Yup. Yet another angry political post thing. You’ve been warned.
Reading the Denver Post op-ed pages (you remember, the ones Margie doesn’t like me reading because of my blood pressure?), I ran across the following inane remarks from a columnist whose name I will not mention:
“It makes me wonder whether this newfound patriotism will move Democrats to now support legislation to protect Old Glory from being dishonored by some of their addled constituents.”
Well, that answers the question I raised a few days ago about Flag Burning. Aside from the insult that it’s Democrats burning the flag, or that the folks doing it are automatically to be considered addled, the question is meaningless because the flag is a symbol, not the values it symbolizes. Seeing a flag burned torques me off. But I’d rather be torqued off than tell people they cannot make that sort of political statement, any more than I’d tell the columnist in question that he cannot write such tripe.
“I feel certain we will hear from the anti-war movement again. We may even see our cities awash once more in armies of angry young men and women unwilling to shed a drop of blood to defend the United States of America, land of their birth.”
By equating those who oppose war, or specific wars, or even specific acts of war, with moral cowardice and an unwillingness to sacrifice for this country and its people, the columnist engages in just the sort of knee-jerk reactionary dialog that makes anti-war protests necessary, even where I don’t agree with them.
“I’m concerned that when casualties do roll in, the appeasers and partisan politicians who are determined to undermine the president will make moves to confirm to our enemies that America is indeed a decadent nation.”
I am sometimes concerned that we are still so casualty-shy from Viet Nam that we’ve let those fears warp and weaken our foreign and military policy of the last decades, that we’ve taken the easy course of bombing and missile attacks, with their collateral damage and relative ineffectiveness, so that we don’t have to face the horror of American soldiers dying “on foreign soil,” lest it call into question what we’re doing in the first place.
That having been said, to call those who are concerned over whether such sacrifice of life is necessary “appeasers,” and to chalk up the rest of it to “partisan politics” and people who are just out to “undermine the president” is a maddening case of black-or-white thinking. It is possible to oppose the President’s policies without being a weakling, without beint a traitor, without wanting to give in to terror. I do think that we are called upon, to some degree, to stand together as a nation in a time of crisis. But that can only take us so far. We do not, as ancient Rome did, elect a dictator during national emergencies so that policy can be made unimpeded by the voices of dissent and debate. We remain a democracy, and a land of values, freedoms, and diversity.
Will there be those who use these perilous times as a means of gaining political or social or financial advantage? Certainly, but they’ll pop up on both sides of the fence, without a doubt. It’s already happening. Using national anger and a desire to Do Something, Dammit, as a tool to silence debate is unworthy of the ideals, of the “freedom,” that some of the most jingoistic sound-biters are yammering about.
And which, by the by, the flag stands for.
Okay, enough ranting for the day. Time to flee to mindless entertainment.