Whew!
Allow me to take off my reporter hat for just one minute and put on my opinion columnist cap.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been worried for some time that no one — especially no conservatives, and definitely none of our Republican presidential candidates — are talking about the ANTI-AMERICANISM that is running amok abroad AND EVEN HERE AT HOME!
Well, now we can relax: The Philadelphia Society is finally bringing this topic out of the dark corners of public discussion to which it had been relegated. THANK GOD, WHO MADE THIS COUNTRY THE BEST EVER IN THE WORLD AND WHOEVER DOESN’T SAY SO IS A LIAR AND A PLAIN FINK!
Anti-Americanism is really perplexing. It seems to have just come out of nowhere — just like the Anti-Swiss and Anti-Ecuadorean movements that are raging internationally right now. It’s really, really weird.
At any rate, we can all agree that anti-Americanism — by which I mean, ANY CRITICISM OF ANYTHING AMERICA EVER DOES, AT LEAST BY A REPUBLICAN ADMINISTRATION — is based simply in hatred and irrationality. Anyone who is critical of America just hates our freedom, and probably our capitalist economy, too. Heck, The Philadelphia Society’s program implies that they probably hate our families and little platoons, too — and I hadn’t even thought about that. Scary!
That’s why I, for one, am glad that The Philadelphia Society does not have on the program any of those so-called “nonpartisan,” “thinking” conservatives who have written so much on this topic, like John Lukacs, or Andrew Bacevich, or Richard Gamble, or Claes Ryn, or Daniel Larison, or any INGRATES like that WHO PROBABLY HAVEN’T EVEN READ MARK STEYN’S BOOK.
It’s too bad that David Gelernter isn’t on the schedule, since he’s a truly great conservative who taught us that Americanism is the West’s fourth great religion — AND I’LL BE DAMNED IF IT ISN’T THE BEST ONE YET!
I notice that the Association of Former High School Bullies, Arrogant Jocks, and Self-Righteous Goody-Goodies is holding its annual meeting on the same weekend. Their theme is “Why doesn’t anyone accept our Facebook friend requests?” There’s another head-scratcher for you. I’ll tell you what, it’s a crazy world these days….
Are you angry that they didn’t put you on the speaker’s list or something? What’s your agenda? Why this particular screed? I’m just curious.
Charles,
I intuit, and I could be wrong, that Herr Krankheit is getting at the Puritan lie, the radically religious as well as the radically secular versions thereof, the “conservative” being the “religious” and the “liberal” being the “secular, that America is a “city on a hill,” a blasphemy since that is the Church and not any nation, country or state, and that America is an “exceptional nation,” a false worldview that gives the leave to bomb all that are not graced with this exceptionality.
I don’t recognize all the names on the schedule, but I think it’d be safe to assume that Henrie and Russello, at very least, will bring a measure of sanity to the proceedings. In fact, the back-and-forth between the ISI types and the Weekly Standard types would be quite interesting, methinks.
Robert- to be fair to the Puritans, they didn’t claim that America was a city on a hill. They instead wanted their Massachusetts settlement to be a city on a hill, which was a worthy goal. It isn’t their fault that later politicians have appropriated their phrase.
Stephen,
There is a body of scholarship that Puritanism, in its radical religious form and in its radical secular form, the later particularly as it degenerates into Unitarianism, has foisted itself on all of America; hence, there is an objective correlative between Edwards “city on a hill” and Reagan’s “city on a hill.” The somewhat polemic but factual essay linked infra provides some initial insight:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/wilson/wilson12.html
Robert M. Peters,
Interesting essay. As someone who was never in his youth embroiled in the Yankee/Southerner rivalry–a distance which I hope gives me some perspective–I wonder if there isn’t a dynamic in play here similar to Edward Said’s “Orientalism?” Such an application, let’s call it “Southernism,” would certainly give Yankees a taste of their over-educated medicine — but watch out for the counter-salvo: “Yankeeism.”
In all seriousness, I had an undergraduate history professor raised on the West Coast but incredibly hostile to the South, which I never really understood. He must have internalized such a disposition during his graduate days in New England.
Yes, but them City-On-the-Hillers coveted the fine harbor at the mouth of the East and North rivers and promptly ejected the languorously puffing burghers only to enact a more professional level of libertinism in the fullness of time.
Privateering Morality, in high dudgeon trumps a peg leg every time.
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