Special to the Mirror by Chas Cornweller
There is a vast difference between being a Patriot and being a Nationalist. If you don’t know the difference between the two, then might I suggest you are being played by this present administration. So, what is the difference between the two? Let’s have a look at their definitions…
1. Patriot: n. a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.
2. Nationalist: n. a person who advocates political independence for a country; a person with strong patriotic feelings, especially one who believes in the superiority of their country over others.
Subtle yet distinct. And you are probably saying there is really no difference. But, there is a slight difference between the two. One strongly (vigorously) SUPPORTS their country and is prepared to defend it against its enemies. The other has strong patriotic FEELINGS and believe in the SUPERIORITY of their country over others. One is prepared to die for his or her country. The other just advocates its superior nature, aggressively. Which leads me to my point.
What is Fascism? Here is the definition according to Webster.
3. Fascism: n. a governmental system lead by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive NATIONALISM and often racism.
So, the next time I see a post telling me that any number means of protest are un-patriotic and un-American, I will assume that post was created and shared by Nationalist. The next time I see a post blaming the woes of America on the past administration, I will also assume that post was created and shared by a Nationalist. The next time I am asked whether the national anthem should be sung at any sports event, in schools, during parades, at church, before weddings/bar mitzvahs/christenings, during beer commercials or at my funeral; I will assume that, that person asking, is a Nationalist. And the next time a liberal minded male is compared to our present White House stooge for their transgressions or outright disgusting acts against others, I will assume that person doing the comparing is a Nationalist. And finally, the next time someone says to me, My Country, right or wrong, I will always love America and if you don’t like what we have here, then you can leave; that person will be seen as a Nationalist.
The actual quote is from Carl Schurz and is stated as such: “My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right”, in response to Stephen Decatur’s original statement of; “Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be right, but our country, right or wrong. So…before you use this quote…yeah.
Nationalist want to believe that this country is the greatest country in the world. Patriots know that is just not so, and we’ve lost our way. Patriots know we’ve been misled by our leadership for many, many years. We have strayed from the ideal that is America. We have borne the sins of the powerful and have been led astray as we reckoned with those sins over many, many years. The powerful could give a damn about you and me. As long as we provide the wealth (through untenable wage earning and taxes), the soldiers to fight their wars (with our sons and now our daughters) and continue to follow blindly their side to side/up and down political rhetoric as they ramp up the NATIONALISTIC call to arms, while gutting our Treasury, our Social Security and societal safety nets and our hard-earned World collateral/security we’d fought so hard for and acquired prior to, during and just after World War two. You see, they are counting on our Patriotism to eventually turn into Nationalism. And for many, that has already occurred. We have had an oligarchy (Very wealthy, powerful, influential white men) running the show for some time now, so the concept of a Constitutional Republic is pretty much a moot point. The next step is to morph the populace into a blinded, spiritually poor, materialistic grabbing mob, salivating over the few scraps left; while the powerful slowly turn their fevered love of country into a dangerous juggernaut of nationalism, hatred, weapons, and war. The final step? I think you already know that.
So, ask yourself. Patriot or Nationalist? Which are you? If you truly search your own heart, you will find your answer there. I did and I found these playing there. Starting with: God Bless America, land that I love. Stand beside her and guide her through the night with a light from above. And then this: Oh beautiful, for heroes proved, in liberating strife. Who more than self, our country loved…and mercy more than life. America, America, God shed his grace on thee and crown thy good with brotherhood, from sea to shining sea.
Paul Plante says
I’m a patriot.
Paul Plante says
Sophistry, people, is the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving, and here with his diatribe above, which is a forceful and bitter verbal attack against “nationalism,” our dear friend and colleague and master wordsmith Chas Cornweller has once again demonstrated to us why it is that he is universally acclaimed as a master at the art, while being proclaimed as the sophist of our times, bar none, sing hallelujah and say amen.
But sophistry, no matter how skillfully done, in the end is still sophistry, which is to say the use of fallacious arguments, especially with the intention of deceiving, and such it is with the screed of Chas Cornweller above on nationalism, where screed is a long speech or piece of writing, typically one regarded as tedious.
Above here, the honorable Chas Cornweller defines a “Nationalist” as a person who advocates political independence for a country; a person with strong patriotic feelings, especially one who believes in the superiority of their country over others.
And then he makes some kind of warped and twisted “leap of illogic” to this set of statements, to wit:
One strongly (vigorously) SUPPORTS their country and is prepared to defend it against its enemies.
The other has strong patriotic FEELINGS and believe in the SUPERIORITY of their country over others.
One is prepared to die for his or her country.
The other just advocates its superior nature, aggressively.
Which leads me to my point.
What is Fascism?
Here is the definition according to Webster.
3. Fascism: n. a governmental system lead by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive NATIONALISM and often racism.
So, the next time I see a post telling me that any number means of protest are un-patriotic and un-American, I will assume that post was created and shared by Nationalist.
The next time I see a post blaming the woes of America on the past administration, I will also assume that post was created and shared by a Nationalist.
The next time I am asked whether the national anthem should be sung at any sports event, in schools, during parades, at church, before weddings/bar mitzvahs/christenings, during beer commercials or at my funeral; I will assume that, that person asking, is a Nationalist.
end quote
Now, at this point, I would like to say that in the United States of America today, thanks to military veterans who put themselves in harm’s way to protect our nation and Chas Cornweller’s way of life, the honorable Chas Cornweller has every right to call anybody he wants whatever names or epithets or slurs he wants, and so it is with his pejorative use of the word “nationalist.”
As for me, the subject is not quite so simple as our accomplished Sophist Chas Cornweller would have us believe, a point I will readily demonstrate as follows:
According to the Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary, which I find to be more comprehensive that the Webster’s our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller relies on, nationalism is defined thusly:
1. Devotion, often chauvinistic, to one’s own nation and to its political and economic interests or aspirations, social and cultural traditions, etc.
2. The belief or doctrine that among nations the common welfare is best served by independent rather than collective or cooperative action
3. A desire or movement for national independence.
end quotes
Note that last, nationalism being a desire or movement for national independence, which is how the United Colonies became the United States of America after 1776, and nationalism, not communism, was at the heart of the Viet Nam war, as we tried to militarily suppress the nationalistic desire of the Vietnamese people to have their own country free from foreign influence and dominance.
Without nationalism, there would be no United States of America today, and our dear friend Chas Cornweller would be bending the knee and tugging a forelock as he abased himself before a foreign king or queen.
Why, as he condemns nationalism, Chas Cornweller cannot see that and make that connection is a mystery to me, but such life is, I have found.
And that brings us back to my number one, as follows:
Devotion, often chauvinistic, to one’s own nation and to its political and economic interests or aspirations, social and cultural traditions, etc.
end quotes
That, people is another definition of nationalism, but it is not the only one, but let us set that aside for a moment to further analyze the definition to get an idea of what it means and to whom it might apply, and let us start with the little used and understood word in that definition, chauvinistic, where Chauvinism is defined as “Militant glorification of one’s country; vainglorious patriotism” or “Unreasoning attachment to one’s race, group, etc.”
Militant glorification of one’s country speaks for itself.
As to vainglorious patriotism, Vainglory is defined as “Excessive or groundless vanity,” where Vanity is defined as “The condition or character of being vain; excessive personal pride; conceit” or “Ambitious display; ostentation; show,” and Vain is defined as “Filled with or showing undue admiration for oneself, one’s appearance; proud, conceited.”
So there, people, we have a much more complete idea of what a nationalist really is, compared to what Chas Cornweller was trying to sell us, and when one puts that all together, the epitome of a nationalist in our time, i.e., one displaying a chauvinistic devotion to his own nation and to its political and economic interests, can be seen in an article by Ben Wolfgang in The Washington Times on Monday September 28 2015, in the person of then-American president and Marxist ideologue Barack Hussein Obama Magnus, who was quoted in that article as follows:
“I lead the strongest military the world has ever known.
“I will never hesitate to protect my country and our allies unilaterally and by force when necessary.”
end quote
There people, is a vivid example of chauvinistic nationalism and don’t let the expert sophistry of our dear friend Chas Cornweller lead you astray into believing otherwise.
While Chas Cornweller decries the concept of nations as he yearns to be part of a nationless New World Order, where everybody sings in tune in three-part harmony, being more conservative, I go with James Wilson in his Speech to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention on November 24, 1787, as follows:
Our wants, our talents, our affections, our passions, all tell us that we were made for a state of society.
end quotes
For there to be a state of society, there needs to be a nation, plain and simple.
Getting back to Mr. Wilson:
But a state of society could not be supported long or happily without some civil restraint.
It is true, that in a state of nature, any one individual may act uncontrolled by others; but it is equally true, that in such a state, every other individual may act uncontrolled by him.
Amidst this universal independence, the dissensions and animosities between interfering members of the society would be numerous and ungovernable.
The consequence would be, that each member, in such a natural state, would enjoy less liberty, and suffer more interruption, than he would in a regulated society.
Hence the universal introduction of governments of some kind or other into the social state.
The liberty of every member is increased by this introduction; for each gains more by the limitation of the freedom of every other member, than he loses by the limitation of his own.
The result is, that civil government is necessary to the perfection and happiness of man.
end quote
Civil government, people, is indeed necessary to the perfection and happiness of man/woman, and for there to be civil government, there must be an established nation, no matter how big or small it might be.
And without nationalism, and nationalists, even chauvinistic ones like Barack Hussein Obama Magnus, there would be no nations, and hence no civil government, and thus, no civil society regulated by its own laws.
Don’t let Chas Cornweller fool you people, with his rhetoric and sophistry.
Nationalism is essential to our American way of life.
Larry says
Make that two patriots. I wonder how many readers will stand up and be counted.
Paul Plante says
Now, if we objectively take Chas Cornweller’s definition of nationalist from Webster’s, that being “a person who advocates political independence for a country; a person with strong patriotic feelings, especially one who believes in the superiority of their country over others,” and combine it with his definition of Fascism from Webster’s, that being “a governmental system lead by a dictator having complete power, forcibly suppressing opposition and criticism, regimenting all industry, commerce, etc., and emphasizing an aggressive NATIONALISM and often racism,” who we immediately see fitting that description of a “nationalist” would be Hillary Rodham Clinton in the TIME magazine article “Hillary Clinton’s Speech Touting ‘American Exceptionalism’” from September 1, 2016, as follows:
If there’s one core belief that has guided and inspired me every step of the way, it is this.
The United States is an exceptional nation.
I believe we are still Lincoln’s last, best hope of Earth.
We’re still Reagan’s shining city on a hill.
We’re still Robert Kennedy’s great, unselfish, compassionate country.
end quotes
Unlike Larry and myself who strongly (vigorously) SUPPORT our country and are prepared to defend it against its enemies, Hillary Rodham Clinton has strong patriotic FEELINGS and believes in the SUPERIORITY of her country over others.
Larry and I are prepared to die for our country, although not foolishly, while Hillary Clinton just advocates its superior nature, aggressively.
There, people, is the real difference between a patriot and a nationalist like Hillary, and we owe Chas Cornweller a debt of gratitude for allowing that difference to be made clear in here.
Incidentally, each time I play the Star Spangled Banner on my banjo as a patriot, I now take care to dedicate it to the patriot Chas Cornweller in tribute to his own patriotism in here.
Chas Cornweller says
Paul, as usual, outdoes his own wordsmithing. In his usual bombast method, actually
(though it takes a while to get there) proves my point. With one word, he proves my
point. That word is Chauvinistic. The meaning of such word is: feeling or displaying
aggressive or exaggerated patriotism, displaying excessive or prejudiced support for
one's own cause, group, or sex. The word aggressive is key here. And precludes my
entire point to this commentary. Patriotism is a form of nationalism, but Nationalism
is a skewed, misguided and aggressive form of patriotism. Nationalism has been used
by leaders of nations to rile and ferment the deep-rooted patriotism in a nation’s
people to take that next step, that being to sending sons and fathers into the fray,
many to never return.
Pure and simple. In my worldview, nationalism creates wars. Patriotism creates
strong statesmen. Nationalism allows for the invasion of sovereign nations and the
indiscriminate killing of another countries populace. Patriotism questions the
necessity of those killings, questions the leadership that ordered the invasion.
Nationalism allows for the continuance of this nation as a Corporate Dictatorship and
provides the blinders to most who cannot see it that way. Patriots know the
Constitution, have studied the history of this great nation and question when and how
did we go from a Constitutional Republic to a nation of sycophants and self-afflicted
tower of babel builders, armed to the teeth and ready to duel anyone with a different
point of view. In other words, where did we go wrong, America? Riddle me that, Paul
Plante. I am sure you will.
Paul Plante says
Actually, Chas cornweller, I find myself in agreement with much if not all of what you just said there about patriots.
And I told everyone you were a patriot and you just proved it there by knowing what one was.
Well done, Chas Cornweller.
But you are dead wrong with your attribution to nationalists of all those societal ills you mention above.
Without nationalists, who think of their country as a living, breathing entity that they are a functioning part of in OUR Republic, there can be no patriots, Chas Cornweller, because there is nothing to be patriotic about.
What you are talking about are more properly called “ultranationalists,” where ultranationalism is defined as “extreme nationalism that promotes the interest of one state or people above all others.”
Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are both ultranationalists.
Ultranationalism was used by them to rile and ferment the deep-rooted patriotism in this nation’s people to take that next step, like invading Syria, that being to sending sons and fathers into the fray, many to never return, as is happening now.
Pure and simple, ultranationalism creates wars.
Ultrannationalism allows for the invasion of sovereign nations and the
indiscriminate killing of another country’s populace.
Ultranationalism allows for the continuance of this nation as a Corporate Dictatorship and provides the blinders to most who cannot see it that way.
As to when and how we went from a Constitutional Republic to a nation of sycophants and self-afflicted tower of babel builders, armed to the teeth and ready to duel anyone with a different point of view, that is the fruits of what is called “progressivism,” and democracy, which has usurped our Republic and replaced it with anarchy and chaos.
Where did we go wrong, America?
I can’t riddle you that, Chas Cornweller, because there isn’t enough space in here to do so.
For answers to questions like that, I often look to the past, back to when this nation of ours was just being formed, and here, I will refer you to the Speech to the Pennsylvania Constitutional Convention by James Wilson on November 24, 1787, where our history as a nation, which most of us are ignorant of because we don’t give a damn about what happened then, the present is all there is and all there has ever been to them, was explained to us as follows:
It has been too well-known, it has been too severely felt, that the present Confederation is inadequate to the government and to the exigencies of the United States.
The great struggle for liberty in this country, should it be unsuccessful, will probably be the last one which she will have for her existence and prosperity, in any part of the globe.
And it must be confessed, that this struggle has, in some of the stages of its progress, been attended with symptoms, that foreboded no fortunate issue.
end quotes
People today read that, Chas Cornweller, and they think he is talking about his times, not ours, but I say they are wrong, and your question about when and how we went from a Constitutional Republic to a nation of sycophants and self-afflicted tower of babel builders, armed to the teeth and ready to duel anyone with a different point of view, proves my point for me.
Getting back to James Wilson, he says:
To the iron hand of tyranny, which was lifted up against her, she manifested, indeed, an intrepid superiority.
She broke in pieces the fetters, which were forged for her, and showed that she was unassailable by force.
But she was environed with dangers of another kind, and springing from a very different source.
While she kept her eye steadily fixed on the efforts of oppression, licentiousness was secretly undermining the rock on which she stood.
end quotes
Licentious in that context is defined as follows:
1. sexually unrestrained; lascivious; libertine; lewd;
2. unrestrained by law or general morality; lawless; immoral; or
3. going beyond customary or proper bounds or limits; disregarding rules.
end quotes
Do you need to look farther than that for your answer, Chas Cornweller?
We are a nation without values and our diversity is our downfall, plain and simple, as a house divided against itself as we now are, cannot stand.
Going back to James Wilson, he continues as follows:
On the glorious conclusion of our conflict with Britain, what high expectations were formed concerning us by others!
What high expectations did we form concerning ourselves!
Have those expectations been realized?
No.
What has been the cause?
Did our citizens lose their perseverance and magnanimity?
Did they become insensible of resentment and indignation at any high-handed attempt that might have been made to injure or enslave them?
No.
What then has been the cause?
The truth is, we dreaded danger only on one side.
This we manfully repelled.
But on another side, danger not less formidable, but more insidious, stole in upon us; and our unsuspicious tempers were not sufficiently attentive either to its approach or to its operations.
Those, whom foreign strength could not overpower, have well-nigh become the victims of internal anarchy.
If we become a little more particular, we shall find that the foregoing representation is by no means exaggerated.
When we had baffled all the menaces of foreign power, we neglected to establish among ourselves a government, that would insure domestic vigor and stability.
What was the consequence?
The commencement of peace was the commencement of every disgrace and distress, that could befall a people in a peaceful state.
end quotes
Victims of internal anarchy, Chas Cornweller, that is us today.
So look to there for your answers, because it is there I am sure you will find them.
And Chas Cornweller, thank you on behalf of a grateful nation for your patriotism.
Stuart Bell says
I am a Patriot and I see a Liberal, Progressive, Democrat as an enemy to this nation and everything it once stood for.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
I stand with Stuart Bell.
Sorry, Mr. Bell I know that one is judged by the company he keeps, but you’re stuck with me agreeing with you………;)
Stuart Bell says
We shall all stand together against Liberal Progressivism when and if the need arises. I took an oath when I joined the service, and I will still stand together with Patriots to defend this Country, it’s Flag, and it’s Constitution today. Public Schools, Politicians, College Professors, and Fools have polluted the minds of quite a few generations as Political Correctness kept most folks quiet. Parents allowed Actors and Athletes to be their children’s heroes. We are all at fault for the State of The Union. It must be stopped and turned around. I do not care if I am called Racist, Homophobic, Misogynistic, or Bigoted. I will not change my moral compass for anyone.
Mike Kuzma, Jr. says
Hear, Hear!!!!!!!!
Paul Plante says
And here we come to the fallacy of the argument of Chas Cornweller above that there is “a vast difference between being a Patriot and being a Nationalist,” a fallacy which is right before our eyes if we look as Chas Cornweller’s definition of a “Patriot” as “a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors.”
If a “Patriot” is “a person who vigorously supports their country and is prepared to defend it against enemies or detractors,” then they first have to be a “nationalist,” elsewise, they would not have a “country” to support or defend against its enemies or detractors, who happen to include Shahid Khan, the owners of the Jacksonville Jaguars football team, who is a Pakistani-American billionaire and business tycoon who as of August 2017 had a net worth over $8.7 billion which ranked him 70th in the Forbes 400 list of richest Americans, while he is overall the 158th wealthiest person in the world, and all these football players taking the knee for the Star Spangled Banner at these football games of theirs.
Consider this language from the U.S. ARMY SOLDIER’S HANDBOOK circa 1968, at p. 53, as follows:
CODE OF CONDUCT FOR MEMBERS OF THE UNITED STATES ARMED FORCES
I. I am an American fighting man.
I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.
I am prepared to give my life in their defense.
end quote
I am an American fighting man, not a fighting man of Russia, a nation unto itself, or Germany, another nation unto itself, or Kenya, the homeland of the Marxist ideologue and Alinsky-ite community organizer Barack Hussein Obama, or the “one world government,” because the United States of America is my nation, my country.
That, people, is an expression of both nationalism first, and then patriotism second, and they are inseparable – you can’t be one, a patriot, without being a nationalist, which point is made in spades in the second sentence above – I serve in the forces which guard my country and our way of life.
The forces which guard MY COUNTRY!
That is a nationalistic statement, not a patriotic statement.
And what about “our way of life?”
Whose way of life is that talking about?
I would like to hear our dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller give us some discourse on that subject.
And then we come to “I am prepared to give my life in their defense.”
That again is both nationalistic and patriotic at the same time, although those who never bothered to stand on the line and serve, and who would not put their own lives on the line to defend their way of life would likely never understand or comprehend that, which is the basis of the saying, “For those who fight to protect it, freedom has a flavor that the protected will never know.”
Such it is and so it goes.
As to “fascism,” the term means authoritarian government.
And when I looked up the definition in Webster’s, this is what I found:
1. a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition;
2. a tendency toward or actual exercise of strong autocratic or dictatorial control
end quotes
Thus, fascism can just as easily refer to a left-wing authoritarian government as it can to a right-wing authoritarian government, and it fact, the Red Guard era of Chairman Mao’s communist government in China can be classified as authoritarian, or fascist, as can the regime of Josef Stalin in the communist Soviet Union.
As to forcible suppression of opposition, we have a vivid example of that in the San Francisco Chronicle article “Masked anarchists violently rout right-wing demonstrators in Berkeley” by Lizzie Johnson, Erin Allday, Michael Cabanatuan and Nanette Asimov dated 28 August 2017, as follows:
An army of anarchists in black clothing and masks routed a small group of right-wing demonstrators who had gathered in a Berkeley park Sunday to rail against the city’s famed progressive politics, driving them out – sometimes violently — while overwhelming a huge contingent of police officers.
The swamping of right-wing political ideas by left-wing demonstrators has become a recurring theme in Berkeley and other California cities.
end quotes
There is the rise of fascism in this country, right before our eyes, people.
As to “fascism” in recent times, at pp. 152,153 of “World Wars And Revolutions” by Walter Phelps Hall, PhD, of Princeton, copyrighted 1943, the author informs us as follows concerning “fascism” in Europe leading up to WWII:
Fascism is an all-embracing doctrine which demands a one hundred percent surrender of the individual will in the name of mystical nationalism – with ends not clearly defined.
This nationalism is beyond good and evil, and thus is deified.
Therefore, fascism properly should be classed as a kind of religion like communism, the latter based on class-consciousness, the former on nationalism.
As such, fascism is compounded of three elements – violence, state socialism, totalitarianism.
Direct and clear is its repudiation of the Sermon on the Mount, for the Fascist insists that he only is blessed who smites and smites again.
Emphatic is its assertion that the economic life of the people must be controlled by governmental agencies.
And furthermore, since the be-all and the end-all of life is the exaltation of the state, all members of it must act alike, think alike, obey alike.
end quotes
Think on that last sentence, people – furthermore, since the be-all and the end-all of life is the exaltation of the state, all members of it must act alike, think alike, obey alike.
Where are we hearing that, people, the part about us all having to think alike?
From whom is that coming?
Isn’t that the goal of these so-called “progressives” we are always hearing about, to force us all to have to think like they want us to think, and act like they want us to act, and to obey them without question, or else?
Is progressivism in the United States of America really just another name for the rise of fascism in this country and one party rule, that being the Democrat party?
A question for our times, indeed.
Chas Cornweller says
Actually the “Fallacy” of the argument is, Paul. One can be a patriot for his “native land or country” as you are wanting to call it. However, can be totally against and an enemy of that country’s government.
Nationalism ties you to that government while Patriotism ties you to the principals of that government.
For example, people during the American revolution had to choose a side. Loyalist or Tories sided with the King (Government) while the Rebels (Patriots, State Militias, Continental Army and Continental Congress members) were for another form of governance based upon the principals of freedom and self-governance. Another example would be the various factions and single individuals who fought either with sedition or assassination attempts against leaders of the German Reich. Though not considered “Patriots” but seditionist, by the German government, the actual “Nationalist” were the Nazi followers and cowed populace.
You may see this, as splitting hairs. I do not. I think it is incumbent upon the citizenry to revolt against leaders who are dangerous, insane, reckless with the nation’s finances, warmongers and in position for their own gains. But then again, I am a Virginian and though not a full on Jeffersonian, cannot help but hear his words ring in my ears from time to time. You may have come across this before. Periodic revolution, “at least once every 20 years,” was “a medicine necessary for the sound health of government.” Have a great week.
Paul Plante says
I’m very well aware of Virginia’s Tommy Jefferson, Chas Cornweller, and his thoughts on a revolution every 20 years in the nature of the French Revolution, with heads rolling in the streets, which earned Tommy the sobriquet of an American Jacobin, and made people fear him, as any rational person would when some lunatic is in their midst calling for mass bloodshed in the name of “revolution.”
In a New Republic article entitled “Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Thomas Jefferson – How a slaveholder and ideologue was also a great democrat” by Sean Wilentz, March 10, 1997, we were informed as follows about Tommy:
To be sure, he remains a sainted figure to millions of ordinary Americans, as the author of the Declaration of Independence; and in American popular culture, to judge from Ken Burns’s commendable PBS film Thomas Jefferson, his nobility is secure.
But Jefferson has been subjected to intense scholarly attack over the past thirty years, more so than any other Founding Father.
In 1963, the legal historian Leonard Levy heavily damaged Jefferson’s reputation as a civil libertarian by describing how, as president, he tolerated the suppression of opposition editors with selective prosecutions for seditious libel.
Soon afterward several leading historians, including Winthrop Jordan, David Brion Davis and Edmund Morgan, challenged the authenticity of Jefferson’s anti-slavery professions and dwelled on his disparaging writings about blacks.
Conservative and radical scholars have been discovering common anti-Jefferson ground on issues ranging from Indian removal to the Haitian Revolution, and they have adopted an increasingly acidulous tone.
Whereas pro-Hamiltonians such as Forrest McDonald denounce Jefferson as a “wild-eyed political quack,” left-leaning historians such as Michael Zuckerman describe him as “the foremost racist of his era in America.”
And now Conor Cruise O’Brien, attacking from the left and the right simultaneously, has written a book that links Jefferson’s legacy to the Ku Klux Klan, Pol Pot, Hendrik Verwoerd and the right-wing militia movement in contemporary America.
end quote
Wow and holy cow, Chas Cornweller, are you getting linked to the Ku Klux Klan, Pol Pot, Hendrik Verwoerd and the right-wing militia movement in contemporary America by your close association with Tommy Jeferson and his call for bloodshed in America every 20 years?
Wouldn’t that be a hoot if you were to turn out to be a right-wing extremist posing as a left-wing liberal in here.
With respect to liberalism and Tommy Jefferson, the New Republic article continues as follows:
Somewhat paradoxically, Jefferson’s fate has paralleled that of twentieth century American liberalism.
There was always something absurd about describing Jefferson, the agrarian anti-statist, as one of the forerunners of Progressive reform and New Deal reform.
With that presumption, the reputations of Jefferson and modern liberalism crested at about the same time, in the 1940s and 1950s.
Yet as the century has dragged on, and as American liberalism has suffered through its own intellectual and political crises, it has become harder to sustain Jefferson’s reputation as any kind of liberal forerunner.
One problem has been Jefferson’s famous defense of the French Revolution, particularly his passing defense of the Jacobin Terror.
As long as 1930s-style Popular Front liberals (along with the Marxists) ennobled the Jacobins as egalitarian radicals, Jefferson looked like a fine internationalist revolutionary.
But during the cold war decades, as the Jacobins (and American fellow travelers of a different kind) fitfully fell into disrepute, the delusions of Jefferson’s more enthusiastic writings on France and revolution became difficult to explain away.
end quotes
There is a petard you have hoisted yourself on, my dear friend and colleague Chas Cornweller, with your advocacy for Jeffersonian revolution in the streets of America.
How do you explain away your own calls for a Jacobin Terror here in America?
Getting back to the New Republic:
The triumphs of the civil rights movement posed much graver problems for Jefferson’s reputation.
In the 1930s and 1940s, the New Deal coalition of liberal northerners and the Solid South could comfortably admire a contradictory Virginia slaveholder who had also criticized slavery and proclaimed that all men were created equal.
In the 1960s, as the New Deal coalition collapsed under the weight of civil rights reform, so did many liberals’ and leftists’ admiration of Jefferson.
Despite his exquisite pain about slavery as “an abominable crime,” Jefferson remained a slaveholder his entire life and arranged for the manumission of fewer than ten of his hundreds of slaves, while a significant number of his fellow Virginians (including George Washington) freed their slaves.
For all of his vaunted egalitarianism, Jefferson proffered, in his Notes on the State of Virginia, some hair-raising, pseudo-scientific personal observations about the innate mental and physical inferiority of blacks, including his notion that Negroes prefer whites “as uniformly as is the preference of the Oran-ootan for the black women over those of his own species.”
When he registered his philosophical objections to slavery, Jefferson always seemed more troubled by the institution’s degrading effects on whites than by its oppression of the slaves.
Until his dying day, Jefferson doubted that blacks and whites could ever coexist peaceably as American citizens; and he looked forward to the eventual disappearance of blacks from these shores, preferably through emancipation, deportation and colonization.
end quotes
Ah, Tommy, how they love you still, notwithstanding.
And Chas Cornweller, where your arguments on patriots and nationalists fall apart in here is your use of generalities.
I am an AMERICAN CITIZEN.
As an AMERICAN CITIZEN, I most certainly can be totally against an enemy of my country’s government, whether foreign or domestic, and as an AMERICAN citizen, I am not at all “tied” to any governmental administration in this country, just as I was not tied to the administration of the Marxist ideologue Barack Hussein Obama, nor am I tied to the administration of this buffoon Donald Trump.
Thus, when talking about AMERICAN CITIZENS, your generalized statement that “Nationalism ties you to that government while Patriotism ties you to the principals of that government,” is dead wrong.
American citizens, Chas Cornweller ARE THE GOVERNMENT in this country, or did you never learn that?
Donald Trump, a citizen, is merely the president.
As such, whether he knows it or not, he owes us a duty through OUR CONSTITUTION.
We are not beholden to him, just as we were not beholden to Hussein Obama, although there are many in this country who would dispute that assertion.
Why, Chas Cornweller, do you never refer to yourself as a CITIZEN, and why do you never talk about CITIZENSHIP RESPONSIBILITIES here in the United States of America?
Why do you refer to us as having to be either “nationalists” or “patriots,” when the truth of the matter is that as citizens, we are in fact supposed to be both?
Paul Plante says
And as always, I would like to thank our dear friend and fellow CCM commentator Chas Cornweller for providing us with such a thought-provoking thread.
As to thought-provoking, as I considered what Chas Cornwller was saying in here about nationalists, as if all nationalists were bad for America, and not just black nationalism, which is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that black people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a black national identity, with black nationalist activism revolving around social, political, and economic empowerment of black communities and people, especially to resist assimilation into white American culture and maintain a distinct black identity, and its twin brother, white nationalism, which is a type of nationalism or pan-nationalism which holds the belief that white people are a race and seeks to develop and maintain a white national identity, I got to wondering if Chas Cornweller is not a nationalist, and who condemns all who are, except the black nationalists, then what could he possibly be, so I looked up the antonym of nationalist, and this is what I came up with:
What is the opposite of a nationalist?
Internationalism.
In political science, internationalism refers to the idea that cooperation between different countries is beneficial for everyone.
The opposite of internationalism is ultranationalism or jingoism, which favor extreme patriotism and aggression toward other countries.
end quotes
Jingoism in its turn is nationalism in the form of aggressive foreign policy, such as a country’s advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests.
As to Jingoism, that is very much on display in an article by Ben Wolfgang in The Washington Times on Monday September 28 2015, in the person of then-American president and Marxist ideologue Barack Hussein Obama Magnus, who was quoted in that article as follows:
“I lead the strongest military the world has ever known.
“I will never hesitate to protect my country and our allies unilaterally and by force when necessary.”
end quotes
That, people, is rampant jingoism on the hoof, and in fact, a review of Barack Obama’s time in office with Hillary Clinton as his muscle in the State Department shows his administration to be the epitome of Jingoism, or nationalism in the form of aggressive foreign policy, such as a country’s advocacy for the use of threats or actual force, as opposed to peaceful relations, in efforts to safeguard what it perceives as its national interests.
We saw that Jingoism on display in the Transcript of the final 2012 presidential debate, “PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA AND FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS., PARTICIPATE IN A CANDIDATES DEBATE, LYNN UNIVERSITY, BOCA RATON, FLORIDA” on October 22, 2012, where the speakers were:
FORMER GOV. MITT ROMNEY, R-MASS.,
PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA
BOB SCHIEFFER, MODERATOR
That display of Obama Jingoism started with this question from Bob Schieffer:
Let me interject the second topic question in this segment about the Middle East and so on, and that is, you both mentioned — alluded to this, and that is Syria.
The war in Syria has now spilled over into Lebanon.
We have, what, more than 100 people that were killed there in a bomb.
There were demonstrations there, eight people dead.
Mr. President, it’s been more than a year since you saw — you told Assad he had to go.
Since then, 30,000 Syrians have died.
We’ve had 300,000 refugees.
The war goes on.
He’s still there.
Should we reassess our policy and see if we can find a better way to influence events there?
Or is that even possible?
And you go first, sir.
OBAMA: What we’ve done is organize the international community, saying Assad has to go.
We have provided humanitarian assistance and we are helping the opposition organize, and we’re particularly interested in making sure that we’re mobilizing the moderate forces inside of Syria.
And I am confident that Assad’s days are numbered.
end quote
“Mr. President, it’s been more than a year since you told Assad he had to go’ – that, people is what Jingoism looks like in real life, for who is Barack Hussein Obama to determine who will rule or govern in other countries?
Where does our Constitution delegate to an American president the right to rule or govern other countries other than the United States of America?
And the answer is, it doesn’t!
So where did Obama get that power from?
That answer is that he grabbed it from out of thin air, and chaos and anarchy has been the result.
Obama Jingoism was also on display in a Reuters article by Mark Hosenball on 2 August 2012, which stated as follows:
President Barack Obama has signed a secret order authorizing U.S. support for rebels seeking to depose Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and his government, sources familiar with the matter said.
Obama’s order, approved earlier this year and known as an intelligence “finding,” broadly permits the CIA and other U.S. agencies to provide support that could help the rebels oust Assad.
end quote
So, as we can see, this thing about nationalism is not so clear cut, so black and white, as our dear friend and fellow CCM commentator Chas Cornweller would have us believe.
Mr. Cornweller presents us with a dichotomy in here involving nationalism and patriotism, where a dichotomy a division or contrast between two things that are or are represented as being opposed or entirely different.
But the dichotomy is wrong, because nationalism and patriotism are not opposed nor are they entirely different.
The dichotomy can only hold if Chas Cornweller is talking about black nationalism, or white nationalism, or the ultranationalism of Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton versus patriotism, and it is there that I would agree with him that they are opposed and entirely different.
Paul Plante says
Getting back to this being a thought-provoking thread, I would go back to these words of Chas Cornweller above, to wit:
Patriots know the Constitution, have studied the history of this great nation and question when and how did we go from a Constitutional Republic to a nation of sycophants and self-afflicted tower of babel builders, armed to the teeth and ready to duel anyone with a different point of view.
In other words, where did we go wrong, America?
Riddle me that, Paul Plante. I am sure you will.
end quote
In response to Chas Cornweller, I would say that there is no mystery or riddle there to a real Patriot who knows the Constitution and has studied the history of this once great nation that is now devolving into a third-world nation.
With that said, I would point out to Chas Cornweller that the Preamble to the largely unknown and completely forgotten New York State Constitution which is very much a dead letter today for that reason, states as follows:
We The People of the State of New York, grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom, in order to secure its blessings, DO ESTABLISH THIS CONSTITUTION.
end quote
When I was young, it was explained to me in kindergarten, where we were taught citizenship as American citizens in a constitutional Republic that the moment of SILENT Prayer we had back then was for the purpose of meditating on those words, especially the part about “grateful to Almighty God for our Freedom,” and the CONTEXT in which those words were written.
All of that has since gone out the window, along with the New York State Constitution and the United States Constitution, as well, and yes, patriotism, which has been replaced with factionalism, which is the splitting of a group into factions, and conflict between factions, along with mindless party loyalty, as opposed to allegiance to the nation.
When young, we were asked to meditate on this question during that moment of silent prayer: WHO was it that were grateful to Almighty God for their Freedom?
That was a question we were supposed to ask ourselves everyday, during the moment of silent prayer.
Now, getting back to Chas Cornweller’s question of “where did we go wrong, America?” I would say part of the answer is that we have totally forgotten our own history, so we do not remember that the people who were grateful to Almighty God for their Freedom were people who against all odds had just gained their independence from a tyrant English king who the Declaration of Independence told us had abdicated Government here, by declaring those people grateful to Almighty God for their Freedom out of his Protection and waging War against them, plundering their seas, ravaged their Coasts, burning their towns, and destroyed the lives of their people, who at that time was transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
Today, we take our freedom for granted, as an entitlement, and so, we no longer have a need to be grateful to anyone or anything, especially not a God somewhere that nobody can see.
God has become an anachronism, and an embarrassment, and let us face it, an encumbrance, so along with patriotism, which has become a pejorative and mocking term today, God has gone out the window in some part because of Barack Hussein Obama himself mocking those in America who he claimed “cling to their Bibles,” as if there was some mental deficiency in those people, as opposed to Obama, who spent his teenage years snorting cocaine and smoking dope so he wouldn’t have to think about who he was, or anything for that matter – just pure hedonism, do what you want and to hell withy rules or laws or whatever anyone else might think about it.
Licentiousness.
So, I would come back and pose this question to Chas Cornweller in response to his question of “where did we go wrong, America?”: Is a lack of a belief in anything, other than perhaps the Democrat party or Republican party and opioids to cure your pain and cocaine to make you forget who you are in any way related to a world that seems to be rapidly devolving before our eyes into chaos and anarchy?
What say you, Chas Cornweller, and America, too?
Paul Plante says
As to the question we were asked to meditate on when young during the moment of silent prayer which no longer exists thanks to the supreme court and the unbelievers in anything in America, the godless among us who have more political clout than those who cling to their Bibles, of “WHO was it that were grateful to Almighty God for their Freedom,” that answer is they were both patriots and nationalists who became this nation’s first citizens.
There was no dichotomy back then or either/or as there now is today, where we never hear about people being citizens, only consumers, or nationalists, or patriots.
As to the patriotism of those early Americans, in FEDERALIST No. 2, titled “Concerning Dangers from Foreign Force and Influence” for the Independent Journal to the People of the State of New York by John Jay, the following is said, to wit:
A strong sense of the value and blessings of union induced the people, at a very early period, to institute a federal government to preserve and perpetuate it.
They formed it almost as soon as they had a political existence; nay, at a time when their habitations were in flames, when many of their citizens were bleeding, and when the progress of hostility and desolation left little room for those calm and mature inquiries and reflections which must ever precede the formation of a wise and well balanced government for a free people.
This intelligent people perceived and regretted these defects.
Still continuing no less attached to union than enamored of liberty, they observed the danger which immediately threatened the former and more remotely the latter; and being pursuaded that ample security for both could only be found in a national government more wisely framed, they as with one voice, convened the late convention at Philadelphia, to take that important subject under consideration.
This convention composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, in times which tried the minds and hearts of men, undertook the arduous task.
It is not yet forgotten that well-grounded apprehensions of imminent danger induced the people of America to form the memorable Congress of 1774.
But if the people at large had reason to confide in the men of that Congress, few of whom had been fully tried or generally known, still greater reason have they now to respect the judgment and advice of the convention, for it is well known that some of the most distinguished members of that Congress, who have been since tried and justly approved for patriotism and abilities, and who have grown old in acquiring political information, were also members of this convention, and carried into it their accumulated knowledge and experience.
end quotes
The Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia was composed of men who possessed the confidence of the people, and many of whom had become highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom, because back then, patriotism was considered a virtue, not a mocking term as it is today.
In response to the question of the honorable Chas Cornweller, “where did we go wrong, America,” that answer is multifold, but consider this: who today in public office possesses the confidence of the people, and who of them are highly distinguished by their patriotism, virtue and wisdom?
Can anyone name even one?
Which brings us to this statement by Chas Cornweller above: The next time I see a post blaming the woes of America on the past administration, I will also assume that post was created and shared by a Nationalist.
Why would that be attributed to a nationalist, I must wonder?
Why wouldn’t an American citizen hold that same opinion, although in truth, Barack Hussein Obama is a symptom of all that is wrong with America, and perhaps he epitomizes with his dope smoking and coke snorting as a teenager much of what is wrong with America, but his administration alone is not responsible for the woes of America, the American people who are neither citizens nor patriots nor nationalists are, in a government of, by and for the people.
When only some take their citizenship seriously, while others decry patriotism and nationalism, and still others do nothing but consume, like sheep eating off all the grass of a meadow, then there truly is no nation, anymore, just a shell of one, which is what we now have today.
As to “where did we go wrong, America,” an answer is that we have become lazy in our citizenship duties, and we have become accepting of gross ignorance, and even idiocy in our elected leaders.
Consider the intelligent political speech in this excerpt from “A Democratic Federalist” by Tench Coxe in the Independent Gazetteer from November 26, 1787:
The examination of the principle of liberty and civil polity is one of the most delightful exercises of the rational faculties of man.
Hence the pleasure we feel in a candid, unimpassioned investigation of the grounds and probably consequences of the new frame of government submitted to the people by the Federal Convention.
The various doubts, which the subject has created, will lead us to consider it the more by awakening our minds to that attention with which ever freeman should examine the intended constitutions of his country.
end quotes
The reference to “freeman” is a reference to the common citizens back then, who were both patriots and nationalists, who were concerned with the fate of their country.
Then let us compare that to the ignorant crap that passes for political speech in our land in our age of decline and devolution:
The White House Office of the Press Secretary For Immediate Release January 29 2015
Remarks by the President to the House Democratic Issues Conference
Sheraton Philadelphia Society Hill Hotel
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
7:34 P.M. EST
THE PRESIDENT: Hey!
(Applause.)
Hello, hello, hello!
(Applause.)
Hello, Democrats!
Thank you so much.
Everybody, sit down, sit down.
It’s good to be with you, Democrats.
(Applause.)
It’s good to be in Philadelphia.
(Applause.)
My understanding is we still have our host, Mayor Nutter, here.
Where’s Mayor Nutter?
(Applause.)
There he is right there.
I want to just remind the New England and Pacific Northwest contingents, this is the City of Brotherly Love.
So regardless of what you think about Sunday, I want you all to keep it clean.
(Laughter.)
I am not taking sides on that one.
(Laughter.)
I want to begin by — oh, bring your own football — is that — oooh.
(Laughter.)
Oooh.
AUDIENCE: Ooooh —
THE PRESIDENT: Wow.
(Laughter.)
That’s why we’re Democrats!
Thank you.
(Applause.)
end quotes
So, really, where did we go wrong, America?
Any guesses, anyone?