By Jonah Goldberg
Friday, July 04, 2014
You wouldn't think, five years into the Obama presidency,
that so many liberal Americans wouldn't like America.
A new Pew survey found that 44 percent of Americans don't
often feel pride in being an American, and only 28 percent said that America is
the greatest country in the world. Respondents who "often feel proud to be
American" were overwhelmingly conservative (from 72 percent to 81 percent
depending on the kind of conservative). A majority (60 percent) of "solid
liberals" said they don't often feel proud to be an American.
The polling data only proves what has been obvious for a
while.
Georgia Rep. John Lewis recently said that, "If the
Civil Rights Act was before the Congress today, it would not pass, it would
probably never make it to the floor for a vote."
Lewis is right. If it came before the Congress today, it
wouldn't pass. You know why? Because we passed it 50 years ago. The GI Bill
wouldn't pass today either, because that was enacted in 1944. If, somehow, we
had Jim Crow today, the American people -- and Congress -- would vote to
abolish it in a landslide.
In fairness, Lewis was primarily condemning congressional
gridlock, not GOP racism.
Primarily.
A legitimate hero of the civil rights era, Lewis has
adopted the liberal habit of suggesting that his political opponents have a
burning desire to return to the era of Jim Crow. At the 2012 Democratic
convention, for instance, he gave a thundering speech that equated a vote for
Mitt Romney with going back to the era of segregation.
Contrary to what you hear daily on MSNBC, Republicans
don't want to force Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, Dr. Ben Carson, Sen.
Tim Scott or any other African-American to the back of the bus.
Lewis isn't the only leading Democrat incapable of giving
the American people some credit. In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision in
the Hobby Lobby case, Hillary Clinton insisted we are following in the
footsteps of anti-democratic Middle Eastern theocracies. According to Clinton,
the majority on the court were like Iranian mullahs, behaving "in ways
that are disadvantageous to women but which prop up them because of their
religion, their sect, their tribe, whatever." The shocking, inarticulate
stupidity of this analysis is only outdone by the stunning ease with which
Clinton offered it.
She's not alone, of course. To listen to some of the
hysterical responses to the court's decision, you'd think the government in
Washington is the only thing thwarting the desire of millions of businessmen to
drape their female employees in burqas.
This glib anti-Americanism manifests itself most readily
when issues of race and gender are in the headlines, but it hardly ends there.
MSNBC host Chris Hayes celebrated soccer's growing popularity in the U.S.
because it strikes a blow against "anti-soccer trolls" who believe in
American exceptionalism. "Part of embracing a truly worldwide
competition," Hayes cheered, "is accepting the fact the U.S. cannot
simply assert its dominance. Turns out we have to play just like everybody
else."
It's ironic. In 2009, conservatives (myself included)
pounced when Barack Obama seemed to dismiss American exceptionalism as an empty
platitude. "I believe in American exceptionalism," Obama explained,
"just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and
the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism."
By this standard, American exceptionalism isn't
exceptional, it's a vague and meaningless form of national self-esteem, rather
than a complex concept describing the uniqueness of the American founding and
American character.
Liberals quickly and angrily defended Obama, saying none
should dare question his patriotism, and of course he believes America is
special. In May, Obama took another stab, telling West Point graduates that he
believes in American exceptionlism "with every fiber of my being."
But he immediately qualified what he meant by insisting that "What makes
us exceptional is not flouting international norms and the rule of law; it's
our willingness to affirm them through our actions."
Translation: We prove we're exceptional by playing just
like everyone else - just like playing soccer!
Why liberals have become so comfortable running down
America is no doubt complicated, but I think one part of the answer is obvious.
Liberals tend to equate patriotism with the government. Obama was supposed to
usher in a glorious new era of European-style big government. He's failed,
though alas not entirely. But in the attempt he aroused a populist movement --
the tea parties -- full of people who wore their traditional patriotism on
their sleeves and tricorn hats. The forces of American exceptionalism proved
formidable, taking advantage of our exceptional constitutional structure to
thwart European social democracy.
And liberal resentment over that fact is palpable.
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