-By Daniel Clark
Is it okay to start questioning their patriotism yet?
On January 29th, Occupy Oakland demonstrators broke into City Hall and stole several American flags, two of which they have since set on fire. Other flag-burnings have been caught on camera at Occupy events in Denver and Portland, Maine.
Not that the sentiment expressed by these actions is anything new to the Occupy movement. All along, the Occupiers have been using American flags as floor mats in their grimy encampments, wearing them to mask their faces like bandanas, and creating mock versions, with corporate logos in place of the white stars. They’ve also been chanting anti-American slogans, waving signs identifying themselves with various socialist organizations, and displaying the image of Communist icon Che Guevara. Nevertheless, if they had expected to incite public outrage, they must by now be terribly disappointed.
One might generously assume that behavior like this is not characteristic of the movement as a whole, if it weren’t so perfectly aligned with its goals of bringing down capitalism and abolishing property rights. The group’s original moniker, “Occupy Wall Street,” itself suggested a violent takeover of the free market system.
Yet you’d be hard-pressed to find a single Democrat in Washington who has been critical of the Occupiers, for either their actions or their aims. House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said, “God bless them.” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid regurgitated their “one percent” versus “99 percent” talking points during a floor debate. President Obama, the former “community organizer,” told them, “You’re the reason why I ran for office in the first place.”
The Occupy movement, characterized by its hordes of self-absorbed, foul-mouthed, vermin-ridden stenchmongers, has been openly contemptuous of America, while at the same time being openly cheered by the nation’s oldest and largest political party. Meanwhile, what little opposition has been heard from the Republicans has been so diluted with focus group-tested semantic soupiness as to be rendered essentially meaningless. A week after accurately referring to the Occupiers as a “mob,” House Majority Leader Eric Cantor retreated, and blathered that they are “justifiably frustrated” with the economy. In fact, it has arguably been the meekness of conservatives, more than the ferocity of their foes on the Left, that is responsible for having brought us to this point.
Communism in America could not have taken hold on its own, if not for the cooperation of the majority of Americans, who readily accepted the ground rule that it’s always wrong to call somebody a Communist. The fact that there’s not a single Communist in American history who’s as infamous as Joe McCarthy tells us that calling somebody a Communist is considered a greater offense than actually being one. The liberals who write our history often wring their hands over the “Red Scare,” without having to face the facts that there really were Reds, and they really were scary.
It has become axiomatic that it’s unacceptable to question somebody else’s patriotism, regardless of your reasons for doing so. This rule rests on the logically indefensible proposition that a person with a free will may not choose to be disloyal to his country. To accept this nonsensical argument is to simply excuse those who are unpatriotic, or even treasonous, rather than risk appearing to be judgmental.
During the G.W. Bush administration, Democrats who wanted the U.S. to lose the war in Iraq employed the non sequitur, “Dissent is patriotic.” Of course, until one defines the prevailing opinion, “dissent” can be practically anything. What they were leading us to conclude from this was that all opinions are equally patriotic, and that ultimately, all ideas are equal. Thus, hatred of one’s own country has become recognized as merely an alternative form of patriotism.
It has taken decades of exposure to such ideological relativism for the Obama presidency to have become possible. Not until after America’s natural defenses had atrophied could a man consort with domestic terrorists, attend a Marxist church with an America-hating pastor, promise to “fundamentally transform America,” paper the country with posters of himself looking like Mussolini, state his intention to “spread the wealth,” and then have the nerve to joke about himself being a “secret Communist,” and still be elected president.
Obama, who might be regarded as the original Occupier, is now using his ideological offspring as informal campaign operatives. Perhaps he envisions himself as the Pied Piper, leading his not-so-merry band of revolutionary rodents. The tune they’re marching to, however, is one that’s been played for generations, by America’s patriotic but overly-tolerant majority.
____________
Daniel Clark is the author and editor of a web publication called The Shinbone: The Frontier of the Free Press, where he also publishes a seasonal sports digest as The College Football Czar.