Letters to the Editor
AJCalhoun
Published Letters: 964 Editor's Choice: 127
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It's the Concept, Stupid!
[Read the article: America is not Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I was taken quite off guard by the general response, so far, to Mr. Blumenthal's excellent article. The cynicism has become so thick now one could cut it with a box knife. Just as the neoatheists reject all forms of belief in something outside themselves because someone once showed them a painting of Zeuss, the new American cynics confuse America in the moment with America as it was conceived. The concept isn't over, outdated nor in anyway invalidated by the idiot irresponsibles who have for the moment seized the tiller, nor by the idiot evangelicals (neoatheists included) who argue over how many angels can dance on the head of a pin and now also whether angels should even exist. Thanks for the distraction.
Blumenthal is right on the money: it is the concept of our Founding Fathers that is our national Holy Grail, and it is still alive and well in the minds of reasonable men and women everywhere. The squeaky wheels get all the attention while the eminently sane continue to get up and live the real American Dream every day. The few, the bored, the overfed and under-inspired continue to make noises in reaction to other noises in the woods. Bush snorts and the Left snorts back, louder. Bin Laden cackles up his sleeve and the Right rattles its rusty sabres in response. Nothing is new here. These are direct descendants of the idiots who landed at Jamestown, the ones who John Smith ridiculed as he continued to every day get up and wrestle with some new aspect of the nascent Republic as it was slowly taking shape in the minds and hearts of his fellow visionaries.
Nothing will take us down and out faster than cynicism. The Left can do cynical every bit as well as the Right, and worse, because the Left fancies itself the font of all great new ideas and ideals, only now it's where they go to die after they've been kicked in the balls by the Right. Walk it off!
It wasn't the founding fathers, either, who truncated Jefferson's wondrous words up there in the "hatband" of the Jefferson Memorial, which went up on FDR's watch. Wonder who removed the critical few words of that sentence which should read "[The clergy has this to fear from me and this alone:] I have sworn [upon the throne of God] eternal hostility against every form of tyranny that would enslave the minds of men." The right and the left can both learn something from this strategic alteration of one of the most powerful remarks issued by any of our Founding Fathers.
It isn't what you see that's wrong here: it's what you don't see. The United States of America isn't a nation; it is a revolution continually in progress.
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For David Buckley
[Read the article: America is not Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It wasn't much of a stretch for me to cite John Smith as a forerunner of our Founding Fathers for a lot of reasons. That he was a loyalist and a lot of other unsavory things (just as Jefferson was a slaveholder)has little to do with it. He was also a factualist, dealt in realities, was among the first to get here and keep the damn thing going even when most of the others, as he so merrily pointed out, were swooning for lack of room service; Smith also was a visionary and had he not shown up when he did, done the things he did and helped set in motion the engine upon which the eventual Republic was set up we might not be having this discussion at all right now.
My main point, however, was that Smith, forerunner of Founding Fathers, had no paitence with the wimping, whining, cynical sapsuckers by whom (got it, whom) he was surrounded. You don't build a New World out of worn out parts, not then and not now. It is our current problem and it has been our recurrent problem (thus the reference to FDR's hacking of Jefferson's words) and it will likely be our problem again in the future. But always there will be Smiths, imperfect at worst, but visionaries and achievers at best, who will brush aside the silly, dithering fops cluttering the path toward tomorrow and lead the reasonable and the willing into the ever-expanding New Order for the Ages.
Kinda disgusting, ain't it? Almost as bad as someone having cited Bush's contemptible and cynical behavior as just what the doctor ordered to get us back in the game. That person may have been right, too. And maybe Bush and Smith will wind up playing checkers in hell - but Smith will beat the snot out him if it comes to that.
Oh, and history is something worse than "mere ideology." It is what's already happened. When we are able to get past that and start looking forward, a la Smith and those more enlightened but equally visionary who came later, the race to the future can recommence. Til then we will be bogged down in arguing over how many colonists can be buried in a gopher hole. If they ever really existed. (The colonists, not the gophers. I've at least seen a gopher).
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For Zandru
[Read the article: America is not Bush]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're way too kind. Sensible, though. :)