On October 5, Andrea Clemons, who identified herself as a Los Angeles high
school science teacher, published “A
Daughter of the American Revolution Speaks Out Against Bush.” Quoting from
the Declaration of Independence, Clemons demanded that President George W. Bush
be removed from office, and implied that violent means be employed. She did not
specify parliamentary means. My response follows.
At first I thought: Oh, a patriot. And that was your intention. But when you
started complaining of patriots that they were “racist,” “homophobic,” and
“nationalist and militaristic,” and you held up illegal immigrants as greater
patriots than those who support and defend America, it became clear that you are
an anti-American. Did you really think anyone would read your screed through,
and think you are a patriot who cares about America, rather than a communist
and/or traitor?
You aren’t even a trenchant critic of President Bush and his “program.” (What
that “program” consists of, you never tell us.) Your criticisms are variously
contradictory, vague, exaggerated and dishonest.
[My] ancestors worked their entire lives – in factories, in offices, in
fields, in homes, and even in the military – to create …. the wealth of this
country and upheld the early ideals of this country and served this country in
whatever ways they knew how….
I understand that this country's wealth has been created first on the
backs of slaves from Africa and forever on the backs of those with the least
monetary wealth and more recently on the backs of people in developing countries
…
Well, which is it? Are you saying your ancestors were slaves? I don’t think
so. Are you saying that your ancestors were slave owners? That too, seems
doubtful. You don’t follow up the logical implications of your bold statements.
Apparently, you think that you can make any statement in any context, as long as
it makes you sound morally superior, logic be damned.
In any event, the claim about “slaves” is a gross exaggeration, and the one
about “people in developing countries” is a lie.
but I also recognize that many Americans today and many Americans in the
past didn't realize these scaled power structures, repeated from international
dynamics to class dynamics and race dynamics, etc.
“Scaled power structures”? “International dynamics to class dynamics and race
dynamics”?
Let me guess. You picked up the preceding dogmatic catch phrases in college.
In the immortal words of the philosopher Sonny Corleone, “What do you go to
college to learn to be stupid?”
You are only able to throw around dogmatic catch phrases, because your
professors never provided any facts in support of them. They “addressed”
skeptical students by variously flunking and expelling them, and seeing to it
that they were whitelisted from ever becoming teachers, thus leaving the field
increasingly to totalitarians like you.
You also falsely claim that America was founded as a democracy. Aside from
the falsity of your claim, I’m at a loss as to how that would be something
praiseworthy to you, seeing that as a Marxist, you are yourself violently
opposed to democracy, and in favor of a dictatorship. (As the Founding Fathers
were well aware, democracy is an undesirable form of government, which is why
they founded the U.S.A. as a republic – “If you can keep it,” in Ben Franklin’s
immortal warning – but Marxists like yourself have this thing about presenting
themselves as “democrats.”)
And yet, before my very eyes, the Bush regime is bucking all of those
protective devices against intolerance and despotism – the right to one's own
religion, the separation of powers, the right to privacy and fair trial . . .
the list doesn't end. It is time to throw off this
government.
Evidence, please.
If anything, via an overly liberal application of the First Amendment’s
Freedom of Religion clause, Bush is permitting Moslems to slowly impose Sharia.
If I were president, your beef might have some substance. But then, had the
Founding Fathers been confronted with the Religion of Terror, they would have
expressly outlawed Islam, and Moslem immigrants.
As for the separation of powers, I’d like to see some proof that President
Bush has usurped either the legislative or the judicial branch; you provide not
so much as a single example. In fact, it is the judicial branch that continues
to usurp power from the other branches, as in for example, the recent case of Hamdan v.
Rumsfeld, in which the Supreme Court usurped the prerogative of the
Commander-in-Chief in running a war, while inventing new, unjustifiable rights
for unlawful combatants in the bargain.
Your invocation of the Declaration of Independence, in order to rationalize
as patriotic your call for a revolution, is a pathetic old communist trick. The
Declaration was written to call into being a new nation, not to destroy that
nation.
When you do get specific, it is to deride as a “violent homophobe” someone
who mocked Frenchmen’s manhood for refusing to fight in the War in Iraq. But
even then, you expect the reader to take your word that a joke that you can’t
even remember was so offensive that we should hold an entire patriotic
organization, and indeed, the very notion of American patriotism, in
contempt.
Sophistry is not your strength, Ms. Clemons. Don’t give up your day job.
On the other hand, if your letter is any indication, you are doubtless
propagandizing your students to death, and expecting the taxpayers whom you
hate, to subsidize your revolution. So, I wish you would give up your day job …
but I know you won’t.