The Sheep Throw Up

Originally Posted at The Festering Swamp on July 1, 2007

From last year, here is my take on the "dissent is the highest form of patriotism" meme, along with a few other mainstream media issues. – Mike LaRoche

As Independence Day draws near, prepare to be assaulted from all sides with the following leftist meme: "true patriots don't hesitate to criticize the U.S." Such was the message imparted to us unfortunate readers of the San Antonio Express News, who saw that statement emblazoned as a headline across the "Views" section of the Sunday edition. The headline is for a column by Harold Jackson of The Philadelphia Inquirer, originally published on June 21 but reprinted in today' Express-News as my hometown paper evidently couldn't find its own DNC water-carrier to crank out a few words on the subject.

Jackson writes that he flies his flag "at least four times a year - Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, and Labor Day." Noticeably absent are Memorial Day and Veterans Day, but why should he bother to honor the memory of troops who died in the service of fascist Amerikkka? And don't get him started on Iraq, for it disturbs Mr. Jackson that "our invasion of Iraq...wasn't so much preemptory as unprovoked. I don't like that. It's un-American." You see, the "American" thing to do is to let your enemy strike first, and only then can you hit back. I wonder how the Americans killed on September 11, 2001 would reply. They could not be reached for comment.

The Express-News wasn't done inflicting left-elitist idiocy upon the people of San Antonio, for the next article was another cut-and-paste job - this one from Timothy Egan, formerly a correspondent for The New York Times. Egan maintains, in full enviro-nut mode, that President Bush's environmental policy is resulting in the destruction of America's national forests. Egan even accuses the Bush administration of not "listening to the public" about the extraction of natural resources from federally-owned lands.

What a joke. I suggest Mr. Egan leave his ivory tower and go speak to some people actually living in those areas, rather than just disgruntled Bureau of Land Management bureaucrats. When I lived in Montana, I recall many a Montanan being incensed about the federal government presuming that they knew better than state residents how to attend to undeveloped lands. Remember the release of wolves into Yellowstone? The concerns of adjacent private landowners (some of whom were ranchers) were dismissed by federally-funded conservationists eager to restore a non-existent "balance of nature."

In the last entry on the front of the "Views" section, the Express-News printed an essay by Robert Seltzer, a long time reporter for the paper and member of its editorial board. Though readers finally get treated to the thoughts of a San Antonian, his views do not differ all that much from those of the aforementioned out-of-staters. Seltzer contends that conservative politicians are putting the country into a panic over the issues of illegal immigration and terrorism. He singles out former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich for special criticism, referring to Gingrich as a "faux historian emeritus" (never mind that Gingrich has a Ph.D. in history and was once a professor) and chiding him for daring to link the two issues. Right, no connection between those matters, never mind the reports filed by one of Seltzer's own colleagues at the Express-News. Nothing to see there.

Getting back to Harold Jackson's column, maybe he has a point. Perhaps the only true patriots are those who find flaws within their own country and criticize them publicly. In that case, I'll point out four such flaws: Jackson's pseudo-patriotism, Egan's environmentalist hysteria, Seltzer's ostrich-like view of illegal immigration and terrorism, and metropolitan newspapers which profess to be fair and balanced but unfailingly present insipid, monotone, one-sided, sheep-like commentary to their subscribers.

God bless America.