Is the Hard Left at War With the American Idea?

I think the current controversy over immigration reform points to a larger issue in America today, which is that Americans are essentially split on the very idea of what America is and should be.

It used to be that Americans mostly agreed that in order to attain citizenship, immigrants had to not only come to this country legally but also demonstrate, after training and study in the American system, that they believed in the unique United States Constitution and embraced what it means to be an American. Though that still occurs in the naturalization process, we seem to have abandoned it altogether in connection with the immigration debate.

What sense does it make that we seek to instill a love of America in those earnestly seeking to acquire legal citizenship through the proper procedures but ignore it altogether in our rush to legalize 11 million illegals?

One major difficulty is that the hard but extremely influential American left, by and large, doesn't seem to have any special affinity for the American idea, the gloriousness of the U.S. Constitution or even the notion of national identity at all, which they associate with intolerance, cultural chauvinism and anti-globalism.

Indeed, hard-leftists don't just disagree with many of America's founding ideals; they believe that it's somehow backward even to have such ideals, because to them, it reflects a prejudice against other systems, cultures and values.

So, you see, this is not really a debate over whether the American system and the ideas and values undergirding it produced the greatest nation in world history and thus should be preserved. It is a core disagreement about whether it's even proper and desirable to endorse a unique set of founding ideals as being superior to any other.

But I ask you: What nation has ever survived, much less thrived, when it lost its national identity?

But just as the left blocks proposals to reduce federal spending and entitlement reform while claiming to support them, it is doing everything it can to block border enforcement. Barbarians aren't at the gate; they are inside and blocking the erection of the gate.

Why would any American citizen want to encourage immigrants to come to this country and not embrace America? Yet how can we doubt that leftists want that result when they flood our universities with like-minded colleagues who are indoctrinating their students against embracing it and when President Obama identifies with La Raza, the militant Mexican nationalist group?

It's not the right wing that is constantly berating the United States before the United Nations. It is not originalist Supreme Court justices refusing to recommend the U.S. Constitution as a model for Egypt. It is not right-wing university professors (to the extent that this species is not wholly extinct) loading up their curricula with courses denouncing everything imaginable about the United States. It is not a conservative presidential candidate who vowed to fundamentally change America and then proceeded to do so once in office.

But what does being American or supporting American ideals even mean anymore? Let's take one example. Can we all agree that promoting a strong work ethic was something almost all Americans once agreed on? Weren't self-reliance and rugged individualism -- a can-do attitude -- admired traits that were understood not to conflict with Christian charity and compassion?

Yet today our leftist ruling class is making it noble to be on government assistance and ignoble to work and produce. Call that hyperbole if you choose, but I hear a president who is constantly berating capitalism, the free market, business and those who have been successful. He has incentivized states to expand their food stamp rolls, reversed welfare reforms, extended unemployment benefits to the point that it exacerbates unemployment, and fiercely opposed entitlement reform. How can this agenda possibly be good for America, much less in the long-term interests of those targeted for government dependency?

Are reports that the Obama administration doesn't require applicants to declare their immigration status to qualify for food stamps true? Is the Department of Agriculture really actively working with the Mexican government to promote food stamps for illegal aliens? I don't know, but these types of outrages are certainly believable with this administration. What self-respecting nation engages in such insanity?

Call me harsh for suggesting the hard left, which controls much of our government, is at war with the American idea. But today the left paints those who support traditional values as bigoted, those who support traditional marriage as homophobes and bigots, and those who support welfare reform, school choice, voter identification laws and securing the borders, as well as those who oppose punitive taxes on the "wealthy," as racists.

No, we just aspire to colorblindness and promote equal opportunity and equal protection of the laws for all Americans. We have pride in America and its founding ideals and unapologetically assert that they are responsible for the greatest experiment in constitutional governance in history and therefore want to preserve them.

Liberals are always paying lip service to consensus building. How about we start by agreeing to embrace America? Or is national pride truly a dirty term?

Thanks for posting.

Our illiteracy about America's founding principles, brought on by decades of deliberate "erasing" of those principles and ideas from the nation's textbooks and public discourse, have prepared us for this moment in the battle between the ideas of liberty and the counterfeit ideas which seem to prevail.

The following has been posted in earlier times, but seems to relate to this thread's question:

Excerpt from a series entitled, "Lessons on Liberty," by a Co-Editor of "Our Ageless Constitution" & "Rediscovering the Ideas of Liberty." The "Lesson" contrasts the Founders' Ideas of Liberty" to be taught to rising generations, with the Counterfeit Ideas being promoted in the so-called "public schools" of America for decades.

IDEAS OF LIBERTY:
(from America’s Founders and Presidents)
“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy, but cannot disjoin them.” (Jefferson - 1774)
“Statesmen may plan and speculate for Liberty, but it is Religion and Morality alone which can establish the principles upon which Freedom can securely stand.” (John Adams - 1775)
“The Sacred Rights of Mankind are not to be rummaged for among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature, by the Hand of the Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.” (Alexander Hamilton)
“Without God, there could be no American form of government, nor an American way of life. Recognition of the Supreme Being is the first and the most basic expression of Americanism. Thus the founding fathers saw it, and thus, with God’s help, it will continue to be.” (Dwight Eisenhower)
“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.” (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)
“…it is the duty of all nations to acknowledge the providence of Almighty God, to obey his will, to be grateful for his benefits, and humbly implore His protection and favor….”(George Washington)
“Now the virtue which had been infused into the Constitution…and was to give it…the stability and duration to which it was destined, was no other than…those abstract principles…proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence—namely, the self-evident truths of the…unalienable rights of man…the…sovereignty of the people, always subordinate to a rule of right and wrong, and always responsible to the Supreme Ruler of the universe for the rightful exercise of that sovereign…power.” (John Quincy Adams, on the occasion of The Jubilee of the Constitution - 1839)
"Today, across our nation, we see consequences of decades of gross neglect and outright censorship of the Founders’ ideas from textbooks and from our public discourse. We have allowed counterfeit ideas to dominate the public square, and the Founders’ principles have been crowded out. Unwittingly, many teachers and other unknowing officials have participated in the agenda of an unelected mind-controlling elite whose tyrannical actions have robbed generations of Americans from reading or studying the ideas that made America free. Like termites, they have eroded our foundations as effectively as if they had burned the books. Yet, not once have they been willing to call it by its rightful name—censorship. Once, in America, stifling ideas about the Creator and Creator-endowed liberty was considered unthinkable. . . .
"The ideas of liberty must be passed on from generation to generation if liberty is to survive. These ideas, when they are allowed to be examined freely, will prevail, because their appeal is to reason and to the love for liberty that is deep in the human heart. John Adams warned: “The people of America now have the best opportunity and the greatest trust in their hands, that Providence ever committed to so small a number…if they betray their trust, their guilt will merit even greater punishment than other nations have suffered, and the indignation of Heaven.”

COUNTERFEIT IDEAS:
(from some of those whose views have dominated national educational policy)
“The idea of God is the keystone of a perverted society. The true root of liberty, equality and culture is atheism.” (Karl Marx)
Our thinking is enlightened “in the degree in which we cease to depend upon belief in the supernatural.” (John Dewey, father of ‘progressive education’ and 1st President of American Humanist Society)
“…democracy is a human faith and movement, unencumbered by supernatural preconceptions.” (John Childs, a protégé of John Dewey at Columbia)
“…the majority of our youth still hold the values of their parents, and if we do not alter this pattern, if we do not resocialize ourselves to accept change, our society may decay.” (John Goodlad, 1971 Report to President, Schooling for the Future)
“As in 1933, humanists still believe that traditional theism, especially a faith in the prayer-hearing God, who is assumed to love and care for persons, to hear and understand their prayers, and be able to do something about them, is an unproved and outmoded faith.” (Humanist Manifesto II, 1973)
“…the most important factor moving us toward a secular society has been the educational factor. Our schools may not teach Johnny to read properly, but the fact that Johnny is in school until he is sixteen tends to lead toward elimination of religious superstition.” (Paul Blanshard, The Humanist, March-April, 1976)
“It [the Nat’l. Education Association’s publication list] includes the delegitimizing of all authority save that of the state, the degradation of traditional morality and the encouragement of citizens in general and children in particular to despise the rules and customs that make their society a functional democracy. The NEA is drifting into exceedingly dangerous waters, and probably carrying more than a few teachers and pupils with it.” (Chester E. Finn, Jr., Ass’t. Sec. Of Education & Prof. Of Education & Public Policy, Vanderbilt Univ., 1982)
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“Now, my countrymen, if you have been taught doctrines which conflict with the great landmarks of the Declaration of Independence…let me entreat you to come back. Return to the fountains whose waters spring close to the blood of the Revolution.” (Abraham Lincoln)

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