Hardly the Last Word

I’ll admit that, at this point, nothing about cable-news-era American partisan shenanigans should surprise me.? I’ve seen push polls and astroturf organizing, free speech zones and major party convention speeches involving the word “spitballs.”? And I’ll also admit that, since I started my new job, I haven’t dedicated any significant time to watching or even reading about Washington, D.C.? I’ve been too busy learning the politics of my new college to pay much attention to the so-called politics that drive the careers of so many cable news networks.

Even so, my wife is a school teacher, so I have come to be aware of the latest head-scratcher, and, despite my self-image as a jaded semi-observer of Washington, I’m genuinely surprised and delighted that occasion has led self-labeled Conservatives to become as thoughtful as the Jehovah’s Witnesses.

I’m writing, of course, about the U.S. President’s upcoming address to the school children later today, September 8, 2009.? Mary has already had to field phone calls from parents informing her that their children would be signed out of school that day.? No problem there, of course–after all, Jehovah’s Witness students have been for some time opting out of the Pledge of Allegiance, so it makes perfect sense that families who have come to realize that the President of the United States is not an office worthy of school children’s audience should sign their children out of class.

I’ll admit that I did not expect this kind of change of heart.? After all,? mere years ago, many of these same folks were decrying the lack of “respect for the office”of the President that people were showing when the former president was pitching a premeditated war on the pretense of national security.? These were the same folks, I imagine, who flew the most American flags and most vocally in the leadup to that invasion.? And I imagine that these were the same folks who called folks like me awful names because, as believers in a robust Just War conversation, we didn’t see anything justifying that war.? But now, proving my suspicious heart wrong, these folks have learned the lesson that no nation-state can go out and “defeat evil” in the world, that their kids shouldn’t be “socialized” by a country so beholden to the multinational corporation, that parents shouldn’t have their kids worshiping a Republic in place of God.? And as far as the name-calling goes?? No problem, friends.? After all, we should rejoice when those in error come to the truth, should we not?

I have to admit as well that, as 2008 came to a close, so many of these folks started saying that they weren’t “Republicans” but “Conservatives.”? Worldly-wise as I thought I was, I figured they were just trying to abandon ship as an unpopular president rode off into the sunset.? But look and see: these same parents have wised up to the insidious tendency of Republics to take the place of family and Church, and just as they are resisting the calls to take education seriously for the benefit of a nation, I’m sure they’ll be first in line to decry those who? make “supporting the troops” the height of personal virtue and “patriotism” the one thing that nobody should insult in the future.

As I’m revising this post (I started writing it Saturday evening after Micah went to bed), I look at the text of the speech, and I’m not surprised at what I see.? Study hard.? Take responsibility for your education.? What devilry is this? I think that the people who started protesting this event almost a week before the text became public are absolutely right: this is bad stuff.? If these things became the bedrock of national character, no doubt the next step would be an ideology of self-reliance, a belief that we as people do not depend on one another (and certainly not in the workings of “the government” whom we elect) for the good fortune we enjoy.? I’m glad to see that these former-Republicans have abandoned such things.

A couple things were obvious even before the text of the speech became public yesterday, and I repeat that my wise formerly-Republican-but-now-Conservative comrades probably saw these and just knew that the speech would be poison. First, the government has enlisted NASCAR drivers to support the effort, obviously ignorant that the “NASCAR dads” who some say drove the previous president’s re-election.? And we know that nothing good can come with NASCAR endorsement:

Second, agents of the Republic have already started calling these anti-nationalist Conservatives “irrational” and “cynical.”? They’ve even implied that, when inevitably a Republican is back in the White House, they’ll go right back to holding up the President as some sacred office, unquestionable lest the dissidents become “unpatriotic” or even “treasonous.”? They expect the flag-waving and the “support our troops” to start up as soon as the next Republican president invades the next petroleum-rich territory without solid evidence of a real threat.? Don’t be fooled: this is right out of the 2003 playbook.? The old, dirty Republicans did the same thing to us Just-War adherents back then too, claiming that the instant we got a Democrat in, we’d treat him as some sort of infallible figure.

But these Conservatives, repentant of that nonsense, know better.? Just as a war of aggression nurtures a spirit of Empire among the citizenry, so working hard in school, taking responsibility for education, and other such acts of “mental war” threaten to make human beings into Patriots, and I’m glad that the Conservatives have stepped up and opposed that threat. And they’re not going anywhere when the Republicans come back to power.? They’re Conservatives, after all, not Republicans.? They said so themselves.? Their opposition to “socialized medicine” today will no doubt come into full bloom in the years to come as they begin, alongside us Just War proponents, to oppose “socialized foreigner-killing,” the use of tax money to raise armies and hire mercenaries to shoot people in countries not our own.? I know that’s the vector we’re following, and I welcome our new allies.

As someone who sees unreflective nationalism as one of the great vices of our decade, I welcome moments like these when the “support our troops” crowd has a chance to step back and think a bit longer about the relationships between the Church and the family and the nation-state. I’m in their corner now, hoping that this will usher in an age when it’s the Conservatives who call out loudest when “love for America” becomes an unqualified virtue, when opposing a war becomes a sign of naivete, when “the president” becomes a figure beyond critique.? Those of us who opposed that kind of mentality six years ago didn’t have many friends in the world, but I for one rejoice that now I march into this struggle shoulder-to-shoulder with new friends, the Jehovah’s Witnesses at our right shoulder and the Conservatives at our left.

Now that I think of it, though, perhaps the Conservatives should march on our right.? They might be more comfortable there.

N.B. I know I’m no Jonathan Swift, but please take this as no more than A Modest Proposal and certainly Hardly the Last Word.

by ngilmour