{"id":50141,"date":"2020-07-16T06:00:31","date_gmt":"2020-07-16T10:00:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/?p=50141"},"modified":"2020-07-13T17:48:48","modified_gmt":"2020-07-13T21:48:48","slug":"should-we-repudiate-americas-past-or-its-present","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/geneveith\/2020\/07\/should-we-repudiate-americas-past-or-its-present\/","title":{"rendered":"Should We Repudiate America’s Past or Its Present?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There is now some push-back against the angst-ridden repudiation of America\u2019s history and culture on the part of Americans themselves.<\/p>\n

My son-in-law sent me a link to this article by a British immigrant to the USA, which first appeared in the Wall Street Journal<\/em> but which was reprinted in an Australian newspaper:<\/p>\n

From Gerard Baker,\u00a0Defend America\u2019s History\u2014and Retake Its Institutions<\/a>\u00a0[subscription required]:<\/p>\n

At the end of the 20th century, the U.S. had won World War II and the Cold War, liberated half the planet from history\u2019s most dehumanizing ideologies, advanced a free-market capitalism that had led more humans out of poverty than any economic system ever devised, and given the world the richest bounty of intellectual, cultural and scientific capital since the Enlightenment. Americans could\u2014and did\u2014look at themselves and the nation they had built with immense pride.<\/p>\n

\n

Twenty years later much of the country\u2019s political leadership, almost its entire academic establishment, most of the people who control its news and cultural output, and a good deal of its corporate elite view America as an irredeemably malignant force for enslavement and oppression, a uniquely evil power founded on an ideology of racial supremacy. These Jacobins demand that Americans repudiate most of the nation\u2019s history, tear down the icons of its creation, and engage in a cultural expurgation of its sins.<\/p>\n

There are, indeed, reasons for this reversal in America\u2019s self-image.\u00a0 \u201cThe rot in America\u2019s cultural institutions was spread for more than half a century by a self-loathing cultural establishment,\u201d says Baker. \u201cNow it has matured amid a public malaise induced by 20 years of elite-driven political and economic failure that has undermined faith in the system that made America great.\u201d<\/p>\n

Baker goes on to blame our educational establishment, the failures of our political leadership, and the corruption of American capitalism.\u00a0 \u201cThe modern woke corporation publicly disdains and derides the values on which the nation\u2014and its profits\u2014were built, even as it pursues global opportunities at the expense of American communities.\u201d\u00a0 He concludes:<\/p>\n

This country hasn\u2019t passed from great to evil in two decades. America hasn\u2019t failed. But Americans have been failed\u2014misled by inept and deceitful political leaders, deserted by predatory and mercenary corporate chiefs, and, above all, betrayed by a parasitic cultural elite that exploited American freedom to trash the country. It isn\u2019t America\u2019s history that needs to be repudiated. It\u2019s its present.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

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<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

It\u2019s interesting that both this defense of America and its attackers are highly critical of big corporations!<\/p>\n

America is exceptional both in its achievements and in its capacity for self-criticism.\u00a0 Perhaps it\u2019s because our ideals are so high that the reality never fully measures up.\u00a0 Even this defense of America is in the form of a critique of our educational, political, and economic establishments.<\/p>\n

HT:\u00a0 Adam<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Image by\u00a0Alexey Hulsov<\/a>\u00a0from\u00a0Pixabay<\/a>\u00a0<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n<\/blockquote><\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

America is exceptional both in its achievements and in its capacity for self-criticism.\u00a0 Perhaps it’s because our ideals are so high that the reality never fully measures up.\u00a0 Here is a defense of America that is in the form of a critique of our educational, political, and economic establishments.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1281,"featured_media":50212,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,36],"tags":[143,3746,585,9769,3531],"class_list":["post-50141","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-america","category-politics","tag-american-exceptionalism","tag-american-history","tag-corporations","tag-critiques-of-america","tag-protests"],"yoast_head":"\nShould We Repudiate America's Past or Its Present?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"America is exceptional both in its achievements and in its capacity for 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