March 30, 2013
The Patriot's Dilemma
By Glenn Fairman

Any aficionado of Golden Age comic magazines circa WW ll will tell you that their writers and artists of that era were not kind to America's Axis enemies. Indeed, characterizations of the Nazis as monocled Teutonic monsters and the Japanese as yellowish-green buck-toothed dwarves reflected an outraged mindset of an America that had not yet succumbed to corrosive self-doubt. And if upon seeing these cultural relics of a simpler age we elicit an inner groan as our more refined sensibilities are taken aback and the judgment of racism hits us with its self-righteous cudgel, well then, such judgments themselves are bloodless -- they are emaciated moral evaluations divorced from context and the utter reality that such a time was rife with monsters and moral dwarves who nearly extinguished the Free West in "a damn most close run thing." In knowing the historical horrors of Germany's and Japan's regimes, can anyone deny that as realized flesh and blood entities moving within history -- in their full internal essence -- they were not those things, and more?

And yet, we cringe upon viewing the cover of Action Comics #58 (March 1943) which features The Man of Steel turning a printing press producing posters with the message: "Superman says: You can slap a Jap with war bonds and stamps." If we then fast-forward to 2011, how surreal it becomes when in Action Comics #900 we learn that the Kryptonian cum American ubermensch is planning on renouncing his U.S. citizenship before the U.N. Apparently, after monitoring a protest in Teheran, Superman states: "I'm tired of having my actions construed as instruments of U.S. policy.... Truth, Justice, and the American Way ...it's not enough anymore." Now, although this "Great Divorce" was never consummated, (and perhaps was a marketing gimmick for a genre facing serious financial challenges) Superman's postmodern epiphany is nevertheless emblematic of a progressive zeitgeist that rightly or wrongly perceives nationalism as constrictive and counter to the interconnectivity of the planet. In essence, the perception of patriotism is hereby being called into question as a passé relic and a hindrance to what many believe is our inexorable future as a universal homogenous people.

Patriotism is defined as a primal love of one's own country or homeland and is manifested in a visceral preference for the customs, laws and culture(s) that reside within. Men are tied by their natures to what they know and the entire subliminal mélange of foods, holidays, and unexpressed ideological assumptions all combine to form the warp and weft of patriotic ardor. This being so, selfless love is often demanded and volunteered unquestioningly to a motherland that we deem more than worthy to perform the ultimate sacrifice for; and Horace's oft-quoted line "How sweet and fitting it is to die for one's country" can perhaps only be balanced by Patton's prudential line: "No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country; he did it by making the other poor bastard die for his country." In affirming Horace's point, even the Nazarene has said: "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." Therefore, to surrender one's blood for the perpetuation of a way of life that a man will no longer share in requires either a blessed transcendent hope beyond the rewards of poppy-strewn fields or a temporal resolve that one has devoted his substance to a cause of greater justice: of which both might prove equally to be true.

But how easy it is to talk the talk without walking the walk. As I type away at my keyboard, a thousand patriotic exhortations are passing through Conservative Facebook timelines waxing poetic concerning the "Tree of Liberty being watered with the Blood of Martyrs" or images of majestic American Eagles clutching crosses and staring down that heinous villain of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. But then it is easy to hit "like" and "share." In a surreal age when flying drones might just be hovering high above men's heads, silently weighing their fidelities, no longer are the frontiers of patriotic sensibility so cut and dried. In perilous times, a man's sworn enemy could one day be the same government that he once swore allegiance to as a child. But perhaps I am now only whistling past the graveyard...

If I may be so frank: The regime that denies a hot breakfast to its troops in Afghanistan and slashes their health care packages is the same one that coddles its parasitic voting bloc back in the homeland and advertises food stamps in Mexico. This state of affairs has done little to fan the patriotic zeal of soldiers living in the crosshairs. Moreover, a handful of men and women come home nearly every day from that grievous Curse of a Land either in metal crates or as the victims of mayhem in the cause of a morally compromised people. The shedding of American blood for our own emancipation or for the worthy causes of Jew against Nazi or Western Liberty contra Communism are no longer our lofty aims. In their stead, we are offered a cause that is no cause at all: we are to fight against those who wish to burn the eyes out of a child with acid for the crime of going to school on behalf of the interests of those who feel justified in keeping those schooled women cloistered at home. Such are the hair-thin distinctions in the thorn-ridden Middle Eastern soul: where on the plains of Kandahar young soldiers are abandoned by their CIC as pawns to be broken in a game whose rules they are not privy to know.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/03/t...l#ixzz2P5c3hHPT

Zitat

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The regime that denies a hot breakfast to its troops in Afghanistan and slashes their health care packages is the same one that coddles its parasitic voting bloc back in the homeland and advertises food stamps in Mexico. This state of affairs has done little to fan the patriotic zeal of soldiers living in the crosshairs. Moreover, a handful of men and women come home nearly every day from that grievous Curse of a Land either in metal crates or as the victims of mayhem in the cause of a morally compromised people. The shedding of American blood for our own emancipation or for the worthy causes of Jew against Nazi or Western Liberty contra Communism are no longer our lofty aims. In their stead, we are offered a cause that is no cause at all: we are to fight against those who wish to burn the eyes out of a child with acid for the crime of going to school on behalf of the interests of those who feel justified in keeping those schooled women cloistered at home. Such are the hair-thin distinctions in the thorn-ridden Middle Eastern soul: where on the plains of Kandahar young soldiers are abandoned by their CIC as pawns to be broken in a game whose rules they are not privy to know.

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Wonderfully said.