America The Cowardly–Fight Or Flight If America Were Attacked

A new Quinnipiac poll asking Americans what they would do if Russians invaded America indicated startling results.  Among 18-34 year olds – prime fighting and draft age – nearly fifty percent (50%) said they would leave the country.  Just 38 percent of African-Americans said they would stay and fight versus 59 percent who’d leave.

What is going on here?  Why have the younger generation of Americans and a significant proportion of minorities say that they have no obligation to defend the country?  Some critics have concluded that the progressive cult of identity, inclusion, and the recasting of ‘civil rights’ as a me-first free for all is at least partly responsible.  Americans who have been told for years that their personal value is a function of sex, race, and ethnicity and that their primary responsibility is to increase their social worth and that of their identity group, are not likely to think of country first.

The commonweal, the ethical community envisaged by Jefferson in which all Americans pursuing life, liberty, and happiness would do so only within a larger, social context has become a thing of the past.  America has become a country of divided, contrary interests, and a zero sum game.  Black people cannot find true independence, worth, or essential value unless white people are maligned, demoted, and dismissed.

Women, long sufferers of male patriarchy and misogyny, can only rise to their true place in society if men are decommissioned, deposed, and removed from positions of authority attained only by sexual greed.  Gay people cannot simply live and let live, enjoy their freedom in a newly-tolerant nation, but must promote homosexuality and other gender alternatives as the best that human nature has to offer, and the best that society can affirm.

The Biden Administration was elected on a platform of social reform, and from the very first days in office made it clear that the President was on the side of ‘the oppressed, the marginalized, and overlooked’ and would do everything in his power to give the black man his due, women their rights, and transgenders their place in the sun. 

Every elected or nominated government official, every teacher, every union member, ever corporate executive would have to change their ways.  Nothing was more important than encouraging the oppressed to speak out proudly about their racial, sexual, or ethnic identity, to dismantle the assumptions and instruments of social conservatism, and make the country truly diverse.

This effort of course, has its consequences.  A country rebuilt on the  basis of race and sex and the culture of individual identity cannot possibly cohere as a nation.  There is no longer a national ethos, one to which everyone subscribes.  Freedom is for those who haven’t had any, progressives say. The abrogation of legal rights, the denunciation of the European civilizations from which whites have descended, and the jettisoning of any of the principles of the Enlightenment are the mantra, meme, and policy of progressive reform. The ideas of Jefferson’s universal freedom, God-given rights, and the pursuit of responsible happiness have become excess baggage.

There is still a national ethos in China, one built around Confucianism and its precepts of honor, duty, and responsibility, and evocative of the country’s imperial past.  There is a similar ethos in Russia, no matter how the West may dismiss Putin’s reflections on Czarist, imperial glory.

Erdogan’s invocation of the greatness of thousands of years of Goturk, Seljuk, Mamluk, and Ottoman Empires; the Ayatollahs’ submission to Allah and the faith in the central role of Islam; or India’s claim to the legacy of the Hindu Maurya and Gupta kingdoms cannot be dismissed.

These countries have more than process at their heart – more than just concepts of individualism, opportunity, equality, justice to be weighed and adjudicated, but fundamental, central, ineradicable points of culture.

Without such an ethos – a belief in the overall value of a country, not just the worth of the individual– a country can never be united, strong, and confident.  It is no surprise that without such a cultural, philosophical, foundational ethos, that many Americans would turn tail and run when something more than their personal sovereignty is threatened.

Decades of internecine, brutal, and venal fighting in Congress have exacerbated this sense of me-too politics.  How can any American look at the shameful absurdities of Congress – both Democrat and Republican – and come away with a sense of duty to country? How indeed can they see the equally shameless lies, distortions, and deliberate, self-serving manipulations of fact by individual politicians and feel patriotism?

Not only is there no philosophical or cultural ethos in the country; and not only have individualism and identity politics eroded whatever Jeffersonian vestiges there might still be, government is a three-ring circus, complete with high-wire acts, lion tamers, bearded ladies, and babies with two heads.  It cannot be taken seriously even by the most patriotic. Congress and its politicians are what is wrong with the county, not what is right.

The hypocrisy of these American politicians is breathtaking.  As Russia invades Ukraine, they shake their fingers at the untoward aggression and autocratic rule; and yet they forget the history of America’s spheres of influence – the policy that Latin America was ours, and to keep it within our orbit, invasion of Cuba, toppling legitimate governments in Chile and Argentina, and backing autocratic strongmen in Argentina and Brazil was justified.

Southeast Asia was also within our extended sphere of influence and the war in Vietnam was a military expression of this conviction.  Our adventurism to keep countries within our orbit continued in Afghanistan and Iraq.

Worst of all is the United States’ firm resolution not to confront the Russians with military power. However phrased, however couched in diplomatic language, and no matter how much the President can shake his fist at Putin, his refusal to commit American aircraft, arms, and troops in Ukraine says only one thing – America is afraid of the Russians.

Patriotism under all these conditions? Hardly.  Head for the South Pacific, lie under the palms with a lovely, café-au-lait beauty, and wait until the ruckus is over.

Every single one of our adversaries is taking note.  They see a flaccid, selfish and self-centered society, a government whose hands are bloody from all its past political ‘indiscretions’, and an administration who would rather run than fight. The North Koreans have just launched an ICBM, the Ayatollahs are continuing to develop nuclear weapons, China knows that it has a patsy in the White House, and we rattle on about gender choice, toppling statues, and howling foul. 

It is a sad state of affairs, and this recent poll has only confirmed what most observers already knew.