Adam’s Blog – Does Radical Russ Hate America?

Adam, The Idaho Conservative (a label that is unintentionally redundant and reductionary at the same time*), posts his critique of my article, Why Do You Hate America So Much?. It’s nice to have something other than the Bible to volley over for a while. Let us begin:

I may have been the unintentional inspiration for Radical Russ’ latest column entitled, “Why Do You Hate America?” about us conservatives who allege liberals hate America.

Flattery will get you everywhere with yourself, won’t it? My inspiration was a phone call from a former supervisor first and conservatives-in-general second. The “Why do liberals hate America” meme has been around much longer than any liberal-bashing book.

For example, did the Royalists during the Revolution hate their colonies, their hometowns, or were they fighting for the best interest of their colonies by standing on the side of the British. Either way, they were fighting against those who wanted Independence in the Revolution, so their reasons didn’t change the facts that they were on the wrong side.

Same thing with the left today. The policies advocated by a Michael Moore or Tim Robbins and the rhetoric they use give aid and comfort to our enemies. Whether they see the world differently or whether they hate America, the result is the same, so who cares?

Poor analogy followed by faulty conclusion. Royalists fought on the side of our enemy during a shooting war. When Michael Moore or Tim Robbins are crashing jet liners into buildings on behalf of al Qaeda, then your analogy will be apt. Until then, the right and the left are offering different opinions on how to best fight against a common enemy.

Of course, we define the enemy a little differently. We figure that the enemy is Osama bin Laden and those who support him, not an innocent Iraqi civilians bombed into oblivion during a wedding rehearsal or caught up in a dragnet and tortured to death at Abu Ghraib.

(Speaking of Osama, what could be more aiding and comforting than that bastard still breathing air thanks to the reckless incompetance of George W. Bush?)

Another enemy we define is one who would subvert our Constitutional ideals by labelling all dissent against the administration as “giving aid and comfort to our enemies”.

Furthermore, what are these policies that we on the left advocate that give aid and comfort to our enemies? Did you get a memo from Osama on this one? Is he thrilled that we fight to keep religion out of our courthouses? Is he excited about how we want all our children to have healthcare? Is he happy to see us demand our president and administration not lie to us in order to send our soldiers to war? How does Osama feel about us battling to protect a woman’s reproductive freedom (I’ll bet Osama’s more on your side on that issue.) What does Osama think about our clamoring that constitutional rights to due process should apply to all American citizens, even ones the president wants to hide without charges down in Gitmo? Is Osama partying now that we’ve decided that the Geneva Conventions are “quaint anachronisms” and we’re free to torture at will? (Actually, he probably is happy about that one… it makes recruitment easier.)

The way Russ quoted this, you’d wonder who endowed those inalienable rights.

I love it when the righties take the bait on this one. Who endowed them with inalienable rights, according to Jefferson, et al? “Their Creator”. Not “God”, not “Almighty God”, not “Heavenly Father”, not “in Jesus’ name”. You think you were created by God? Great, then He gave you these rights. You think you were created by your mom & dad? Fine, you get the same rights. You say you were created by Geppetto and given sentience by magic fairies? Fabulous, you get the same rights.

Jefferson and many of the Founders were Deists, not Christians. Their inclusion of “their Creator” instead of “almighty God” is a significant linguistic, social, and political statement, especially considering the tenor of the times in which they lived.

As for the inalienable right to life, Russ can’t claim the left stands that for that, with the assisted suicide crowd. Inalienable means “incapable of being alienated, surrendered, or transferred” according to the Merriam Webster dictionary. Assisted Suicide allows people to surrender their right to life, so therefore if liberals support assisted suicide they can’t be said to support a right to life that can’t be surrendered.

Context, dude, context. My dictionary offers this definition (emphasis mine):

incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another

That is, someone else (government, cops, neo-fascist hypoChristian jackbooted conservative goons) can’t take my inalienable rights (without due process). You can’t take my life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness; it’s mine. But since it is mine, I may do with it as I please. No one can stop me if I choose to deprive myself of some liberty by joining the military (where you surrender many constitutional rights unto the UCMJ) or deprive myself of pursuing happiness by becoming a Republican.

And when it comes right down to it, as Hunter Thompson proved a few weeks ago, no one can stop me if choose to deprive myself of life, either. But so far I am denied medical assistance in depriving myself of life if I am incapable of ending my life on my own (except in my beloved Oregon). In a twisted sense, you deprive me of liberty by forcing me to live a life I no longer want to live.

This whole Schiavo case underscores that point. Some people feel it’s appropriate to force someone to live against their own wishes (don’t get me started on her wishes; every single state and federal court has borne this out multiple times already, and you can’t convinced me that the young woman who starved herself to look pretty would want to be kept alive in an ugly state on a feeding tube). It’s just fundamentally sick that someone else thinks they have the right to force anyone else to live. It’s also incredibly ironic that the people who think that death brings a glorious blissful afterlife at the right hand of Jesus are so reluctant to let a sick person choose to go there.

We’ve gotten to the point in our politics that one side of the aisle is speaking German and the other Chinese.

You know, you may be half right there. What I’ve heard from the right does sound faintly German. “Ein volk, ein Reich, ein Führer”… “You’re either with us or against us”… “The [Nazi party] should not become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their master!”… “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends.”… “Any alliance whose purpose is not the intention to wage war is senseless and useless.”… “But you look at vast numbers of other countries in Europe, they’re not with France and Germany… they’re with the US. You’re thinking of Europe as Germany and France. I don’t, I think that’s old Europe.”… “The Ten Commandments are a code of living to which there’s no refutation. These precepts correspond to irrefragable needs of the human soul.”… “Districts ought to be allowed to post the Ten Commandments, no matter what a person’s religion is. There’s some inherent values in those great commandments that would make our society a better place for everybody.”… “Who says I am not under the special protection of God?… I would like to thank Providence and the Almighty for choosing me of all people to be allowed to wage this battle for Germany.”… “I feel like God wants me to run for president. I can’t explain it, but I sense my country is going to need me. . . . I know it won’t be easy on me or my family, but God wants me to do it.”…

We’re a nation with two constitutions, two cultures, and two histories. Thus, the understanding of who we are, where we’ve been, and where we’re going has never been more different. I stand by that assessment today.

Yes, two Constitutions. We’ve got the one Jefferson wrote and you’ve got the one that Scalia has had redacted.

Two cultures? Yup, we’re got the one with a separation of church and state, a belief that all men are created equal, a reliance on skepticism and scientific method, and one that stands for the rights of oppressed minorities; you’ve got ther one that believes in religious freedom so long as the other religions recognize the supremacy of Christianity, a belief that some men are created more equal than others, an obesience to whackjob fundamentalists opposed to science, and a willingness to deny rights to minorities if they screw in a manner you find distasteful.

Two histories? There’s the hat trick. We’ve got the one that is proud of the positive accomplishments of America (and there are plenty), but does not flinch from recalling the atrocities of the Trail of Tears, the Japanese internment camps (in our own Idaho backyard, no less!), the world’s only wartime use of nukes, slavery, apartheid, covert foreign assassinations and coups, overthrow of foreign democracies, suspension of civil liberties, and many wars of imperialism leading to deaths of millions of innocent people worldwide. You’ve got the one where America is founded as a Christian Nation, the good ol’ days were when women and blacks knew their place, gay folks stayed securely in the closet and even then were fair game for assault and murder, and any of America’s so-called “travesties” are rationalized away as the means to an end.

All kidding aside, I don’t entirely disagree with your point. I’ve long believed that we may be just too fractured to stand as a union anymore. I’m all for letting the South rise again and letting the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states join their Confederacy. Let Jesusland be Jesusland — you’ll all be happier and we’ll be happier without you. Besides, we can take all that tax money we use to support your welfare-state asses and spend it on projects that benefit our people.

I’m not a fan of war. Radical Russ would be surprised to know that I’ve only supported two US military actions going in twice: Somalia and Afghanistan.

I supported Somalia because it was humanitarian and no one was supposed to be killed. At 12, you learned the lesson that war was about killing people by its nature. I supported Afghanistan because they wouldn’t turn over Osama.

I opposed Gulf War I as a 10 year-old, more because I was afraid of Saddam gassing the US. I opposed going into Haiti, Bosnia, and Kosovo. On the Iraq War, I had mixed feelings about going in. On one hand, I felt that Saddam was a threat and tended to give the President the benefit of the doubt on the intelligence plus I felt that after 13 years, it was time for some resolution. On the other, I feared for our troops, worried about the expense. At the end of the day, I was undecided but supported out troops. Now that we’re there, I feel have to win it. The only other option is to lose and to retreat and dishonor and I refuse to take a position that makes the deaths of those who’ve died in Iraq mean nothing.

At age 10 and 12 you’re considering the relative merits of our military adventures worldwide? Damn, kid, didn’t your parents get you a PlayStation or something? 😉

Now, about Iraq, just some questions:

Why does the President get your benefit of the doubt on Iraqi pre-war intelligence, but not the inspectors on the ground who knew for certain there were no WMDs?

After 13 years, when there were ongoing inspections and al-Samoud missiles were being destroyed, when our sanctions had isolated Saddam, when his military was decimated, when he was no longer considered a threat so much so that his neighbors wouldn’t even join our “coalition of the bribed”, when our planes patrolled no-fly zones in the north and south, what issue was still left to be resolved? (Please tell me it had something to do with torture in prisons, rape rooms, and mass graves… please!)

How does supporting the president and the administration when they lie to the American people and going to war with too few troops with too little armor against a country that didn’t attack us, had no involvement in 9/11, and diverted us from pursuing our real enemy (Osama, remember him?) translate into supporting our troops?

(“I support the troops” is so tired, as if anyone who disagrees with the president doesn’t support the troops. We all support the troops. I support them by not getting them killed unless absolutely necessary. Dead guys don’t give a shit whether they died in vain or not. I was a troop. Were you? Yeah, neither was the President, or the Vice President, or the Secretary of Defense, or the Deputy Secretary of Defense, or Sean Hannity, or Rush Limbaugh, or Bill O’Reilly, or Joe Scarborough…)

What do you mean by “win”? And why is the only other option to lose and retreat? Have you studied enough about the Vietnam War to realize how very familiar your sentence sounds? “Well, 1533 soldiers have died already, so we have to ensure that even more die so that the ones who’ve already died didn’t die in vain.”

Besides, I thought we already won. We went to war because of an imminet threat of WMD, we disarmed Saddam of the weapons he didn’t have, Mission Accomplished! No wait, we went to war to overthrow Saddam Hussein, we caught him in spider hole, Mission Accomplished! No, hold on, we went to war to liberate the Iraqi people from torture, rape rooms, and mass graves, Mission… uh, well, Transferred. No, I got it, we went to war to install an Iraqi democracy, the people have blue-stained fingers, Mission Accomplished! No, no, the ultimate goal is to make a world where America is safe from terrorism, and to fight them over there so we don’t have to fight them on American streets.

Sure enough, Mission Accomplished. A country where terrorists were unheard of (according to 2003 State Dept. maps) is now flush with terrorists killing our soldiers. And sure enough, there have been no terrorist attacks in America since 9/11. Why should there be; Osama has more to gain by letting us run roughshod over the Middle East than by attacking our homeland, thereby generating worldwide support for America. In 2001, only a few diehard Muslim extremists hated us. In 2005, a large portion of the Muslim world hates us, and even many of our allies distrust us. Mission Accomplished!

*redundant because “Idaho” and “Conservative” are virtually synonymous, reductionary because “The” presumes that an Idaho Conservative is a singular occurence.