If Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Harry Reid had to write the
Declaration of Independence and Constitution from scratch, what
would those documents say? Would they read like the current ones?
No, they would read like the platform of the Democratic Party.
Barack Obama’s America started not in 1776 but around 2006. By
letting slip the comment, “For the first time in my adult life, I
am really proud of my country,” Michelle Obama said as much.
The only question that remains is: If Obama wins, will the
Democrats have the courage of their convictions? Will they hold a
sort of ongoing constitutional convention and transform America
into the liberal country of their dreams — the America in their
minds which they identify now as the source of true patriotism?
Politics and parasitism would appear to be the only obstacles
that could stop them: fearing a backlash, they might temporize
and moderate their plans, or like Bill Clinton they might not
want to risk total chaos by devouring the conservative host
whole. Liberalism, after all, has to feed off the lingering order
of conservatism for it to exist at all. Were liberalism
implemented fully and purely, the disorder unleashed, as even
Clinton sensed, would make life increasingly impossible.
Then again, absolute power could corrupt absolutely and
Clinton-era circumspection may now appear to the Democrats
hopelessly passé. Debates in D.C. seem to shift ever leftward,
with last year’s liberal positions becoming this year’s
unacceptably reactionary ones — a trend that is bound to
accelerate under a Democratic monopoly of all three branches of
government.
The extent to which the 1960s counter-culture has become the
culture and 1960s anti-Americanism become the new patriotism is
amazing. That’s why Obama could launch his political career in
the living room of a domestic terrorist and pay almost no price
for it. As Chris Matthews lectured Pat Buchanan on Hardball last
Friday night, Ayers was a terrorist with a worthy motivation: he
bombed the Pentagon because he wanted America out of Vietnam, a
blameless goal indeed. Under the Left’s tortured understanding of
the new patriotism, even Jeremiah Wright is pro-American: his
fulminations had the purpose of drawing America into the light.
Patriotism is now measured not by respect for the conservatism
contained in the Declaration of Independence and Constitution but
by the level of one’s enthusiasm for the America to come.
To be a good American now means you nod vigorously as an Obama
supporter at a cocktail party bashes the Boy Scouts as bigots
while explaining to you why Obama’s association with the
“distinguished” education professor (as Congressman Rahm Emanuel
put it) Bill Ayers is no big deal. It means you chuckle along
with Joe Biden as he tells Ellen DeGeneres that conservative
Californians are deluded to oppose gay marriage.
Or it means listening in hushed awe as unimpeachable American
hero Colin Powell calls the most liberal Republican presidential
nominee ever “narrow” and insufficiently “inclusive,” and scolds
unnamed Americans for objecting to the notion of a Muslim
president. (I was half-expecting him to join Barney Frank in
calling for the elimination of the Constitution’s prohibition on
foreign-born presidents. Surely that’s not “inclusive” either.)
What was once considered the anti-American Left now has the power
to define who is and who is not a good American. Seeing victory
in sight, they grow more bold and unapologetic. Over the last few
days, instead of denying charges thrown at Obama, they have
readily conceded them and basically said: So what?
To them, Obama’s “spreading the wealth around” comment isn’t a
cringe-inducing gaffe but an appaluse line and sound basis for
policy. What’s wrong with the state redistributing wealth? more
than a few of them have asked, including, by the way, Colin
Powell after his Meet the Press appearance before reporters.
Here, too, we see the new Americanism at work: where the founding
fathers saw King George III’s overtaxation as an occasion to
start the country, an enlightened modern American is expected to
join Joe Biden in welcoming new taxes as a “patriotic” duty.
Under the unholy triumvirate of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, good
Americans will be expected to entrust their economy to
redistributionists, their defense to pacifists, and their culture
to proponents of abortion and gay marriage. Expect a crisis
within six months should Obama win, promises Joe Biden. Perhaps
he is right, but the first one is more likely to be domestic than
international.
