Those of us born in the 1930s and 40s came along at the tail end of an era, a bright and special era, an era in which children were still taught to love their country, to admire its Founders, and to revere the Constitution. Many of us took those lessons to heart, but now we find ourselves increasingly at odds with an imposing and ever-growing army of powerful and influential people--people in the highest levels of government, people who manage the country’s largest news organizations, people who operate our nation’s most prestigious universities.
It seems as though a vast and increasing number of slick, fashionable and well educated people believe that patriotism is nothing but foolish sentimentality, that the Constitution is a burdensome and inconvenient impediment to progress, and that the 18th Century beliefs of the Founders are now hopelessly outdated.
Yet these same people insist that they are genuinely concerned for us, especially in these difficult times, and want only to make us all secure and happy. Mind you, they want to dismantle all the priceless safeguards to our liberties, but they want us to be secure and happy. In other words, instead of placing our trust in a written contract, the Constitution, they want us to place our trust solely in them and their word.
But to those of us in my generation, this kind of talk sounds dubious, dangerous and frightening. According to what we were taught in those little one- and two-room rural schools, this is just the kind of devious chicanery the Founders were hoping to steer their posterity clear of when they wrote the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in the first place. Of course, when we attended school our dedicated and self-sacrificing teachers didn’t have access to the latest educational theories put out by the federal government, so they admittedly were working under a severe and serious handicap.
Nevertheless, call me backward and old-fashioned if you must, but I’m not buying the clearly self-serving tripe these un-American radicals are dishing out. I don’t believe for one minute that their interest in our welfare is genuine. I believe it’s thoroughly counterfeit and utterly bogus, as well as insulting and disgusting. I believe it is nothing more than a clever and deadly pretense, a ruse, if you will, possessing only the crudest outward appearance of authentic concern and compassion. Their idea of charity is seizing your money through taxation and transferring it to someone else, someone who in their opinion is in greater need of it than you are. Is that compassion? No! Let’s call it what it is, it’s socialism! And socialism isn’t what this country’s about. It’s repugnant and alien to us. Strong, proud, self-reliant men and women don’t need or want socialism. A socialist is not, and can never be, a true American.
I don’t give a hoot what presidential candidates and senate majority leaders say. I couldn’t care less what big city newspaper editors and television commentators think. And I’m certainly not interested in what the distinguished head of the political science department at Harvard University believes. I think we’d be damned foolish to let go of any portion of the Constitution. Those Founders were an extremely wise group of men. Their theories of government are still valid and will continue to hold us in good stead. All we have to do is wholeheartedly return to those beliefs and ideals, and embrace once again that independent and self-sufficient spirit that made Americans and America great.
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