It’s times like these that I miss my
country most.
Holidays like Memorial Day, the Fourth of July and Thanksgiving
remind me that once upon a time (long ago, in a galaxy far, far
away), I had a country. It was called America.
Perfect? Absolutely not. Nothing is in this world. But it
represented something noble, brave and fine. Even if they
couldn’t quite articulate it, Americans understood what America
meant – and cherished it. Once, we knew our nation’s history.
Once we spoke a national language. Once we controlled our
borders. Once we knew what treason was and how to deal with it.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Of our three national holidays, for me, Memorial Day is the most
significant. The Fourth of July celebrates our independence.
Harkening back to our beginnings, Thanksgiving recalls our
religious roots. But it’s the blood and guts (the suffering and
sacrifice) symbolized by Memorial Day, that made America
possible. To make ideals real – and to protect and preserve them
-- requires payment in the coin of strife and death.
At the urging of my youngest son, I just finished watching the
series “Band of Brothers,” based on the Stephen Ambrose history
of one company of the 506th Regiment of the 101st Airborne, from
Normandy to the Eagle’s Nest. It’s a stirring saga – all the
more intense because it’s told without the usual Hollywood
hoopla.
Each episode opens with commentary from the men whose story this
is -- the veterans of Easy Company. Old men (most in their ‘80s)
their faces are like a bomb-scarred landscape. There’s an
undercurrent of emotion in the quiet voices of men who went
through hell so the rest of us have a safe, comfortable life as
free men in a nation of free men.
If I could speak with them, I’d ask: “Are you happy with what
your country has become? When you were a nervous kid waiting to
jump out of a plane while shells peppered the sky, did you ever
imagine it would come to this?”
Alienation – the sense of being severed from your roots. Waking
up covered in bandages, in a hospital bed in a strange land
(where no one understands a word you’re saying) and wondering
what happened to the world you once knew.
Doom and gloom, you say? You wouldn’t if you were paying
attention.
Less than 8 weeks ago, a brain-damaged woman was deliberately
starved to death. (Her mother was not allowed to moisten her
parched lips with drops of water.) A judge decided that hers was
a life unworthy of life -- in the finest tradition of Nazi
medicine.
In Lexington, Massachusetts – where Minutemen first confronted
the tyranny represented by redcoats – the father of a
kindergartener was arrested recently for objecting to the
indoctrination of his child in the homosexual lifestyle. (He had
refused to leave his son’s elementary school until
administrators agreed to respect his parental rights.) Nothing
is allowed to stand in the way of teaching kids the swellness of
sodomy.
In Nebraska, a federal judge overturned an amendment to the
state constitution (enacted by over 70% of voters) recognizing
the reality that a married couple is a man and a woman united in
the bonds of matrimony – not two perverts playing house.
Democracy and morality are dying together.
On a cable TV reality-based show, a fat loudmouth with a
ponytail and his dwarf companion repeatedly used a four-letter
word to refer to Mother Teresa, who devoted her life to
succoring the sick and dying. This loathsome display of
vulgarity and disrespect is one example of the evil that passes
for entertainment in 21st century America.
Across the nation, pandering politicians rush to bestow benefits
on illegal aliens – driver's licenses, in-state tuition at
public colleges for their children, even workmen’s compensation
for injuries sustained at jobs they shouldn’t have. We’ve become
a people of misplaced compassion who are driven to show love for
home invaders.
In Massachusetts, Connecticut and elsewhere, bills advance to
give addicts needles (supposedly to contain the spread of AIDS –
a disease spawned by the Sexual Revolution). Thus have we gone
from just-say-no, to just use a clean needle as you shoot junk
into your arm and accelerate our evolution to Addict Nation. In
California and a number of other Western states, physicians can
prescribe pot – the drug that opens the gates to a life of
addiction – for everything from the nausea accompanying
chemotherapy to a bad back.
Sometime in its current term, the U.S. Supreme Court will decide
if Americans will be allowed to have public displays of the Ten
Commandments (as long as they’re constitutionally camouflaged
with secular documents). It’s reached the point where this is a
real big deal – permitting any public acknowledgement of the
ethos on which America was founded. The 9th Circuit Appeals
Court nearly succeeded in taking “one nation under God” out of
the Pledge of Allegiance. (Its decision was overturned by the
Supreme Court – on a technicality.) What then of John Adams
admonition: “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and a
religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of
any other”?
And that’s just an aerial overview of a nation in spiritual
free-fall.
If you approve of the above, read no further. You are hopeless,
and deserve the fate which awaits you. On the other hand, if you
hate what we’ve become in the past four decades, let me show you
the not-so-distant past.
Let me tell you what my America was like. For those of you under
40, it may come as a revelation.
· In my America, there was prayer in the schools, crčches in
public parks at Christmas (in fact, sales people actually wished
you a “Merry Christmas,” instead of the generic, secularized
“happy holiday”), and universal respect for individuals who were
reverently
referred to a “men of the cloth.” Hollywood celebrated faith
with classics like “The Song of Bernadette,” “Going My Way,”
“The Ten Commandments” and “Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.”
· Instead of half-naked, writhing celebrities and
smirking savages with pistols larger than their
brains, we had athletes, warriors, champions of
justice and people of faith as heroes. (In terms of
role models, we’ve gone from Audie Murphy to Eddie
Murphy.)
· It was universally acknowledged that sex should be
reserved for marriage. Those who lived together
without the benefit of a marriage license weren’t
called a “cohabitating couple.” It was said they
were “shacking up” or “fornicating.” The product of
their “illicit” relationships weren’t “born
out-of-wedlock;” they were bastards (a judgment on
the parents, not the children).
· Pornography was limited to the shadow world – to paperbacks
and magazines surreptitiously sold under the counter, or
arriving in the mail in a plain-brown wrapper. Parents could be
assured that children wouldn’t encounter sex before the
appropriate time. Society treated this volatile aspect of human
nature cautiously and respectfully, not as a lurid national
pastime that pervades every aspect of our lives.
Virginity and fidelity were prized. Indiscretion,
promiscuity and adultery were condemned.
· Addiction too was limited to society’s fringes, to social
outcasts. Provisions were made for the treatment – or
incarceration – of the unfortunates who became slaves to
narcotics. But we didn’t cater to them by facilitating their
addiction, in the name of disease control or compassion.
· Immigrants (who were here legally) were humbly grateful to
reside in the greatest nation on earth. They understood that it
was their responsibility to learn our language and history and
identify with us – in short to Americanize. Instead of making
demands, they accepted obligations.
· In general, our society was more oriented toward
responsibilities than rights. The mark of an American wasn’t a
hand outstretched, palm up, but a shoulder for bearing burdens.
Instead of whiny demands, we gratefully accepted duties.
· Crime was an anomaly. In small towns, people frequently went
away for the weekend without locking their doors. Except for
certain disreputable sections, the streets of our cities were
safe for women, even at night Girls weren’t abducted, raped and
buried alive in landfills. The rights of the accused were
minimal.
· Expressions like “no-fault divorce,” “casual sex,”
“recreational drugs,” “undocumented workers,” “same-sex
couples,” “trophy wives,” “gender-neutral,” “racial profiling,”
“affirmative action,” “church-state separation,” “victimless
crimes,” “sex-industry workers,” “symbolic speech,” “sexually
transmitted diseases,” “non-judgmentalism,” and “revisionist
history” were blessedly unknown.
· Homosexuality was treated as a grievous sin – or a mental
disorder (depending on your perspective) – not as an innate
characteristic conferring minority status. Before they became
“gay,” homosexuals weren’t hated; they were pitied. But they
weren’t allowed to turn the social order upside down to enhance
their self-esteem.
· The FBI, Boy Scouts, police, firemen, military and clergy were
respected. Degenerates, parasites, misfits, mutants and whiners
were not.
· Americans knew their history, celebrated their past and
revered their heroes. They weren’t consumed with guilt for the
mistakes of the past. Everyone knew that slavery was a great
wrong and the Indians got a raw deal. We also knew that slavery
was a universal institution and we weren’t the first people to
clash with an indigenous population. We understood that
America’s faults were minor and – on balance – the blessings we
bestowed on humanity far outweighed our mistakes.
· We weren’t obsessed with our image abroad – whether foreigners
loved us. We were willing to accept the animosity of the envious
and the hatred of our enemies as part of the natural order. When
the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, we didn’t ask if we had
brought this on ourselves by our ghastly treatment of a nation
of ruthless warmongers. FDR didn’t proclaim that our mission was
to bring democracy to the Germans and Japanese (that was a side
effect). It was to kill Japanese and Germans and to keep killing
them until they stopped killing Chinese and Filipinos, and Jews
and Poles and went back where they belonged. The idea of
Americans agonizing over whether Mein Kampf was treated
disrespectfully in a POW camp for Germans is ludicrous.
· We weren’t “multi-cultural.” There was one culture –
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant – to which others were expected to
conform. This didn’t mean that Jews, Catholics, blacks or
Asians, considered themselves less American than those of
Mayflower descent. But it was universally acknowledged that
America was founded on the heritage of Western civilization, as
amplified and transmitted by England.
My America worked. We saved civilization from repeated barbarian
onslaughts. We were the arsenal of democracy – the workshop of
the world. Our prosperity lifted boats across the globe. We were
happy, self-confident and proud.
And look at us now. We’re like a dysfunctional family of 268
million, bordered by two oceans.
Our salvation/resurrection lies in memory.
In a novel of the end of the Roman Empire (“The Last Legion” by
Valerio Manfredi), the boy emperor Romulus Augustus and
his tutor are about to escape their barbarian captors. The
elderly mentor stops to take a copy of the “Aeneid” (Virgil’s
epic poem of the founding of Rome).
“’That’s useless weight,’ protested Romulus.”
“’On the contrary, it is the most precious thing I have in here,
my son,’ replied Ambrosinus. ‘When we flee and leave everything
behind us, the only resource that we can take with us is memory.
The memory of our origins, of our roots, the stories of our
ancestors. Only memory can allow us to be reborn. It doesn’t
matter where, it doesn’t matter when. If we conserve the memory
of our past greatness and the reasons we’ve lost it, we will
rise again.’”
No one will give us back our country. We have to take it back –
with our memory, our discernment, our capacity for struggle and
sacrifice and our sheer will.
These are thoughts to ponder while you’re waiting to jump out of
a plane onto the battlefield of the culture war.
