Father to the Man
If you need to know any more about the news media in this country these days than you've already seen, consider where the people in the media turn to get their news when they're not doing their jobs. As I walk around my newsroom, I often see this site up on computer screens.
Just peruse the contributors from the past week or so: Bob Herbert, Ralph Nader, Paul Krugman, Daniel Ellsberg, Arianna Huffington. Just check out the column headlines: "Hypocritical U.S. Fight for 'Freedom,'" "Kids in the Military: They Won't Go," "Proof is in the Memo: Soldiers Died for a Lie," "Losing Our Country," "Dean Just Told Them The Truth and They Thought It Was Hell," "The Disassembler in Chief and the War of Error," "Foreign Policy Driven by Fear," "The War Against Islam."
The usual stuff, from the usual suspects. But remember: this is what is being read regularly by the people who determine what goes into the daily newspaper in this small city in America. This is what is shaping the framework of the world as they see it. They then take that template and can't help but impose it on their decision-making in writing and editing a daily newspaper that is the window on the world for a shrinking but still substantial number of American citizens.
Anyway, I was gratified to find this article there, which addresses one of my criticisms of people who only write negatively about the United States, then draw back in shock when people question their dedication to that country. The columnist responds:
I often use that same metaphor. This country's social order, and its government are like our child. But note how this writer shifts silently between two positions, to avoid the real question. His father loves him, which is why his father disciplines him, and not Billy down the street. But does his father do nothing but discipline him? Search out his every fault and error, even when he has done his best, done better than Billy down the street, done more than he ever did before? Is his father a tireless torrent of criticism and contempt -- such as "Common Dreams" is?
And would he say such a father loved him, in that case?
I don't care if this writer doesn't want to criticize terrorists. There are plenty who will roll up their sleeves and take on the Islamist killers, if he doesn't have the nerve to. If he wants only to criticize governments that won't try to kill him for it, that's his affair. Frankly, with his fuzzy brain, I'd rather not have him trying to do the same thing I'm trying to do.
But based on his own metaphor, I don't think much of him as a parent.
Sisyphean Musings happens to have the right quote for this today, from Chesterton, who describes such people, on a grander scale, under the heading "pessimists."
Just peruse the contributors from the past week or so: Bob Herbert, Ralph Nader, Paul Krugman, Daniel Ellsberg, Arianna Huffington. Just check out the column headlines: "Hypocritical U.S. Fight for 'Freedom,'" "Kids in the Military: They Won't Go," "Proof is in the Memo: Soldiers Died for a Lie," "Losing Our Country," "Dean Just Told Them The Truth and They Thought It Was Hell," "The Disassembler in Chief and the War of Error," "Foreign Policy Driven by Fear," "The War Against Islam."
The usual stuff, from the usual suspects. But remember: this is what is being read regularly by the people who determine what goes into the daily newspaper in this small city in America. This is what is shaping the framework of the world as they see it. They then take that template and can't help but impose it on their decision-making in writing and editing a daily newspaper that is the window on the world for a shrinking but still substantial number of American citizens.
Anyway, I was gratified to find this article there, which addresses one of my criticisms of people who only write negatively about the United States, then draw back in shock when people question their dedication to that country. The columnist responds:
I'm an unlikely candidate to advocate the destruction of the United States. I challenge U.S. policies rather than describe the misdeeds of terrorists because I believe it's the responsibility of citizens to monitor and constrain our government.
When I was a child, my parents were strict disciplinarians. If I did something wrong, they punished me. It would have been nonsensical for me to suggest that my father hated me because all he did was punish me, while not saying a single word about Billy down the street, who was worse than me.
My father disciplined me because he loved me, and he wanted me to live according to a particular code of conduct. He wasn't concerned about Billy, because Billy wasn't his child.
The U.S. government is our "child," and we have a duty to make sure that child acts appropriately. The men and women in the U.S. military took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." I believe all Americans should make a similar commitment.
I often use that same metaphor. This country's social order, and its government are like our child. But note how this writer shifts silently between two positions, to avoid the real question. His father loves him, which is why his father disciplines him, and not Billy down the street. But does his father do nothing but discipline him? Search out his every fault and error, even when he has done his best, done better than Billy down the street, done more than he ever did before? Is his father a tireless torrent of criticism and contempt -- such as "Common Dreams" is?
And would he say such a father loved him, in that case?
I don't care if this writer doesn't want to criticize terrorists. There are plenty who will roll up their sleeves and take on the Islamist killers, if he doesn't have the nerve to. If he wants only to criticize governments that won't try to kill him for it, that's his affair. Frankly, with his fuzzy brain, I'd rather not have him trying to do the same thing I'm trying to do.
But based on his own metaphor, I don't think much of him as a parent.
Sisyphean Musings happens to have the right quote for this today, from Chesterton, who describes such people, on a grander scale, under the heading "pessimists."
... the pessimist (who is the cosmic anti-patriot) uses the freedom that life allows to her counsellors to lure away the people from her flag. Granted that he states only facts, it is still essential to know what are his emotions, what is his motive. It may be that twelve hundred men in Tottenham are down with smallpox; but we want to know whether this is stated by some great philosopher who wants to curse the gods, or only by some common clergyman who wants to help the men.
The evil of the pessimist is, then, not that he chastises gods and men, but that he does not love what he chastises -- he has not this primary and supernatural loyalty to things ...
