The Patriot.08 -The America Haters

They are out there. You know it and I know it. I am talking about those people—those Americans—who hate America. And it troubles me … it troubles me greatly.

The worldview that I have enjoyed all of my life cannot make room for hating America. The sentiment does not fit into my personal perspective on human existence in the universe. It is not natural for me to relate to those who think that America is evil and that being an American brings with it a life altering shame—the kind of shame that led Natalie Maines to announce,

”We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas.”

First, let me clarify. I do not believe that Maines is an America hater. To my knowledge she has never stated such a thing. Rather she publicly, and boldly I might add, proclaimed her embarrassment to have come from the same state as a president who was about to start a war that she felt was ill-advised and inappropriate.

Perhaps I am somewhat soft-selling her true sentiments. She clearly felt very strongly about America’s engagement in Iraq, with deep enough convictions to speak boldly. And she must have understood, at least intuitively, the risk she was taking with her career.

I don’t wish to rehash Maines’ story again, although her proclamation provides me just enough insight into a worldview that is different from mine. I can relate to Maines’ embarrassment regarding presidential leadership. I find myself cringing when our current president boldly touts his worldview. We are all familiar with the so-called “apology tour” he took in the early months of his presidency. I was embarrassed. And you probably were, too. So we do share that one thing in common with Maines.

We share something else in common, too. We both want to change America’s leadership.

You and I want a return to Constitutional government. Maines and her crowd want … well I am not sure what they want. And sometimes I don’t think they are clear on that either.

America hating is in fashion in some American circles. But how … how does one get to be an America hater? I first encountered it in the mid-to-late sixties. I alluded to it in A Patriot’s Baseline.

As a teenager in 1968, I could understand the rage of the rioters in the black communities better than I could understand the Vietnam War protesters. At least the American inner city blacks—in fact all American blacks—had just cause for anger. After all, they had been stepped on, pushed down, and discriminated against for generations. I could get my mind and even my heart around their rage.

But because of my rich patriotic upbringing, it took me a long, long time to work through my thoughts and feelings about the war in Vietnam. I now think that war was a mistake. And more recently, I have had to work through the same internal thought processes regarding the war in Iraq (and I still am).

America does have some stains on its record. The institution of slavery is the most obvious error of human judgment in American history. It was deeply egregious and terribly wrong. Even 150 years after it was abolished, the after-effects still plague us. And our long chain of broken treaties with many native American tribes runs a very close second.

I can also understand, to some degree, the anger against the dark side of capitalism. In the latter 1800’s and the early 1900’s, the unions did serve a legitimate purpose in defending the tread-upon worker. And today, crony capitalism and particularly corporatism present me with some cause for concern.

• Crony Capitalism: enrichment of the well-connected; the flow of wealth to a small group of people who are already wealthy and well connected.
• Corporatism: running of state by large organizations: a system of running a state using the power of organizations such as businesses and labor unions that act, or claim to act, for large numbers of people.

Source: Encarta® World English Dictionary

Yes, there are plenty of things wrong with America. One might even make the argument that America has acted, in recent decades, like an imperialist nation. I do not support Ron Paul’s candidacy nor his foreign policy philosophy, but I do understand his thought processes.

I could produce a lengthy list. And when taken on the whole, without the other parts of the American story, I can see where one might possibly slide into hating America, or at least embracing an extremely gloomy outlook. Look only at the dark things, the bad things, the things that we as a nation have not done well, and added up, they might bring one to conclude that America is a bad country.

But I just can’t get there from here. I can concede our mistakes, our failures. I can look at some of our historic leaders (and present ones) and conclude that they were bad for the country. But I can’t hate America. I can’t hate America because there are far too many good things about America that are worth celebrating. I love who we wanted to be, at the beginning, at the start of the experiment in 1787. And as I reflect on the many, many stories unfolding as they have through our 235 year history, I see that the good far outweighs the bad.

Like patriotism, America hating must be learned. And to be learned, it must be taught. And to be taught, there must be intentionality. Chew on that for a while.

This post concludes the MIDDLE portion of our series, the part where we examine the patriotic abberations, the deformities of American patriotism.

Up next we will begin the END of our series, where we look at cures for what ails authentic patriotism in this country of ours.