I’m thinking most Americans are familiar with the classic Jeff Foxworthy comic rift on southern life. But just in case you aren’t, it goes like this. Foxworthy says, “You might be a redneck if…" and then applies a zinger, “…you go to family reunions to meet perspective brides." All us southern foke know it’s not true. Heck, I only know 3 or 4 ol’ boys that married cousins and only half of them were first cousins. But it gives me an ideal about a debate going on and I don’t find it any funnier than most would find my humor. You Might Be A Bad American If… and it goes something like this.
You Might Be A Bad American If…you claim the right to disagree because we live in a democracy. Well, at the very least it makes for a uniformed American. Regardless of where you stand on the ‘under god’ part of Pledge of Allegiance, children still pledge to the ‘republic’ and not the democracy for which it stands. We have the right to decent, but not because we live in a democracy. The founding fathers established this nation as a democratic republic. Democracies can be monarchies, dictatorships, or representative like ours. Democracy does not guarantee freedom of speech. The articles of our Republic do. Pure democracy means one citizen, one vote.
Our founders had enough common sense to address inherent inequities and pitfalls of purely democratic systems. They established a representative government with checks and balances like the coequal representation that defines a republic. They anticipated things like population growth, demographic and geographic concentrations. Our republic insures majority opinion rule and minority protection at local, regional and national levels. They may have worn wigs, but it wasn’t to hide heads pointed by dunce caps. This may seem a small distinction to some. However, if I’m claiming an authoritative right to descent with elected authorities I might ought have a passing knowledge of the kind of government we actually have.
You Might Be A Bad American If…your point of contention with ‘the republic for which it stands’ is just one out of a ten or twelve-point address outlining the need for a new proactive stance in the world. Ask the Kurds and Iranians if they were weapons of mass distraction or destruction. Oh, that’s right. 1.2 million of them can’t be reached for comment! But even if someone can’t accept that logic and denies the 900 or so chemical weapons that have been found in Iraq, they might consider self-preservation, offering freedom to the oppressed or the need to protect innocents as legitimate expenditures of national treasure. Ok, like the first one this one might not necessarily make someone a bad American, but it surely makes for a shortsighted and/or selfish American.
You Might Be A Bad American If…you wrap yourself in the flag by claiming a moral authority as a former service member while lambasting those you disagree because they didn’t serve. That’s like someone with children telling someone without a child that they can’t have a legitimate point of view on child rearing. What…do they pass out some secret handbook with newborns that the childless never see? Or maybe childbirth raises parental IQs 40 points. My family and I would claim otherwise.
Like the other two, it may not make you a bad American, but I’d definitely puts it in the intellectually dishonest American category. Being a member of the armed service certainly does not make us any less human or any more insightful. I seem to remember one of our most highly decorated American heroes named Duke Cunningham being convicted recently because he gave in to human frailty. Oh, and a recent veteran writing a blog under a pseudonym and lying about atrocities in Iraq doesn’t show good judgment or insight either.
You Might Be A Bad American If…there is a “but" applied after the statement, terrorism is a problem. To suggest terrorism, Islam-o-fascism or whatever it’s called is not the number one problem of this generation is naïve in the extreme. The last such idiocy was when Neville Chamberlain stepped off the plane from Germany in 1938 and said, “there will be peace in our time." In a way he was right. Depending on whose stats we accept, it only cost 12 million Jews, 20 million Russians, and 4 million assorted other lives. That’s another 36 million that cannot be reached for comment. I think that, might be a bad American applies here. Although it could be argued that they may simply be as naïve an American as old Neville was a Brit.
Let us hope that unlike Chamberlain’s folly, 6 months after the next self-serving politician, reporter or writer applies a ‘but’ behind the statement that terrorism is a problem a few million people don’t disappear in a blinding white flash and mushroom cloud over New York, L.A. or Miami. The attacks of 9/11 were not the exception or an aberration. It was continuing business and finishing a job started with the first Trade Center bombing.
You Might Be A Bad American If…(and these last three are nonnegotiable for me) your only chance for successfully supporting your opinion or power is to hope for the failure of your country in the most important armed struggle in the last fifty years. This one could also be titled… You Might Be A Bad American If…in an attempt to bend public opinion, you publicly express half-truths and lies about the legitimacy of any program or action that has or will save lives in this country. Given the choice, I will choose to protect even a bad American and a few million of their closest friends every time.
Publicly attacking our countries efforts to defeat this enemy provides encouragement to the enemy and reinforces their beliefs about us. They believe us weak spirited, weak willed, self-serving, spineless and devoid of resolve. They offer comments of petty partisanship, which are so easily expressed and accessed in the information age as proof to encourage the desperate to become murder bombers of the jihad. Contrary to popular belief, there are thoughts that are not worth expressing…especially if they come echoing out of a bottle of Crown Royal.
You Might Be A Bad American If…you recognize the reality of our situation and continue to work toward an outcome that could cost thousands or even millions of lives. A policy of whatever damage we do we’ll fix when we get power is unconscionable and no different than the fanatics we are fighting.
This enemy will not stop killing because we are not in Iraq, Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia. Just ask the French, Turks, Saudis or Germans. They will come to kill our children as they work, ride buses, shop in malls and go to school. They don’t want our compassion or understanding. Ask the relief agencies with missing and dead volunteers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, India, Turkey, and many other places. They will not respect us because we’re conservative, moderate, liberal, religious, agnostic or atheist. They can rationalize killing the most powerless among their own ranks. They don’t care who we are. To radicals interrupting the Islamic religion to fit an agenda, might makes right and they will impose their will on weakness, PERIOD!
In WWII nearly a half a million Americans died, a tragic number to be sure. It could have been much worse. It’s estimated we could have added a million more Americans to that number if we had not dropped the Fat Man and Little Boy bombs when we did. It is true that because this hard choice was made many thousands of innocent Japanese were killed. But there were innocents dying before that point. Archive footage of the Pacific invasion is the best evidence of what might have happened without the bombs. Images graphically illustrate civilians jumping from island cliffs with infants in their arms as our soldiers approached. It demonstrates a fanaticism that could not be reasoned with.
By attracting these fanatics to a place of our choosing we risk the loss of innocent lives. But those fanatics will not be sneaking across America’s borders or developing weapons of mass destruction at their leisure. We diminish the numbers of those with the actual will to kill us. We expose and destroy support resources. We reduce the exposure to killers by American citizens to those trained and willing to accept the danger. Our outstanding members of the armed services understand this concept even if a bad American cannot or will not. To avoid the killing fields of Cambodia, the cliffs of Okinawaand further mass graves in Iraq and the broader middle east, fanaticism must be forced to capitulate, not negotiated with.
Lastly,if you were part of the 86% of Americans who supported the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and are part of the roughly 68% who now say it is wrong …You Might Be A Bad American. The only thing that can snatch defeat of Islam-o-fascism from the jaws of victory is our lack of resolve. Let’s not repeat the mistakes of Vietnam. Millions of innocent Cambodian and Vietnamese paid with their lives. Our will was eroded with lies told by media and activist with personal agendas. Whether or not we should have been there in the first place to finish what the French started, the only way the worse could have happened was if we did not fight to win and win the fight. Politicians tied our soldier’s hands, we lost resolve and the worst happened.
Just do an Internet search for a nighttime satellite photo of North and South Korea. The Korean peninsula stands as a stark reminder of this scenario. The reasons for the divide are different. A war weary people, fear of a war with China, WWII equipment and an America looking to turn its industrial might toward better times, but the results are undeniable. No sane person would argue that North Korea is better off because of the armistice. And we are still spending national treasure there today. The same thing will apply to the current situation in the Middle East.
For the sake of generations to come you must steel your backbone, find your resolve and support the work of our troops. History will judge harshly those who help facilitate a loss in this struggle. The validity of this struggle is for the future to decide. Right or wrong, the next Great War to end all wars is on us and we must not lose!
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