From October 2010, this Andrew Klavan video nicely sums up the weirdness of unpatriotic “patriots” that I touched upon in an earlier post:

Click here to view the embedded video.

As I do every year, I went with my family to our town’s Fourth of July Parade.  It’s a great parade, with all sorts of community groups participating, including the various chambers of commerce; Little League baseball teams; bagpipers (Marin is home to a thriving bagpipe community); an impressive selection of WWII vehicles from from the Garbarino Military Vehicle Museum, a private collection of lovingly restored military vehicles; marching bands; and the usual flotsam and jetsam of community organizations in a small town.

Thousands of people turn out to line the parade route.  Flags are everywhere:  they festoon the trucks and cars and children wave them wildly.  It’s like the colorized version of a 1940s movie.  Attending is a delightful experience.

But there’s something funny going on here.  In 2008, Barack Obama got 78% of the Marin County vote.  This was not an accident.  Despite being the beneficiaries of the best America has to offer in terms of wealth and natural beauty, Marin’s residents are die-hard Democrats.

To the extent they veer away from soccer and carpools, and into politics, the Facebook posts I see demonstrate that, at least in significant numbers, these investment bankers, lawyers, doctors, architects, educators, accountants, etc., worship at the shrine of socialized medicine, government price controls, and higher taxes.  They are fervently anti-War, despite their cheers for the WWII vehicles and the sprinkling of WWII vets who sat in those vehicles.  They embrace multiculturalism with a passion, think Israel is unfair to the beleaguered Palestinians whose land they stole, and are dismayed by America’s long history of slavery, imperialism, sexism and racism, not to mention the grossly unequal way America treats its own poor.  They voted for Barack Obama because they agree with him that America needs to be fundamentally changed in order to be worthy:  she needs to be turned into a pacifist, socialist, small county.

This is America, and Marinites are entitled to head to the polls, determined to obtain transformation.  Whether they’ll like it if they get it is another question, of course.

But what I really wondered today is what all the flag waving was about.  A vast number of the attendees and participants disrespect our country’s history, dislike her institutions, and want to remake her into something entirely different from what she is today.  They don’t want to improve her, they want to transform her.  If patriotism is the “devoted love, support, and defense of one’s country,” what does one call enthusiasm for the symbols of a country, without any attendant support for the country itself?  Perhaps a better term than patriotism would be “theater of the absurd.”

Click here to view the embedded video.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News

The Bookworm Turns : A Secret Conservative in Liberal Land, available in e-format for $4.99 at Amazon, Smashwords or through your iBook app.

Click here to view the embedded video.

A Harvard study has said that Republicans own July 4th:

The political right has been more successful in appropriating American patriotism and its symbols during the 20th century.  (Emphasis mine.)

That makes it sound as if Republicans engaged in some nefarious propaganda scheme to steal away American iconography.  Perhaps Republicans didn’t take it; perhaps Democrats gave it away:

Anti-war protesters burn flag

Jane Fonda in North Vietnam

The Democrats' friends in LA make a point

Sign at a Code Pink Rally

Here’s a good example of American imperialism, whereby rich and greedy American billionaires fund the sabotage of democratic institutions in foreign countries to further their own ideological and economic interests.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Via: smalldeadanimals.com.

Whether or not one liked him, Ronald Reagan got “the vision thing.”  He had an extremely strong sense of America and her place in the world, and was never afraid to share that narrative.  America was the shining city on the hill, the bastion of true republican democracy, and the world leader in exporting freedom and wealth.  The Communists were, simply, evil.  They were the antithesis of America because they were the antithesis of freedom.

Sophisticates sneered at Reagan’s simple, (old) Hollywood vision of the world.  To ordinary Americans, though, Reagan’s clearly and repeatedly articulated vision of this country instilled in them a deep sense of pride that ran comfortably alongside an economic boom resulting from the policies that underlay Reagan’s vision.  Just as importantly, in gulags and prisons around the world, prisoners, and dissenters, and dreamers heard Reagan’s words too.  They understood that, not only was he describing something better than their totalitarian governments had to offer, but also that the leader of the most powerful nation in the world understood and willingly articulated that truth.

Obama also gets the vision thing.  His education, career and presidential trajectory show it very, very clearly.  His vision is that America is an arrogant nation rife with internal inequities.  Domestically, his job as president is to equalize people’s status within the country, which is best done through redistributive financial policies.  On the international side of things, his job is to subordinate America to the United Nations, making it just one nation among many.  ObamaCare and the Libya War stand as hallmarks of these domestic and foreign visions.

Obama’s vision is of America as Europe — not Europe during her imperialistic heyday, but a post-WWII Europe, socialist and humbled.  Of course, what he doesn’t seem to realize is that post-WWII Europe survived only as long as it did because America footed the bill.  No America, no post-WWII Europe.  He hasn’t grappled with that economic reality as he’s pushed America out of her financier mode and into her begging socialist mode.

What’s interesting about Obama is that, while he is consistent in his vision, and unfailing in his willingness to put it in effect, he refuses to articulate that vision.  Put him in front of a teleprompter, and he simply mouths platitudes about “America is great.”  Unscripted, he slips up periodically and talks about “sharing the wealth,” and the fact that there’s nothing exceptional about America.  Overall, though, he’s coy.

Reagan braved the ridicule of the world’s intellectuals to sell his vision to the world.  Obama already has the world’s intellectuals on board.  His vision about America and her place in the world is exactly the same as their vision.  He’s coy, then, not because he fears media and Ivory Tower derision, but because he knows that ordinary Americans will not buy what he would be selling were he to speak.  How much better to skip the sales pitch and just force the product on a credulous public?  Obama also doesn’t sell his vision because he knows that, abroad, while the Euro-trash and Muslim Brotherhood eat up what he has to say, the people languishing in prisons, in China, in Cuba, in Venezuela, in Iran, etc., would recognize his vision for what it is — not even snake oil, but pure venom.

I’m actually grateful to NPR.  It was its unbelievably biased Israel coverage that helped me make the break with my reflexive liberalism and take a long, hard look at my political beliefs and party affiliation.  Nevertheless, it irks me no end that my taxpayer money funds NPR, PBS and local affiliates.  There is no reason in this day and age to have government media, especially government media that is hostile to more than half the American population and wants to roll around naked in bed with the Muslim Brotherhood.

If you don’t believe me about NPR’s beliefs and desires, you must read this Daily Caller article and take the 11 minutes to watch the video that is a part of the article.  It’s disgusting but it’s also wonderful, because it shines sunlight in an area the Progressives have tried to keep shady.  Considering that the NPR executive who got punked said it would be best for NPR to lose its federal funding, my response is, let’s give the guy what he wants.

UPDATE:  I like NPR’s defense which amounts to this:  since we didn’t immediately accept their phony bribe, we’re “appalled” by Schiller’s comments, and Schiller got another job, get off our back.

“The fraudulent organization represented in this video repeatedly pressed us to accept a $5 million check, with no strings attached, which we repeatedly refused to accept.

“We are appalled by the comments made by Ron Schiller in the video, which are contrary to what NPR stands for.

“Mr. Schiller announced last week that he is leaving NPR for another job.”

It doesn’t seem to occur to the NPR folks that the video shows Schiller desperate to get a steady stream of income from a Muslim Brotherhood organization that wants to give a platform to Hamas and Hezbollah, two terrorist groups.

I heard about Blake Gopnik’s attack on Norman Rockwell (as part of his defense of the “Ants on Jesus” video), and actually started writing a post on the subject.  Life caught up with me, though, and I abandoned the post and doubt I’ll return to it.  Fortunately, Anchoress has been thinking about the subject, and I can’t do better than what she wrote.

I first ran this YouTube video three years ago, when Barack Obama, our nation’s first anti-American president, was still a theory, not a fact.  It bears watching now, as we witness Obama’s efforts to bring about a world without America:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If you read only one thing today, please read Andrew McCarthy’s incredibly sad and disturbing article about the way in which we are currently being governed by foreigners, all American born, in Congress and the White House.   Then, if you have time for a second read today, check out what Charles Krauthammer had to say about the federal government’s Civil War era first-of-its-kind announcement that it will support federal law only if that law comes from favored states, and it will ignore federal law if legal infractions are triggered by disfavored states.

My mother, a Democrat since she arrived in this country in the 1950s, is finally convinced that this administration genuinely hates America and wishes her ill.  That is, this is not an administration that shares with most Americans a common goal for this country’s well-being, but that disagrees with half of Americans about how to effectuate that goal.  Nope.  This is an administration that truly, madly, deeply hates what our country stands for and desires to see America’s wings well and truly clipped.

UPDATE:  While you’re at it, if you find even a little bit more time, read the Anchoress on those who want dictatorships, and why Barry Obama and Gene Wilder might have been separated at birth.