The left-wing mindset can be summed up by the vacuous and insipid lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the opening notes of which still send graying hippies and their progeny into ecstasy.
Is it any coincidence that the two entities American liberals probably hate most are organized religion and our military? Liberal groups like Moveon.org run ads disparaging military men of honor like General David Petraeus while folks like the ACLU and the “Reverend” Barry Lynn have made the elimination of God in public their life’s work.
But what do these groups have in common? While they all preach a gospel of socialism, secularism and sexual worship, the main driving force behind those who denigrate our military and religious practices is egotism. They just can’t wrap their minds around the concept that there is something bigger than themselves.
Soldiers, sailors and airmen voluntarily risking their lives for others and, even worse, Catholic nuns and priests throwing away their lives by consecrating them to God and their fellow men — to the extent that they are willing to forgo the one, true purpose of life: sex — must seem the acme of insanity to leftist naval gazers.
To them and their way of thinking, the notion that “greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends,” is an incomprehensibility. Religious and military vocations have discipline and obedience at their core; an odious combination for those of the Me Generation of the 1960’s. It’s not difficult to see why the ‘never trust anyone over thirty’ crowd has always been scandalized by this.
Having spurned the authority of their parents and responsibility for their country’s defense, the next steps on the road to Utopia were a snap. For them, police officers were “pigs,” God was dead and our armed personnel were reduced to being merely the murderous arm of the shadowy, “military-industrial complex.”
And they oddly felt that this was for the good of the country. Much of this continues today. Indeed, their current attitude is reflected in a saying of their idol, Ho Chi Minh: “It was patriotism, not Communism, that inspired me."
Whether or not they truly believed all of this or if their conceit made it so, is known only to them. But what is known is that their embrace of Communism, at a time when the proponents of this benign system were the greatest threats to our nation’s security, simply sealed the deal. For them, the belief that God watched over a country that deserved defending, was and continues to be passé.
All of this can be summed up by the vacuous and insipid lyrics of John Lennon’s “Imagine,” the opening notes of which still send graying hippies and their progeny into ecstasy. So popular is its socialistic, yet sugar-coated message, that fellow traveler Jimmy Carter has said that, “In many countries around the world you hear [it] used almost equally with national anthems."
This dreaming of a dreary existence without heaven, hell, religion, countries and especially “nothing to kill or die for” sums it all up nicely. The fact Lennon himself admitted that it was, "virtually the Communist Manifesto" has not diminished its continuing influence on modern-day America .
Yet we can see the similarities between Lennon — a millionaire “tax exile” from the UK who asked us to “imagine no possessions” — and certain current lefties who hector us on the evils of energy consumption while jetting around the world in the process of doing so.
Summing up the Utopian ideal, Mahatma Gandhi once said, “What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy?” Fortunately for us, the majority in this country recognize the difference and thankfully still outnumber those who most certainly do not.
But modern leftists carry on the egoistic mantra of Lennon and friends. And their disdain for our military and religion might be explained in the lyric from another song from the dreadful “Imagine” album:
Well, I don't wanna be a churchman mama, I don't wanna cry;
Well, I don't wanna be a soldier mama, I don't wanna die.
Amusing. It’s all too true that the hypocrisy of the left wing can be found in their portfolios. However, I find it difficult to find the bridge between the greater good and American soldiers dying and killing in Iraq. God forbid they’re doing it for my benefit.
It’s amazing someone can make a decent living writing columns for conservative folks where both the Liberal Devil is excoriated and the superior virtues of conservatives are validated at the same time. Without the New York Times, some conservative authors would be struck dumb in a literal sense – nothing to write about. Now John Lennon enters the ranks of Liberal Devil with albeit a lesser rank than the NY Times or the Washington Post.
While growing up in the late 50s’ and early 60s’, virtuous, and usually matronly, ladies were constantly incensed with the immoral and scandalous goings-on in the television programs of those days. By today’s standards, getting a brief peek at some girl’s underwear during energetic gyrations on American Bandstand or depicting anything more than a veiled hint that consensual sex was about to occur would earn contemporary programming nothing worse than a “G” rating. Not so in bygone years – letters and phone calls would deluge the networks. Seeing Janet Jackson’s nipple flopping around on a nationally televised football game would probably have brought down the Eisenhower or Kennedy administrations.
Most kids of my day, being somewhat naïve due to age, wondered why these ladies didn’t simply change the channel and save their apoplexy for a more worthwhile subject. But, being older now, I suspect they couldn’t wait to tune in, impatiently jiggle around waiting for the picture tube to warm up and discover the latest smut ruining our American culture. Some folks are natural censors; apparently even some conservative folks have the “censor gene” as the evolutionists would say. Somehow, I suspect conservatives should have a compendium of more important concerns other than constantly discussing the shortcomings of the Left’s aging Boomers – but then where’s the fun in that?
I know Pat. What a disppointment this place is turning into! We haven’t had an article that disparaged conservatism in I don’t know how long…
What do you expect to read on a blog devoted to conservatism? And is any of the commentary, such as this, wrong, or nonfactual? Of all the things to complain about, people writing about the virtues of conservatism is the very last item on my list.
I find even greater hypocrisy in Carter’s complaint against the U.S. government (“the United States government has done all it could in recent years to prevent Ortega from being elected”) while defending Venezuelan President Chavez’s outright buying of elections there for fellow socialists using oil and (appropriately) fertilizer to grease the way. Bush’s great crime according to Carter appears to be he expressed preference for candidates other than Sandinistas. This can only refer to brother Jeb taking out a full page ad in 2001 against Ortega drawing attention to Sandanista involvement in election fraud and manipulating election law, pointing out Ortega’s past abuses, and revealing Venezuelan shennanigans that cost Ortega that election; and, more recently, the characterization of Ortega as a “hoodlum” by an Administration envoy. Bush is also on record as saying if Ortega won he might ruin Nicaraguan economic progress based on Ortega’s own campaign promise to nationalize the economy and align his country with other latin socialist nations. These appear to be the substance of Carter’s allegations against the Bush Administration. Carter himself clearly played favorites in an election he was supposed to be monitoring against favoritism; openly supporting the Sandinistas by his fraternization with and praise of Ortega.
Later in the NPR article, Carter says “the United States electoral system … would not qualify at all for instance for participation by the Carter Center in observing. We require for instance that there be uniform voting procedures throughout an entire nation.” Carter is for overhauling our elector-college system, making it more like those of nations the Carter Center is willing to monitor, such as Nicaragua, Mozambique, Palestine, and Congo; some of which suffered economic downturns and unrest following elections Carter monitored. With that kind of track record, I think I’d prefer the Carter Center kept its nose out of our elections.
lipstone wrote:
“God forbid they’re doing it for my benefit.”
Here’s a clue, moron, they are. Even if it offends that little naive notion you have that you can somehow divorce yourself from the benefits and failures of our military just by wishing it away and declaring your neutrality.
Let me give you a couple of specific examples. American soldiers were recently involved in a lot of “dying and killing” with Germans and Japanese to remove two of the most odious and murderous societies in human history and because they did that, you benefited. You don’t have to deal with those hateful murderers because previous Americans were “dying and killing”. So even if you don’t like the “dying and killing”, you still benefit. Another example would be the American Revolution. Some American soldiers did some “dying and killing” so that you could benefit. Who knows what terrible direction history would have taken if the United States had never become the United States because nobody wanted to offend the liberals of future generations by “dying and killing”.
So here you are, living in the paradise that is the United States, the benefactor of all sorts of tangible blessings as a result of previous “dying and killing” on the part of American soldiers, and you’re offended that you might benefit from current “dying and killing”, of which you don’t approve. Hmmm, how can we cure that? I’ve got it! If you renounce your citizenship and leave the country permanently, then you can be truly divorced from the benefits of the “dying and killing” that might have been, or is being, to your benefit. But there is one catch, to truly be free from the benefits of “dying and killing”, you cannot go to any country that has ever benefited from Americans “dying and killing”, because that would be hypocritical. So, that leaves out the whole of Europe, most of Latin America, parts of civilized Asia, and parts of Africa. Because, if you did go to a country that has benefited like our country has benefited from Americans “dying and killing”, then you’d still be enjoying benefits bought in blood, which clearly offends you.
Of course, I know that you aren’t leaving, because like all liberals, you hate the manner in which your freedoms and prosperity come to you, but you lack the stomach to last more than a few seconds without them.