Post by Benji Duncan on May 27, 2007 0:04:45 GMT -5
If religion is the opium of the people, patriotism is the crystal meth.
Both concepts serve our need for belief affirmation. When we commune with like-minded people to sing songs about what we already think and listen to a preacher tell us what we already think, we are deluded by the comforting notion that absolute truth is not only accessible but more discernible the least we contemplate it. After a week of experiences that enforce the idea that the world is complex and confusing a person can drive home from a Sunday church therapy, sigh and state with expressive confidence, “Whew, I have a pretty good grip on things after all.”
Patriotism gives us this same feeling but in a more motive way. After we pledge our sacred allegiance to a piece of fabric or listen to Whitney Houston sing a song about a name for a political boundary, we feel a connection with something bigger than ourselves. Of course “America” is no more real than an imaginary wall a couple of bedroom sharing brothers try to create with tape on the floor. If everyone succumbed to abstract amnesia it wouldn’t even exist anymore but we can let that go. Why this totally intangible idea of “America” should take precedence over concrete things like real flesh and blood human beings or the very real planet we live on is a tad irritating but we can let that go also.
Connecting with the patriotic over soul gives us a primitive sense of strength that mirrors the belief in god. And while it comforts us, it shields us from contemplating the consequences of the decisions we make and the way we treat one another. With our vigor, we feel a connection with age-old values we can accept without question. The simple fact they have lasted proves their worth. “Benjamin Franklin believed poop is an acceptable glue for a cracked lunch box and darn it, so do I!” We proclaim with hand on heart and eyes full of patriotic tears.
Yes, tis the season for Supreme Court confirmations and renewed constitutional debate. The jolly time has arrived for political pundits and politicians to drag the founding fathers from their coffins and apply their old quotes to contemporary issues that likely would have made their old gray heads explode.
Time to gather in the great halls of democracy and argue what a generation that couldn’t think to wear pants that went past their shins in the dead of winter and believed tomatoes were poisonous meant when they wrote documents with terminology so vague they basically say nothing at all. “Oh the genius of leaving the wording vague,” we say, then add, “but it is quite clear that Thomas Jefferson went into a time machine, checked out babyrape.com and decided it did not constitute “speech.”
Founding father idolaters grow into sudden fanatical enragement at the least criticism of their 1776 gods. Yet, a tone of understanding should be used with such people. For those who have downloaded their entire belief system from someone else, an attempt to wipe the omniscient gild from their idol would be viewed as an immediate threat to their whole take on the world. “Nothing is vague about the constitution!” these people spit with the dogmatic energy of a fire and brimstone preacher. Then they accuse the speaker of "treason," patriot-religions word for blasphemy.
Even Thomas Jefferson stated the constitution lacked the specific wording to suit his intentions, one of which included a restricted press during wartime. John Adams stated disagreement with the very idea of democracy and once told his wife he couldn’t talk to her of politics because she was a woman. George Washington condoned the torture of hundreds of non-combatant loyalists. The founding fathers were not bad people, but they were people. They were people less sociologically evolved than the contemporary American in many ways. If a modern fifth grader interviewed Thomas Jefferson it would take him ten minutes to realize what seemed to escape Jefferson his entire life. That the two hundred slaves he owned contradicted the statements he wrote in the Declaration of Independence.
One wonders why we would want to back up our beliefs by quoting the beliefs of the less evolved. People are funny. Although the opinions of the founding fathers should matter no more than my view or the view of anyone, here is perhaps the most important and overlooked statement from that period. I’m told placing dead people’s opinions in my writing gives it “credibility.”
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of it’s majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country. -Thomas Jefferson
Both concepts serve our need for belief affirmation. When we commune with like-minded people to sing songs about what we already think and listen to a preacher tell us what we already think, we are deluded by the comforting notion that absolute truth is not only accessible but more discernible the least we contemplate it. After a week of experiences that enforce the idea that the world is complex and confusing a person can drive home from a Sunday church therapy, sigh and state with expressive confidence, “Whew, I have a pretty good grip on things after all.”
Patriotism gives us this same feeling but in a more motive way. After we pledge our sacred allegiance to a piece of fabric or listen to Whitney Houston sing a song about a name for a political boundary, we feel a connection with something bigger than ourselves. Of course “America” is no more real than an imaginary wall a couple of bedroom sharing brothers try to create with tape on the floor. If everyone succumbed to abstract amnesia it wouldn’t even exist anymore but we can let that go. Why this totally intangible idea of “America” should take precedence over concrete things like real flesh and blood human beings or the very real planet we live on is a tad irritating but we can let that go also.
Connecting with the patriotic over soul gives us a primitive sense of strength that mirrors the belief in god. And while it comforts us, it shields us from contemplating the consequences of the decisions we make and the way we treat one another. With our vigor, we feel a connection with age-old values we can accept without question. The simple fact they have lasted proves their worth. “Benjamin Franklin believed poop is an acceptable glue for a cracked lunch box and darn it, so do I!” We proclaim with hand on heart and eyes full of patriotic tears.
Yes, tis the season for Supreme Court confirmations and renewed constitutional debate. The jolly time has arrived for political pundits and politicians to drag the founding fathers from their coffins and apply their old quotes to contemporary issues that likely would have made their old gray heads explode.
Time to gather in the great halls of democracy and argue what a generation that couldn’t think to wear pants that went past their shins in the dead of winter and believed tomatoes were poisonous meant when they wrote documents with terminology so vague they basically say nothing at all. “Oh the genius of leaving the wording vague,” we say, then add, “but it is quite clear that Thomas Jefferson went into a time machine, checked out babyrape.com and decided it did not constitute “speech.”
Founding father idolaters grow into sudden fanatical enragement at the least criticism of their 1776 gods. Yet, a tone of understanding should be used with such people. For those who have downloaded their entire belief system from someone else, an attempt to wipe the omniscient gild from their idol would be viewed as an immediate threat to their whole take on the world. “Nothing is vague about the constitution!” these people spit with the dogmatic energy of a fire and brimstone preacher. Then they accuse the speaker of "treason," patriot-religions word for blasphemy.
Even Thomas Jefferson stated the constitution lacked the specific wording to suit his intentions, one of which included a restricted press during wartime. John Adams stated disagreement with the very idea of democracy and once told his wife he couldn’t talk to her of politics because she was a woman. George Washington condoned the torture of hundreds of non-combatant loyalists. The founding fathers were not bad people, but they were people. They were people less sociologically evolved than the contemporary American in many ways. If a modern fifth grader interviewed Thomas Jefferson it would take him ten minutes to realize what seemed to escape Jefferson his entire life. That the two hundred slaves he owned contradicted the statements he wrote in the Declaration of Independence.
One wonders why we would want to back up our beliefs by quoting the beliefs of the less evolved. People are funny. Although the opinions of the founding fathers should matter no more than my view or the view of anyone, here is perhaps the most important and overlooked statement from that period. I’m told placing dead people’s opinions in my writing gives it “credibility.”
We may consider each generation as a distinct nation, with a right, by the will of it’s majority, to bind themselves, but none to bind the succeeding generation, more than the inhabitants of another country. -Thomas Jefferson