Patriotic Stirrings in the Real America

[Geee]

American Spectator:

Point Clear, AL -- Down here on the Gulf Coast, unlike in the Virginia suburbs of DC, people tend to display American flags even when it’s not the Fourth of July. But on the boardwalk in Point Clear on Independence Day weekend, flags are ubiquitous, their display joyous and un-self-conscious. My 13-year-old nephew, unbidden, flawlessly recites the key lines of the Declaration. Families on the boardwalk sponsor a children’s parade, with more red-white-and-blue on a single wagon or bicycle than you might see on a whole neighborhood in, oh, Los Angeles or somewhere like that. And the children can tell you, seeming to understand what they are saying rather than just repeating it by rote, that we are celebrating the facts that we are Americans and we are free.

All up and down the shoreline of Mobile Bay, private families or groups of families don’t merely shoot off a few bottle-rockets, but actually compete with the organized public fireworks displays with nearly half-hour extravaganzas of their own, each one visible a mile or more away. This isn’t “jingoism” or some such sentiment described by some trendy leftish pejorative; it’s just honest patriotism honestly expressed.

For me, newly repatriated on the Gulf after five years, everybody has questions. How can anybody think it’s okay to tell me I’m required to buy a certain service (the Obamacare mandate)? And How can they possibly think they’ll solve anything by having the government spend more money? And How can they even begin to justify these levels of debt?

There’s a genuine puzzlement, as if the attitudes of Official Washington and of the establishment media just don’t compute -- for the very good reason that those lefty elitist attitudes really don’t compute, because they don’t make sense of any sort. The Washington elite’s attitudes defy logic, violate the ethics of ordinary life, trample on common sense, and offend the common decency usually upheld by communal norms of quotidian virtue.

More than anything else, though, again and again and again, the question comes at me, with a deep concern almost plaintive in nature: Who is out there who can beat Obama and do an okay job? This isn’t merely a “Clinton is a scuzzbucket” or a “Carter is inept” sort of sentiment. This is different. This is an expression of the conviction that what Obama is doing, along with the likes of Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, is alien to our very idea of what being an American means. And no, this isn’t a concern with where Obama was born or what color his skin is; instead, it truly is a reaction to the president’s ideas, warped ideals, and precipitate actions. What is alien is not Obama’s being, not his person, but his worldview, his arrogance and his cold disregard for American traditions and allies. Many people doubt not just Obama’s judgment but also his motives.