Reckless Hate

There's a scene in a popular movie, where the evil hordes of mutant balls of seething hatred are breaking into the fortress, and the king stares at the inside of the last gates, which are crumbling... and he says "What can mere men do against such reckless hate?"

"Ride out with me. Ride out and meet them."

In that context, I quote the entirety of an op-ed published and praised by Salem-News.

http://www.salem-news.com/articles/july152009/american_problem_7-15-09.php

Here it is:

The American Problem
By Daniel Johnson Salem-News.com
Because America is such a huge economy and military power, it has influences, positive and negative, virtually everywhere on the earth. The American problem, in fact, the world’s problem, is that as long as Americans continue to act, politically and militarily, as if they are the only people on earth, the future looks rocky indeed—for everyone.

(CALGARY, Alberta) - On the second day of her confirmation hearings, judge Sonia Sotomayor was asked about the influence of foreign law. She said: “American law does not permit the use of foreign law or international law to interpret the Constitution.

That's a given. . . . There is no debate on that question; there's no issue about that question.” She could say nothing else. When other Supreme Court justices in the past (O’Connor and Ginsberg) have mentioned taking wisdom from other jurisdictions, they received death threats.

Clarence Thomas said that the Court should never “impose foreign moods, fads or fashions on Americans.” To dismiss the extensive legal traditions of some of the other great nations of the world as “moods, fads or fashions” is nothing short of ignorant.

Which reminds me of a joke. A man dies and goes to heaven. St. Peter is showing him around and the man notices a high wall and what sounds like voices on the other side. What’s the wall for, he asks St. Peter. Not so loud, St. Peter replies. Catholics over there. They think they’re the only one up here.

This applies to Earth and the human race. To hear many Americans on the topic, they are the only ones on the planet. But to paraphrase Robert Pirsig, author of Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance, "Why, for example, should a group of simple, stable compounds of carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen struggle for billions of years to organize themselves into [an American citizen]? What's the motive?"

But, of course, a majority of Americans, believing as they do in Christian-oriented religions probably wouldn’t even understand that little joke and if they do, would probably be offended.

The Myth of American Exceptionalism

Earlier this year, Roger Cohen in the New York Times, reviewed a book called The Myth of American Exceptionalism by the British writer Godfrey Hodgson and acknowledged American exceptionalism: “The high number of its prison inmates is exceptional. The quality of its health care is exceptionally bad. The degree of its social inequality is exceptionally acute. Public education has gone into exceptional decline. The Americanization of the Holocaust and uncritical support for Israel have demonstrated an exceptional ability to gloss over uncomfortable truths, including broad American indifference to Hitler’s genocide as it happened.”

This exposes the foundation of the American Problem—the belief that America and its people and somehow favored by their Christian God.

But, says Rush Limbaugh: “America is the solution to the world’s problems. We are not the problem.” au contraire, counters Cohen, “The culture wars saw the rise of a new Christian right intent on defending its conception of American values not only against metrosexual coastal cities but also against a death-penalty-deriding Canada and Europe. The result, Hodgson argues, is an America unique not for its virtue but for its failings and illusions.”

Hodgson argues that “what has been essentially a liberating set of beliefs has been corrupted over the past 30 years or so by hubris and self-interest into what is now a dangerous basis for national policy and for the international system.”

The corruption began before that. Part of American Exceptionalism is the idea that the magical system called Capitalism has made America great.

But, wrote Ferdinand Lundberg in the late 1960s: “Whereas European royalty and nobility played profound integral roles in European history, the latter-day American rich were more like hitchhikers who opportunistically climbed aboard a good thing. They produced neither the technology, the climate, the land, the people nor the political system. Nor did they, like many European groups (as in England) take over the terrain as invading conquerors. Rather did they infiltrate the situation from below, insinuate themselves into opportunely presented economic gaps, subvert various rules and procedures, and, as it were ride a rocket to the moon and beyond, meanwhile through their propagandists presenting themselves, no less, as the creators of machine industrialization which was in fact copied from England and transplanted into a lush terrain.”

Capitalism, wrote Lundberg, is a failure system:

“In business, under the American system, hundreds of thousands more have failed, generation after generation, than the few who have succeeded. If we are to judge by the preponderance of individual successes over failures or vice versa, then the American system, businesswise, is a record of steady, almost unrelieved failure. It has failure literally built into it. It is indeed a near-miracle, front page news, when anyone really makes it. This judicious observation sounds paradoxical only because it contradicts conventional propaganda.”

That was 1968. As Jay Goltz wrote last week in the NYT, “The Dark Side of Entrepreneurship”:

“Some 70 percent of businesses fail within seven years, according to the Small Business Administration. In the worst cases, the result is not only business failure but also complete financial failure. What I have learned is that the damage doesn’t stop there. I share this with you as an attempt to bring some reality to the conversation about entrepreneurship. It is not just about passion and innovation and bringing your dog to work. It is also about risk, tenacity and fear. It is also about the repercussions of bad luck, bad decisions and bad economies. I know of four business owners in Chicago who have taken their own lives since the economy turned.”

Because America is such a huge economy and military power, it has influences, positive and negative, virtually everywhere on the earth. The American problem, in fact, the world’s problem, is that as long as Americans continue to act, politically and militarily, as if they are the only people on earth, the future looks rocky indeed—for everyone.
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And so I ask... what can mere men do against such reckless hate?

Hate is the only thing I can think of that would motivate people to write the horrible tripe I quoted.

Let's look at it a bit...

Clarence Thomas said that the Court should never “impose foreign moods, fads or fashions on Americans.” To dismiss the extensive legal traditions of some of the other great nations of the world as “moods, fads or fashions” is nothing short of ignorant."

No, Daniel. The principle of self governance means that laws and the power of the state only exists by the CONSENT of the governed. Imposing laws written by others is not self governance, it is tyranny.

But, says Rush Limbaugh: “America is the solution to the world’s problems. We are not the problem.” au contraire, counters Cohen, “The culture wars saw the rise of a new Christian right intent on defending its conception of American values not only against metrosexual coastal cities but also against a death-penalty-deriding Canada and Europe. The result, Hodgson argues, is an America unique not for its virtue but for its failings and illusions.”

Think about that. The only thing worthy of note in America, is it's failings. Really? I think not. The kind of hate that drives that kind of hyperbole and vile rhetoric cannot be merely human.

Capitalism, wrote Lundberg, is a failure system:

“In business, under the American system, hundreds of thousands more have failed, generation after generation, than the few who have succeeded. If we are to judge by the preponderance of individual successes over failures or vice versa, then the American system, businesswise, is a record of steady, almost unrelieved failure. It has failure literally built into it. It is indeed a near-miracle, front page news, when anyone really makes it. This judicious observation sounds paradoxical only because it contradicts conventional propaganda.”

That's "judicious"? No, it's insanity.

To use that standard of measurement, the entire human race is an utter failure. We fall many more times than we learn to walk. You only do that once in your life. The number of times you fall while doing that may be huge. The measurement of success is not whether you fall trying to learn to walk, but whether you get up one more time than you fall. To judge humanity by the yardstick the author suggests, is to say that anyone who fails to walk the first time proves that walking is an invalid means of travel.

Sadly, the only means by which one can view life in such a fatal and unworkable way... Is to be so filled with negativity, that one cannot recognize reality.

So, people of good will and sense... We cannot just let them win. Come with me... go out and meet them. And make such a fight, as it will be remembered.