Those of you of a certain age are likely to remember that patriotism seemed to be around us all, all the time. The calendars we hung on our walls were filled with historic dates, involving not only the most prominent Americans, but many of the lesser-known ones as well. Corporations printed and distributed materials that invoked American heroes. We learned patriotic poems, sang patriotic songs, and celebrated patriotic events. People seemed to use first-class mail much more frequently then as now, and the subjects of those stamps were invariably of historical interest and importance. The “regular” issues, that were used for day-to-day business, featured historic figures or buildings such as Independence Hall; subjects to which no one raised any objections, or if they did they kept them to themselves.
Our history texts treated the events and people and elected and appointed officials of America with respect. We grew up with them considered admirable and esteemed. A bit later revisionist historians shifted the emphasis to the flaws of those people and events, while maintaining respect for our history and our founding documents and our institutions. The path has wound a long way since then, and we have gone from treating our past with esteem, to stressing flaws, to today, when the centers of intellectual authority consider that almost all of the heroes we grew up with are downright evil.
It was only a few years ago that the Democrat party held annual “Jefferson-Jackson” dinners, in recognition of the two men they claimed as founders of the party, but then things were “discovered” about those men that made them unpalatable to today’s highly sophisticated tastes, and the dinners were cancelled from Rhode Island to California.
And can one imagine the response if “MAGA Trump” people attempted to sabotage a Biden rally? That is just what happened in Tulsa, except of course it was a Trump rally and the progressive left was thrilled by it. They boasted that they flooded the internet with phony reservations, blocked paths to metal detectors, and did whatever they could to hold down attendance at the rally. Not one Democrat elected official said these practices were unfair or dishonest. The anti-Trump left reveled in claims that they had thwarted the rally. A similar tack was tried at Mt. Rushmore, where the left set up barricades and tried to block roads to keep the Trump folks away. We are sure they were disappointed that no fires occurred after the fireworks show at Mt. Rushmore.
Their claims to the contrary, the progressive left does not believe in freedom of speech or assembly. They will attempt any maneuver to prevent the “other side” from speaking or being heard. They must have little faith in the truth of their own contentions and are terrified of allowing voices that they disagree with to be heard. Expressing an opinion is dangerous to one’s reputation or employment prospects. Just ask the fellow who, back in 1987, made arguments against women serving in combat roles in the US military. He lost his job with Boeing this week – not for anything he had done since then, but because of that article he had written in 1987, when he was 29. He even allowed as how he had changed his mind, but it was not enough. So much for the free exchange of ideas.
Corporate logos and brand names are being redesigned; college mascots are being dropped; there are movements to change to names of major US cities such as St. Louis and Columbus, Ohio. Columbus once was worthy of esteem and respect, and remains a hero to the Italian-American community and millions of patriotic Americans of all ethnicities, but he is a hero no more to the progressive left and statues to him are being pulled down in many places.
The things that always unified us – the Flag, the National Anthem, the Pledge of Allegiance, patriotic songs, our public monuments, the Declaration and the Constitution are under attack as never before. They are being replaced by things that stress our differences and serve to divide us. And has the progressive left forgotten that our Constitution carried with it the means for ending the slave trade; that we fought a Civil War that ended slavery; that we amended our Constitution to ban slavery, to make former slaves citizens, and to assure citizens the right to vote. No credit is given for those steps.
Gestures of reconciliation were made to the former Confederacy, such as the erection of statues or naming military bases after Confederate heroes. Those gestures were made in order to unify the country, and they worked, as long as people were willing to reconcile. But a hundred years or more of unity have been shattered overnight, and now the left is going through everything, rejecting all that does not fit their impossibly high standards of purity.
Yes, Washington and Jefferson did own slaves, and yet it was not BECAUSE they owned slaves that they were immortalized on Mt. Rushmore. Many of those Confederate generals were reaccepted into public life after the Civil War, elected to office in their states, appointed to Federal office. It was a quaint Nineteenth-century concept that one could rise above the egregious errors, flaws or mistakes in one’s past and one could thus turn one’s life around. Those concepts have long vanished from the lexicon of the progressive left. One mistake or “incorrect” thought erases any good that ever was done or any effort to repent or rejoin or reenter public life. Those are pretty high standards, and we wonder how many of us could meet them, let alone the rioters, looters, arsonists and vandals. The goal is to separate Americans from our past, to ruminate about how rotten and lousy America was and is, instead of how great we were and are or aspire to be. We built a tradition and a legacy over the course of centuries, but the progressive left will not be happy until they can destroy it in an afternoon.