thedrifter
03-31-03, 07:29 AM
Protesters & Patriotism
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Exclusive commentary by Gary Larson
Mar 30, 2003
“…they are vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men, and from a dash of the purely fashionable, and literary communism.” -- Letter X, “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis (1942)
Patriotism does not hate. Nor is it a blind love, or “my country, right or wrong.” Jingoism it’s decidedly not. Patriotism to most Americans is an abiding faith that something noble, inherently good motivates our nation in response to a world of evil regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s.
Some well-intentioned would simply wish away evil. This ostrich-like naiveté believes lethal illnesses if left alone, somehow go away. In real life, though, evil reappears with a vengeance, often out of the blue, like 9/11.
This does not occur to believers in benign do-nothingness; it is the fatal flaw in their hopeful arguments. “There is wishful thinking in Hell as well on Earth,” observed C.S. Lewis in the Preface to his fictional 1942 wartime classic, The Screwtape Letters.
Triumphs of naiveté are historical, too. Witness Neville Chamberlain’s historically ludicrous “Peace in Our Time.” And the anti-Semitic America First Committee led by Charles Lindbergh in the late 1930s. (Pearl Harbor, same as 9/11, awoke us to the stark realities of worldwide evil.)
In today’s context, ducking reality would’ve “let inspections work.” Or endorsed the bogus band-aid solution of containment. Some would even bargain with the mustachioed devil himself, a proposition Lewis’s Screwtape would find delightfully ironic.
Do-nothings are procrastinators. Panaceas lie just over yonder horizon, like a cure for cancer. They bow to every cockamamie notion for Easy Way Out. Their magic “Pixie Dust,” or wish-granting genie, pops into geopolitics. Presto! Solves what in hell to do with Iraq. Only in their dreams.
Innocent dreamers deserve respect, if for no other reason than the purity of their patriotic naiveté. Not so the virulent anti-war mobs now infecting the debate. They use this war to wreak havoc on an America they must surely hate. Poised for “die-ins,” riot-like snits and traffic tie-ups, theirs is soft guerilla warfare, the stuff of Fifth Columns.
Who would defend such faux patriotism? For one, a left-liberal newspaper here in the hinterland where I live, opines a little nutty on the subject. Get a load of the daffy logic in its recent editorial:
“Never, ever challenge the patriotism of someone with a different point of view.” -- [Minneapolis] Star Tribune, March 3, 2003.
Come again? Such an admonition ignores the back-stabbing anti-America gang. They’d make war, not love, upon an evil “Amerika.” Throwbacks to the 1960s? Sure. Some of the same folks, too, only with new slogans, but still incoherent, like “No blood for oil.“
Unlike the duped naive, histrionic anti-USAers use disarming of Saddam as a pretext for nation-bashing. Only it’s our nation, not the Butcher of Baghdad’s, they bash, and President Bush is their very devil. Lewis would find this deliciously ironic, playing into Screwtape’s devilish hand. They are like Michael Moore, spewing hatred and falsehoods, and Sen. Tom Daschle, undermining for rank partisan purposes. Is it “anything goes” for that next election?
(For the uninitiated, Screwtape is a senior demon who pens stinging, satirical letters to his novice emissary on earth, Wormwood. This mission is to lead astray “the patient,“ mankind, from God, aka “the Enemy. ”)
Truth does not matter, what with savage ideological axes to grind. Bush is always the “oilman,” code word for bad guy. (Wink! Wink!) Or he‘s a gun-slinging “cowboy” and “unilateralist.“ Never mind he’s the former Governor of Texas, and former baseball club owner. And he’s reported breathlessly to be a paradigm of iniquity, an “unabashed” Christian--and (gasp!) an “evangelical” one at that. (Religion never was understood by the secular Left, or the mainstream media, its unabashed mouthpiece.)
Implicit in that silly notion--“never, ever challenge”--is a moral relativism of a New Age. Its premise is that all philosophies, harebrained or not, are somehow equal, thus redemptive. Reduced to its core, such relativism suggests--no, it insists, and self-righteously so--that all viewpoints carry equal weight. Even Palestinian suicide bombers can claim moral authority. Next, terrorists? Makes no difference what‘s right. Who, and sometimes highly partisan spin, matter largely. Relativists’ newest commandment is “Thou Shall Not Judge.”
Americans in previous wars--those who did not flee to Canada, a least, or to Oxford while loathing the military--bring to the table more moral authority, I submit, than all draft dodgers and malingerers. French Resistance in World War I I, rather than the Nazi collaborators, displayed the courage of patriotism. They asked not to be repaid in the silence of protesters. They fought to safeguard the freedom of others to protest, adding moral authority (superiority?) to their arsenal.
Let us now praise the class of protesters of pure heart and wishful thinking. They mean well. But a pox on always spiteful hate-and-blame-America-types. Their incoherent anti-patriotism is a blight on America.
In “The Screwtape Letters,“ Wormwood is grooming a couple “of the world” to lead “the patient” (Christianity) away from “the Enemy.“ Jabbing at the relativism, Screwtape pronounces the couple ideal for the job. Why? They’re “smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical of everything in the world.“ Their “flippancy,” Screwtape adds, “builds armour-plating against the Enemy.” Eureka!
Perfect foils for a world abuzz with moral relativism: Defeat evil now, or later at greater cost? I’m with our President and Commander-in-Chief, plus a majority of Americans, to prosecute this awful preemptive just war. God bless our GIs in the serious undertaking they now face over there. Methinks that He--or is that, She?--is on “our side” in this clash with unmitigated evil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larson is a retired association CEO in Minnesota, and a former business magazine editor in New York City and Kansas City. He is not the cartoonist of the same name. His political commentaries appear in FrontPage Magazine and Accuracy in Media.
Sempers,
Roger
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exclusive commentary by Gary Larson
Mar 30, 2003
“…they are vaguely pacifist, not on moral grounds but from an ingrained habit of belittling anything that concerns the great mass of their fellow men, and from a dash of the purely fashionable, and literary communism.” -- Letter X, “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis (1942)
Patriotism does not hate. Nor is it a blind love, or “my country, right or wrong.” Jingoism it’s decidedly not. Patriotism to most Americans is an abiding faith that something noble, inherently good motivates our nation in response to a world of evil regimes such as Saddam Hussein’s.
Some well-intentioned would simply wish away evil. This ostrich-like naiveté believes lethal illnesses if left alone, somehow go away. In real life, though, evil reappears with a vengeance, often out of the blue, like 9/11.
This does not occur to believers in benign do-nothingness; it is the fatal flaw in their hopeful arguments. “There is wishful thinking in Hell as well on Earth,” observed C.S. Lewis in the Preface to his fictional 1942 wartime classic, The Screwtape Letters.
Triumphs of naiveté are historical, too. Witness Neville Chamberlain’s historically ludicrous “Peace in Our Time.” And the anti-Semitic America First Committee led by Charles Lindbergh in the late 1930s. (Pearl Harbor, same as 9/11, awoke us to the stark realities of worldwide evil.)
In today’s context, ducking reality would’ve “let inspections work.” Or endorsed the bogus band-aid solution of containment. Some would even bargain with the mustachioed devil himself, a proposition Lewis’s Screwtape would find delightfully ironic.
Do-nothings are procrastinators. Panaceas lie just over yonder horizon, like a cure for cancer. They bow to every cockamamie notion for Easy Way Out. Their magic “Pixie Dust,” or wish-granting genie, pops into geopolitics. Presto! Solves what in hell to do with Iraq. Only in their dreams.
Innocent dreamers deserve respect, if for no other reason than the purity of their patriotic naiveté. Not so the virulent anti-war mobs now infecting the debate. They use this war to wreak havoc on an America they must surely hate. Poised for “die-ins,” riot-like snits and traffic tie-ups, theirs is soft guerilla warfare, the stuff of Fifth Columns.
Who would defend such faux patriotism? For one, a left-liberal newspaper here in the hinterland where I live, opines a little nutty on the subject. Get a load of the daffy logic in its recent editorial:
“Never, ever challenge the patriotism of someone with a different point of view.” -- [Minneapolis] Star Tribune, March 3, 2003.
Come again? Such an admonition ignores the back-stabbing anti-America gang. They’d make war, not love, upon an evil “Amerika.” Throwbacks to the 1960s? Sure. Some of the same folks, too, only with new slogans, but still incoherent, like “No blood for oil.“
Unlike the duped naive, histrionic anti-USAers use disarming of Saddam as a pretext for nation-bashing. Only it’s our nation, not the Butcher of Baghdad’s, they bash, and President Bush is their very devil. Lewis would find this deliciously ironic, playing into Screwtape’s devilish hand. They are like Michael Moore, spewing hatred and falsehoods, and Sen. Tom Daschle, undermining for rank partisan purposes. Is it “anything goes” for that next election?
(For the uninitiated, Screwtape is a senior demon who pens stinging, satirical letters to his novice emissary on earth, Wormwood. This mission is to lead astray “the patient,“ mankind, from God, aka “the Enemy. ”)
Truth does not matter, what with savage ideological axes to grind. Bush is always the “oilman,” code word for bad guy. (Wink! Wink!) Or he‘s a gun-slinging “cowboy” and “unilateralist.“ Never mind he’s the former Governor of Texas, and former baseball club owner. And he’s reported breathlessly to be a paradigm of iniquity, an “unabashed” Christian--and (gasp!) an “evangelical” one at that. (Religion never was understood by the secular Left, or the mainstream media, its unabashed mouthpiece.)
Implicit in that silly notion--“never, ever challenge”--is a moral relativism of a New Age. Its premise is that all philosophies, harebrained or not, are somehow equal, thus redemptive. Reduced to its core, such relativism suggests--no, it insists, and self-righteously so--that all viewpoints carry equal weight. Even Palestinian suicide bombers can claim moral authority. Next, terrorists? Makes no difference what‘s right. Who, and sometimes highly partisan spin, matter largely. Relativists’ newest commandment is “Thou Shall Not Judge.”
Americans in previous wars--those who did not flee to Canada, a least, or to Oxford while loathing the military--bring to the table more moral authority, I submit, than all draft dodgers and malingerers. French Resistance in World War I I, rather than the Nazi collaborators, displayed the courage of patriotism. They asked not to be repaid in the silence of protesters. They fought to safeguard the freedom of others to protest, adding moral authority (superiority?) to their arsenal.
Let us now praise the class of protesters of pure heart and wishful thinking. They mean well. But a pox on always spiteful hate-and-blame-America-types. Their incoherent anti-patriotism is a blight on America.
In “The Screwtape Letters,“ Wormwood is grooming a couple “of the world” to lead “the patient” (Christianity) away from “the Enemy.“ Jabbing at the relativism, Screwtape pronounces the couple ideal for the job. Why? They’re “smart, superficially intellectual, and brightly skeptical of everything in the world.“ Their “flippancy,” Screwtape adds, “builds armour-plating against the Enemy.” Eureka!
Perfect foils for a world abuzz with moral relativism: Defeat evil now, or later at greater cost? I’m with our President and Commander-in-Chief, plus a majority of Americans, to prosecute this awful preemptive just war. God bless our GIs in the serious undertaking they now face over there. Methinks that He--or is that, She?--is on “our side” in this clash with unmitigated evil.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Larson is a retired association CEO in Minnesota, and a former business magazine editor in New York City and Kansas City. He is not the cartoonist of the same name. His political commentaries appear in FrontPage Magazine and Accuracy in Media.
Sempers,
Roger