A friend forward this piece of jingoism, worthy of Pat Buchanan, to me
today, in which David Horowitz accuses me of having "a subversive
mission whose agenda is to warn them [my students]against the very
society their parents had freely chosen. The students are addressed not
as members of a free community freely choosing their futures, but as
though they were dragged to these shores (and kept here) in chains."
He based this assumption on my questioning of students who stand for the
pledge of allegiance "if she or he can tell me of any moment in history
where the inhabitants of this land actually enjoyed 'liberty and justice
for all,' and beyond the words
of the pledge, to show me any proof that such was ever intended."
No student was ever able to do so. Now I am making the same challenge
to Prof. Horowitz to see, with his apparent profound knowledge and deep
respect for American history and its traditions, e.g., slavery and Jim
Crow, genocide of the indigenous population, close to 200 interventions
on foreign soil, if he can answer the question.
Perhaps, Horowitz would like to have a public debate on the question?
I'm ready, David. Just name the time and place.
Jeff Blankfort
salon.com | July 10, 2000
URL: http://www.frontpagemag.com/dh/dh07-10-00p.htm
The Fourth of July Weekend is normally a time for reflection about
the American Founding and renewed commitment to its enduring legacy.
But in recent
years the anniversary of American Independence has also become an
occasion to reflect on the way America's heritage is under continuous
assault by the
determined legions of the political left. This attack has been
mounted by an intellectual class based in the media and in America's
politically correct
educational institutions. Their inspiration is a set of discredited
19th Century dogmas masquerading as "progressive" nostrums, and not
even the collapse
of Communism has been able to reconcile their alienated psyches with
the American cause.
These thoughts were brought into focus by three unrelated but
thematically coherent incidents that occurred during the holiday
respite. They include an
Internet post concerning the Pledge of Allegiance as it is taught in
our public schools; a dialogue about "patriotism" arranged by the New
York Times
between neo-conservative Norman Podhoretz and Nation editor Victor
Navasky; and the release of Mel Gibson's epic film, "The Patriot,"
which is about
this history itself.
The ritual of civic renewal is important to Americans in a way that
it is not to the citizens of other nations. Their patria have been
created out of common
bonds of blood, language and soil. Their national identities are not
intrinsic - as America's is -- to a set of abstract principles and
ideas. The singularity of
the American identity lies in being forged through a conscious
commitment to what until recently was still referred to as an
"American way of life." The
construct "American" was defined by the Founding, beginning with its
Declaration that announced the creation of a new nation dedicated to
the proposition
that all human beings are created equal and that they are endowed
with a natural right to pursue life, liberty and happiness. To be
anti-American is not only
to reject the heritage of this past, but a future that is "American" as well.
Until recently, the public schools in America functioned as a
crucible of its citizenship. Immigrants who came to America seeking
refuge and opportunity
were educated in this social contract by their teachers. At the
beginning of every school day, students would pledge allegiance to
the flag of a multi-ethnic
republic that was united into one indivisible nation by the
commitment of all its citizens to a common national ideal. For these
immigrants, public education
was a process of assimilation into an American culture that had
pledged itself to liberty and justice for all. But now this contract
is under siege by radical
multi-culturalists who condemn America and its heritage as
oppressive, and valorize instead the culture of the "Other" - of
peoples this nation is alleged to
oppress. In this perverse -- but now academically normal - view, the
world is turned upside down. The nation conceived in liberty is
reconceived as the
tyrant to be overthrown.
Hows effective is this campaign? A Zogby poll, taken in January,
showed that nearly a third of America's college students declined to
say that they are
proud to be Americans. This can be considered a direct result of the
fact that their left-wing professors, as a matter of course, teach
them to be ashamed of
their country's present and its history.
The Internet post I came across was from a Sixties list, and it
encapsulated the attitude that has caused this to happen. The post
was written by Jeffrey
Blankfort, a photographer who supplied the media with romantic images
of the Black Panthers, during their struggles with law and order in
the 1960s.
Blankfort is now a public school teacher, and an unreconstructed
missionary from the hate-America school of radical thought, perhaps
the most enduring
legacy of his radical generation to the national debate. This is what
Blankfort wrote:
"In the schools in which I have subbed and then taught, very few
students stand for the pledge of allegiance unless coerced to do so
by their teacher. Most
of the students have either African, Latin American or Asian
ancestry. When an occasional student does stand, I ask, in a friendly
manner, if she or he can
tell me of any moment in history where the inhabitants of this land
actually enjoyed 'liberty and justice for all,' and beyond the words
of the pledge, to show
me any proof that such was ever intended."
In other words, for Jeffrey Blankfort and his comrades, gone is the
role of public education as an assimilator of immigrants and
minorities into the
American culture; gone, too, is the task of integrating them into the
opportunities offered under the umbrella of "the American dream." It
has been replaced
by a subversive mission whose agenda is to warn them against the very
society their parents had freely chosen. The students are addressed
not as members
of a free community freely choosing their futures, but as though they
were dragged to these shores (and kept here) in chains. Thirty years
ago no teacher
would have thought to abuse his authority over school children in
this manner. But now educational institutions all the way from
university to kindergarten
have been thoroughly politicized by a "post-modern" left that
respects no institutions and no standards, and for whom everything is
political, including the
lives of small children.
This is an authentic movement of sedition, and it is new as well. In
fact, I have a personal way of measuring just how new. My father was
a Communist
teacher during the Thirties and Forties, unfairly purged in the
McCarthy era from the New York City school system. But not for an act
like this. For he did
not, so far as the record shows, violate his classroom trust; nor did
he intrude his personal political agendas into his lessons. Even
though my father
belonged to a conspiratorial party that took its orders from a
foreign power, it would have been absolutely unthinkable for him to
attack America in its
promise ("show me any proof that such [liberty and justice] was ever
intended") as today's leftists reflexively do.
My father belonged to a party whose slogan was "Communism is 20th
Century Americanism," and he believed it. The socialism of which he
and his
comrades dreamed was incompatible, of course, with the American
founding. But in their minds the future to which they aspired was
going to be a
completion - not a rejection - of the American idea. Accordingly,
they named their organizations after American icons like Lincoln and
Jefferson, men now
routinely demonized by the left as "racists" and (in Jefferson's
case) "rapists." Even though what Communists like my father really
wanted was a "Soviet
Lincoln
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