election of a single individual means that we are united, patriotic, proud of America? Suddenly Okinawa or Antietam, or all those who died at the Argonne, are ours to claim again? (This reminds of elementary school, when our third-grade split up into two sides, as the teacher quizzed us on geography-and the losers of the contest cried and said unfair and how they didn’t like school or Mrs. Wilson, and then when they won the next day, how suddenly third grade became glorious, and Mrs. Wilson and her games were once again wonderful).
The reasoning of these sudden patriots is very much at the maturity level of the third grade. To be charitable. This childish, sudden “love” for this country only because their candidate won election isn’t really new, of course. It is much the same thing that Thomas Paine warned about: the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot.
Do read the whole thing. Hanson is, as always, worth reading in full.
Via Real Clear Politics.
I say second grade. With the reading comprehension of a first grader.
I, for one, have ALWAYS been proud of my country and proud to be an American. I was raised back in the days when that was still what you were taught in school and at home. Even though I thought Carter was an incompetent bumbler, I still was proud of my country. That’s why I got lividly angry when I heard Michelle Obama’s speech about being proud of her country for the first time and even angrier when others tried to excuse it as “she mis-spoke”. She didn’t mis-speak. That speech wasn’t ad libbed. It was a prepared speech that was written and read over many times before it was given. She said exactly what she meant. She and her fellow liberals just didn’t realize what a firestorm it would cause because, being liberals, they assumed that of course everyone feels the way they do.