Catholic and Enjoying It!
Obama is currently a greater hero to most Americans than Jesus Christ.
Which reminds me of some pointed but true remarks Daniel Larison was making this weekend:
One of the most tired accusations is that so-and-so “blames America first,” which in a more sane world would be understood as taking responsibility for one’s own flaws. One would think that a more damning charge would be to say that someone never blames America, and so refuses to take responsibility for anything done in her, our, name, but even this use of the word blame is misguided. In fact, most of the people who “blame America first” go to great lengths to identify the flaws of America only with the parts of the country unlike theirs and only with the people on the other side of cultural and political divides. The more comprehensive the critique, the fewer people there are who want to hear it. When making a cultural critique of private habits, the resistance becomes even more fierce. The more prophetic and less convenient the warning, the less political traction it has because it unites more enemies against it. To call for self-restraint, rather than self-congratulation and self-rewarding, from everyone is necessarily to be a voice in the wilderness.
Obviously, there are different degrees of responsibility. Not everyone is equally responsible for our predicament, but neither is anyone entirely free of responsibility. One of the worst traits of populist rhetoric is its capacity to find scapegoats and evade the responsibility that the people themselves have for their predicament, so it follows that a populist agenda that is expressed in terms of self-criticism will make many enemies and win few friends. I think this may help explain why “Come Home, America” grates on so many ears, instead of sounding like a clarion call. To call for America to come home suggests that she has gone astray, and so it means that we as a nation have gone astray, which is to do the worst thing possible in a political campaign: tell your audience the truth about them.
What does any of this have to do with the original discussion? To the extent that people conventionally define patriotism as collectively denying national responsibility and exulting in national pride, it is not surprising that it should wax and wane with electoral fortunes of different factions. It is telling that this discussion was prompted by the argument currrently circulating that there can now be an unabashed left-patriotism on account of Obama’s election, as if patriotism or the expression of it can or should be contingent on the faction currently running the state. Now that Obama is in office, the argument seems to go, the left can indulge in the pretense that we can do no wrong and other nations hate us for our freedom (or whatever virtue they would like to trumpet at the time). If patriotism were actually contingent on such things, I would submit that it wasn’t really patriotism at all. Indeed, evading responsibility, shifting blame and invoking our exceptional status are all reliable ways of escaping patriotic duties and the hard choices that go with them. Critics of such “patriotism,” which is not really patriotism at all, are necessarily going against the optimistic grain, as optimism permits the perpetual deferral of hard choices.
Patriotism is simply the second greatest commandment extended to your borders. The genius of the prophets was that they knew it was the *second* greatest commandment and always subordinated it to the first greatest commandment. Jingos elevate the second greatest commandment and regard any criticism of the country at “blaming America first”. America haters reject the duty of patriotism altogether. Secular messianists subordinate the second greatest commandment to something besides the greatest commandment, turning America into some sort of vehicle to achieve some other good than God as the ultimate good. But real patriots keep the two commandments in right order, loving their country as God loves us, not as payback, but because she is our mother. However, just as nobody says “My mother, drunk or sober” so no true son of his mother says “My country, right or wrong.” Instead, if Mom is a drunk, we move heaven and earth to try to help her get sober and we, out of love, ignore her when she protests you “blaming me first” as we drive her to the rehab clinic.
For most of my life, the most narcissistic generation in the history of the world has indeed defined patriotism as taking credit for everything and taking responsibilitty for nothing. The people who were supposed to be the grownups leading us for the past eight years have led the charge in this. Result: an obese nation of Jerry Springer and Oprah-catechized sub prime debtors (and the Wall Street sharks whose greed was their own trap), all in happy concord with a bipartisan coalition of pols whose incometence is only exceeded by their arrogance are now poised to plunge us, with a grand harmonious unity, into the Greater Depression. A more eloquent testimonial to original sin and the mystery of evil you can hardly see, made all the more poignant by the fact that, as these clowns do this, they still labor to a) figure out a way to kill as many children as possible before the whole system comes down and b) acclaim the guy who is presiding over the catastrophe as greater than Jesus Christ.
For my part, I believe the real patriots are going to be the people who do the thankless work of pointing out to plump Americans that Jesus’ first words to us not “Way to go!” or “You should be so *proud*!” or “Western values! Wow!” but “Repent!”
Seems like a good week to celebrate Ash Wednesday. We need it–bad.
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