Posted on 07/04/2004 9:35:51 AM PDT by MoralSense
By Jan Golab
I first heard "patriot" used derisively when I was a Vietnam War protester in the 1960s. "Patriot" and "flag-waver" were terms used to denigrate those we perceived as knee-jerk supporters of an immoral war. We felt we were the true patriots. We hated Nixon, because Tricky Dick portrayed us as anti-American. How dare he impugn our patriotism?
As it turned out, Nixon didn't need to smear anybody. When Jane Fonda went to North Vietnam, I knew immediately that the anti-war movement should condemn her. By giving aid, comfort and hope to the enemy, she had crossed a clear line between dissent and treason. So did many of my fellow dissidents who disrupted the Democratic Convention in 1968. I was shocked to hear Tom Hayden and others declare support for a communist victory in Vietnam. By failing to stand up to the radical left, the anti-war movement allowed itself to be defined by it.
Thirty-two years later, it feels like deja vu all over again.
Today's anti-war crowd becomes indignant when they are called unpatriotic. But whose fault is it they get tarred with that brush? Too many among them have adopted the rhetoric of the lunatic left -- America is "the real enemy" -- and coronated Michael Moore as their hero.
Whole lies, half-truths, false presumptions, ignored facts, faulty logic, snide innuendo, unflattering handpicked film footage, all deliberately packaged to denigrate the president and the war effort, do not amount to an act of patriotism. (Yes, I saw the film.) It also violates the basic American value of truth and fairness. No newspaper or magazine today would publish such a shameful hatchet job about anyone. (I know, as I've been a magazine journalist for 30 years.)
Saddam Hussein, the greatest tyrant of our time (2 million dead, and counting -- unmentioned in Moore's film) doesn't need to produce propaganda anymore, because he's outsourced the job to the American left. Indeed, Hezbollah has offered to help promote "Fahrenheit 9/11" in the Middle East. Most recently, Moore has compared the insurgents who are cutting off American heads in Iraq to the Minutemen in the American Revolution -- the real patriots. "Their numbers will grow and they will win," he says.
How's that for encouraging the enemy?
One of my college roommates in 1969 had a dirt-bag friend who crashed on our couch once for a few days. I told him I wanted the slimeball out of the house. "He's cool, man!" My roommate exclaimed. "He smokes dope, he likes the Beatles, he hates Nixon -- he's a bro', man."
I told him: "Charlie Manson smokes dope, listens to the Beatles and hates Nixon, but he's not my 'bro', man."
When your only criterion for "brotherhood" is a shared hatred, you will embrace slime. Nixon didn't need to run against McGovern. He ran against Jane Fonda, Tom Hayden, Abbie Hoffman, Bernadine Dohrn, The Chicago 7, The Black Panthers, the bomb-throwing Weather Underground and the SLA -- and Manson. He ran against the anti-American lunatic Left the Democrats should have thrown out of their house.
Today's anti-war activists should do the same with slimeball Moore, but instead they heap him with praise and awards. Moore's wacky conspiracy theories are as rooted in reality as Manson's belief that he was starting The Revolution.
Here is what John Kerry needs to say if he hopes to win in November:
"My fellow Americans, you know I am critical of President Bush. But I am not running for president because I share in some irrational and pathological hatred for the man. I am running because I believe I will make a better president. So I will not embrace propagandist Michael Moore simply because he hates President Bush and wants him defeated.
"While Mr. Moore's film makes some interesting points, it is not a fair or honest presentation of the facts. It is, in fact, deliberately unfair. It promotes conspiracy theories that are paranoid and don't make any sense. I believe President Bush acted hastily in Iraq, that he failed to deploy better diplomacy or gather a wider coalition. But to accuse him of sending our troops to die solely to enrich oil interests is both unfounded and unconscionable. It is a loathsome and unsupported charge, far worse than claims made by Clinton-haters about the death of Vince Foster.
"I refuse to embrace this man and thereby politicize the war in such a way that my rhetoric becomes ready-made propaganda for the enemy, to be used as a tool for the defeat of our troops and their great, noble effort."
Will Kerry have the courage to make that speech? Not likely. So whose fault will it be if he gets tarred by the same brush that tars Michael Moore?
I keep a picture on my bulletin board that was taken during one of the war protests at California State University, Northridge, this year. From the picture alone, you couldn't tell if it was taken in 1972 or 2004. A dozen angry students are shouting. One of them carries a sign that reads: "Imperialism needs Racism & War. Fight the real enemy."
Perhaps many of the students in the picture realize that the war in Iraq is not imperialistic or racist and that America is not the real enemy. But will they confront the sign carrier and give her a history lesson? Will anyone in the anti-war left brace her with the truth? No, they won't. Yet those same students will bristle if anyone accuses them of being unpatriotic.
So whose fault is it if people get that impression?
I keep the picture because it reminds me of what went wrong in the '60s (the lunatic left). Osama bin Laden probably keeps the same photo on a bulletin board in his cave to inspire him and encourage his followers.
Many of the people who are against the war and our president are indeed patriotic. But the horrible truth is that many of them are not. Today might be a good day to reflect on which group one belongs to.
During this momentous time of the inescapable great divide, two very different camps will be celebrating today. One will be rooting for our victory in Iraq, the historic liberation of 25 million Iraqis and the establishment of a free nation in the Middle East. The other camp will be rooting for defeat, hyping our failures, chortling over "Fahrenheit 9/11," bloviating their conspiracies and their hate.
I'll be watching fireworks with the flag-wavers. The patriots.
Jan Golab is a San Fernando Valley resident and author of "The Dark Side of the Force: A True Story of Corruption and Murder in the LAPD."
Good points. Bump to the top!
That's why feminists embraced Marxism. Now they are in the position of siding with misogynistic Islamofacists against capitalism. Fools.
The 2004 election will be the Patriots against the Hatriots, god help us if Patriots lose.
This is an excellent article. Thanks for posting.
Hatriots led by the pig-faced, lowbrow, inconsistent blowhard Michael Moore.
John Kerry will never make that speech the author of this excellent piece suggests. He should also denounce his mentor, Ted Kennedy, but he never will. Anything that helps him defeat President Bush is all right by him.
As other posters have said, God help us if Kerry and the Hatriots win.
The Democrats have embraced the lunatic left and its radical demogogues have now become the face of the party. Thank you Michael Moore et al.
There was a fair amount of anti-Vietnam-War activism that was strongly anti-communist. Some even made a distinction between the southern guerillas (Viet Cong) and the NVA. The US communists turned their wrath on those in the anti-war who were also anti-communist just as the NVA turned on and murdered the NLF.
BTW, Viet Cong originally was a pejorative for the country-based fighters equivalent to "hillbilly" but a bit more derogatory. "Cong" does not mean communist, but the Orwellian language folk hammered away so that the distinction was lost.
If Kerry were to confront the Loony Left and drive out of the Democratic Party, most Americans would be with him. I just don't see him having the guts to stand up to them. Nothing in his history or character tells us that Kerry will take a stand against the paranoid types who've come to dominate the Left. The truth is, he needs their votes to stay competitive with President Bush. The moment he denounces the Walter Daum wing of the Democratic Party is the moment he will be as hated as Bush. Jan Golab is right on what Kerry must do - and won't - if the Democratic Party is to have a future.
The voice of the "loyal opposition". It's hard to hear it anymore above the din of chaos.
A distinction that did not, in fact, exist, except among some fuzzy-thinking South Vietnamese communists who were exploited by the DRVN leaders, and the even more fuzzy-thinking American leftists who tried to triangulate between the USA and its enemies.
From 1959 and even earlier the "southern guerillas" were under the political and military leadership of northern cadres. Everyone knew it, except that handful of naive Vietnamese commies, and the much larger group of American fellow travelers. The memoirs of NV leaders make this crystal clear - they never saw it as anything but one country, under their dictatorship.
d.o.l.
Criminal Number 18F
Interesting. I thought it was one of the renderings of "Cong" which means "carry on the back," as a farm laborer would do.
In any case, in the south "Viet Cong" remains a pejorative to this very day and is usually said with some amount of venom and an expression of disgust.
Everyone from Hue northwards is referred to as "Viet Cong," and the term also connotes (along with adherence to communism) backwardness, stupidity, corruption, and generally crude and rustic behavior and attitudes.
Wifey's uncle (Vietnamese) was once an English teacher and he rants and rails that the current sitting Politburo in Hanoi is packed with a bunch of backwoods hicks who never went to school, cannot speak proper Vietnamese, and who mostly carry faked educational credentials provided by their other Viet Cong pals in Hanoi.
sedition (si;"dIS@n, sI-) Forms: 4 sedici(o)un, seducioun, Sc. sedicione, seduccione, 5 cedicioun, 5–6 sedicion, 6 sedycyon, sedytyon, Sc. sediciounn, sedetione, 6– sedition. [a. OF. sedition (mod.F. sédition), ad. L. sUditiZn-em, f. sUd- (see se-) + itiZn-em a going, n. of action f. Wre to go. Cf. Sp. sedicion, Pg. sedição, It. sedizione. †1. Violent party strife; an instance of this, esp. a factious contest attended with rioting and disorder. Obs. 2. a. A concerted movement to overthrow an established government; a revolt, rebellion, mutiny. Now rare. b. Conduct or language inciting to rebellion against the constituted authority in a state. †3. Of inanimate things: Tumult, uproar. [After L. seditio; in quot. 1640 with allusion to sense 2.]
The ME. spelling seducioun, seduccione are due to pseudoetymological association with L. sUdGcSre seduce v.] c1375 Sc. Leg. Saints ii. (Paulus) 163 Þe folk of rowme+Raisit in hym sedicione, and wald have brokyn his palace done.
Ibid. v. (Johannes) 291 Al þa þat mad sacrifice til mawmentis+In þe puple (raisit) seduccione a-gane sancte Iohne.
a1380 S. Ambrose 113 in Horstm. Altengl. Leg. (1878) 10 Þei neore not alle in on red, Þer ros a gret sediciun Tofore þat ilke elecciun.
1382 Wyclif Mark xv. 7 Barabas, that was boundan with sleeris of men, and that hadde don manslauŠtre in seducioun, that is, debaat in cytee.
Ibid., Acts xxiv. 5 We han foundun this man+stiringe sedicioun, or dissencioun, to alle Jewis+and auctour of seducioun of the secte of Nazarens.
1402 Pol. Poems (Rolls) II. 56 Foure angels singnefien foure general synnes,+cediciouns, supersticions, the glotouns, and the proude.
1447 O. Bokenham Seyntys, Agnes 490 And wyth her wurdys a sedycyoun lo Among þe peple dede grow.
c1477 Caxton Jason 77b, And some ther were couetous desiring their singuler prouffit accorded unto this sedicion.
1529 More Dyaloge i. Wks. 150/2 As though these men were Apostles now specially sent by god to preache heresyes and sow sedicion among christen men.
1536 St. Papers Hen. VIII, II. 356 For this cuntrey passith all that ever I sawe, for ministration of sedition and discorde.
1549 Compl. Scot. ix. 78 Thair vas gryt sedition and discentione amang al the gryt personagis of grece.
1602 Segar Honor, Mil. & Civ. iv. i. iii, When the Romanes were diuided, one faction labouring to oppresse another+such enimitie was called Sedition.
1628 Hobbes Thucydides (1822) 87 But there would be thoughts of sedition in one towards another in the city.
1585 T. Washington tr. Nicholay's Voy. iv. xxix. 150 Messenie+was giuen to reuolting & seditions.
1607–12 Bacon Ess., Seditions (Arb.) 398 The matter of seditions is of two kindes, Much povertye and much discontent.
1689 Locke Toleration 50 Seditions are very frequently raised, upon pretence of Religion.
1755 Johnson, Sedition, a tumult; an insurrection; a popular commotion; an uproar.
1788 Gibbon Decl. & F. xlviii. V. 83 With the dawn of day the city burst into a general sedition.
1842 Elphinstone Hist. India II. 65 The tribe had turned into a turbulent democracy+; a sedition had broken out about the property left by Kuttaul.
1875 Jowett Plato (ed. 2) V. 327 By reason of inequality, cities are filled with seditions.
1886 Encycl. Brit. XXI. 620/1 In the Acts of Congress [of the United States] the word ‘sedition’ appears to occur only in the army and navy articles. A soldier joining any sedition or who, being present at any sedition, does not use his utmost endeavour to suppress the same is punishable with death.
1838 W. Bell Dict. Law Scot. s.v., Sedition is distinguished from leasing-making, in this respect, that the object of leasing-making is to disparage or prejudice the private character of the Sovereign, whereas sedition is directed against the order and tranquility of the State.
1877 Act. 40 & 41 Vict. c. 21 §40 [A] prisoner+on conviction for sedition or seditious libel shall be treated as a misdemeanant of the first division.
1883 Stephen Hist. Crim. Law II. xxiv. 298 As for sedition itself I do not think that any such offence is known to English law.
1887 Chamberlain Sp. 11 Oct. Sp. Irish Question (1890) 49 Loyalty in the House of Commons—Irish loyalty—is represented only by seventeen votes, and sedition, on the contrary, enjoys a majority of eighty-six votes.
1556 Olde Antichrist 92 Murtherous sedicion sowers, and open churche robbers.
1801 A. Hamilton Wks. (1886) VII. 193 As to the sedition law, we refer you to the debates in Congress.
1865 Daily Tel. 2 Dec. 6/5 Native sedition-mongers.
1886 Encycl. Brit. XXI. 620/1 In 1798 an Act of Congress called the Sedition Act was passed, which expired by effluxion of time in 1801.
1898 Westm. Gaz. 24 Jan. 9/3 A correspondent at Madras telegraphs to-day that a joint public meeting of Hindoos and Mohammedans was held there+to protest against the sedition law amendments.
1908 Ibid. 28 July 9/1 The trial of some sedition-monger in India.
1640 Habington Castara iii. 220 When the distracted Ocean Swells to Sedition, and obeyes no Law.
1671 R. Bohun Wind 12 But what Seditions, Eddies and Undulations must this cause in the whole body of Air.
Happy Fourth of July ......PING....to an excellent article!
Happy Birthday U.S.A.!!!
Hi Julie! Thanks for 'pinging' the 2 good articles.
Happy Independence Day!!
Bumpity bump!
Bump!
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