OPINION:
What better occasion for the left to display its contempt for the United States than on Independence Day. This year, it staged the equivalent of a Nuremberg rally of anti-Americanism.
Ice cream mongers Ben & Jerry’s posted, “It’s high-time we recognize that the U.S. exists on stolen indigenous land and commit to returning it.”
Ben & Jerry’s itself has made no such commitment, even though its corporate headquarters is on what was once land of the Abenaki tribe.
Most land was stolen from someone at some point in time. What’s now Britain was stolen from Celtic tribes by the Romans and later taken from Roman Britons by the Saxons, who in turn lost it to the Normans. Other than the Israelites, God didn’t give anyone title in perpetuity to the land they now occupy.
At the Essence Festival, singer Jill Scott did her own version of the national anthem, which began: “Oh say can you see by the blood in the streets/That this place doesn’t smile on you colored child.”
So, America is to blame for Black men killing Black children caught in the crossfire in drug turf wars?
In 2021, Squad member Rep. Cori Bush tweeted, “When they say that the 4th of July is about American freedom, remember this: the freedom they’re referring to is for white people.”
Would that include part White folks like ex-President Barack Obama, twice elected to the highest office in the land?
The field of candidates for the Republican presidential nomination includes Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Miami Mayor Francis Suarez and author Vivek Ramaswamy — not exactly the Beverly Hills Country Club.
Anti-Americanism filters down. Recent polling shows that only 16% of 18- to 25-year-olds say they’re proud to be Americans, the lowest percentage in polling history.
If these spoiled brats aren’t proud to live here, where would they rather reside — in Cuba, Iran or North Korea, where suspicion of disloyalty lands you in a gulag or in front of a firing squad?
No, they’d rather stay here and bellyache about how miserable it is to live in a country that people are literally dying to get into.
But it’s not entirely their fault. They’ve been subjected to the equivalent of North Korean-style reeducation camps.
In a March 30 Newsweek column, C.J. Pearson, who describes himself as a Black kid raised in the Deep South, charged: “The identity crisis fueling Gen Z has been cultivated by the left-wing indoctrination into which we are inculcated at every educational and cultural institution in America. … We have been groomed to be disgusted by tradition, ashamed of our identity as Americans, and to embrace the thralls of victimhood.”
Keri D. Ingraham of the Discovery Institute observes: “It is no longer a priority to teach students a historically balanced and accurate understanding of our nation’s founding and the role of government. Instead, K-12 public schools inject woke ideology of social justice, ethnic studies, Critical Race Theory, and a revised historical narrative throughout the curriculum.”
If you think that’s an exaggeration, remember who controls public education — the progressive National Education Association and American Federation of Teachers, labor unions allied with the Democratic Party.
What vestige of patriotism remains in the hearts of the products of public schooling is purged by the news and entertainment media — “news coverage” that approximates press releases from the Democratic National Committee and movies that portray American history as a dark chronicle of exploitation and degradation.
HBO, Amazon and Netflix are in a fierce competition to crank out toxic waste like “The Man in the High Castle” and “The Plot Against America.”
Presiding over it all are the puppetmasters of the Democratic Party.
Former President Jimmy Carter claimed that America has political prisoners. (I don’t think he was talking about Jan. 6 protesters.)
Mr. Obama ridiculed the idea of American exceptionalism. Former first lady Michelle Obama said that the first time in her life she was proud of America was when her husband received his party’s nomination for president.
President Biden has spent his term in office indicting the nation he is said to lead as racist, while his party works overtime to trap Black children in failing public schools.
Billionaire Elon Musk says Democrats “have become the party of division and hate.”
In an anonymous post on Reddit, C.J. says he’s a lifelong Democrat, active in his local and state Democratic Central Committees, who has “started to believe Democrats hate America.”
As a math book I had in college put it, “It is intuitively obvious even to the most casual observer.”
• Don Feder is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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