Ironically, just as this was coming to pass, some conservative thinkers were moving in the other direction. Driven by their disgust with certain Supreme Court decisions relating to abortion and other social questions, by the degeneracy of so much of our popular culture, and by their disappointment in the American people for refusing to demand the removal of Bill Clinton from office after the Monica Lewinsky scandal, these conservatives took to sounding like the leftist radicals of the 1960s. Some even questioned the legitimacy of the American "regime" and suggested that civil disobedience and rebellion might be the only recourse for persons of conscience.
Hmmm would you say, these are the Republican Hamas of American politics ?
Fortunately, nearly all the conservatives who fell into this state of mind have been beating a quiet retreat. I believe that most of them will, on further reflection, re-embrace the truth -- so long denied by so many -- that the United States of America represents one of the highest points in the history of human civilization. Unlike, say, fifth-century Athens or Elizabethan England, the U.S. has earned its place on that exalted list not by the production of artistic monuments. What entitles it to so high a ranking is its creation of a society in which more people enjoy more liberty and more prosperity than has ever been seen at any time anywhere else on earth.
Yes !
Now...
Let me quote H.L. Mencken and even Ayn Rand, to see...
that...
they actually agree with me ! *g*
Mencken:
We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.
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Ayn Rand:
"America's founding ideal was the principle of individual rights. Nothing more and nothing less. The rest --everything that America achieved, everything she became, everything "noble" and "just", and heroic, and great, and unprecedented in human history-- was the logical consequence of fidelity to that one principle. The first consequence was the principle of political freedom, i.e. an individual's freedom from physical compulsion, coercion, or interference by the government. The next was the implementation of political freedom: The system of Capitalism."
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It is the idea, by those original revolutionaires, but it is also the effort by many (who came from totally different "countries" yet, human beings, that built the concept "this country represents".
An effort by humans under an environment of freedom to have the opportunity (not the guarantee), to exchange value for value, in good will.
To those, happy 4th. of July. A celebration of the accomplishments of a group of humans [now nearly] free of government tyranny (do away with the IRS, the EPA, idiot TV, [particularly local news], Tom DeLay,[and acolites], Richard Gephardt, [and cronies], fast food, and the churches, then we will be trully free).
But I still do not believe in the worshiping of flags, nations, national borders, or gods.
I simply believe that one of these days, we humans, although are born idiots, we will finally learn how not to become stupid as we grow older, then we will truly evolve, |
