Lenin's Hippies
I'm surprised at the intense hold the chickenhawk meme (CHM) exerts over my fellow journalists, even some of the non-frothing ones. Recent newsroom chit-chat:
Yes, yes, raise up national leaders who will march at the head of their armies, just like in the histories of the European Dark Ages, which, after all, were one unbroken chronicle of tolerance and peace.
The Chickenhawk Meme: If you choose or advocate military action, you must go and fight in it. The decision to employ military force must be made only by those who serve in the military, so none not in military service may participate in the decision. The result of that would be, the military alone controls what the military does.
A more pernicious policy in a free republic can scare be discovered. "Only the U.S. military says what the U.S. military does." In asserting that, you flush 500 years of hard-learned political experience.
Yet assert it they do, with mechanical regularity every time they brush up against a supporter of the overthrow of Saddam.
Who's "they?" Not the Democrats as a mass, or even to the few who occasionally, in a fit of anger, invoke the CHM curse. I'm willing to write that off. I mean that faction in the Democratic Party, extending well beyond it and looping around even into the fringes of the libertarian far right, whose sure badge of identification is reaching for the CHM at every opportunity. But I cannot hold blameless the more moderate Democrats who let this sort of nonsense go unchecked.
Even a few seconds' reflection on the consequences of this demand, without regard to the present political enmities, unseams it. It would be the death warrant of American freedom and democracy.
Anyone who upholds it deserves the dreaded label "unpatriotic." Unpatriotic, not in the innocent, reflexive "support our troops, my country right or wrong" sense, which the CHM bullies mock. But betraying the true and advanced patriotism which the enlightened left claim to embody: they would destroy the common values and constitutional structures of their country, simply to punish political enemies.
But only if you take them seriously, only if you believe they mean what they say. And of course they don't, any more than a child in a temper fit who yells "I'm going to run away and join the circus" really means it. That's their out, and they know it. The CHM is nothing but a scourge to those who disagree, unrooted in reality or policy or thought.
They're taking none of this seriously, in terms of acting on principles they would follow and policies they would implement if they should find themselves in power. Which is why I hope they never do. Reckless disregard for constancy, disavowal of guiding principles, and willful refusal to think of consequences hardly are advertisements for election to political high office.
Which makes me wonder what kind of fools play this way? Are they permanent minoritarians in their hearts? Or does the CHM embody the old hippie/Yippie tactic of childish playfulness to nonplus humorless authority? Are they still acting out the Merry Pranskters vs. the California sheriffs?
(Another recent Frothing Co-Worker quote: "Whenever I hear this patriotic shit, I want to quote a scene from 'Easy Rider.' ")
Or is it a residual tactic of Leninist revolutionary strategy: Say anything to undercut an enemy, then deny you ever said it the second a dogma becomes inconvenient?
Frothing: My solution to war is, if anyone wants to start a war, let them go and fight it. Let Bush go fight.
Non-Frothing: Yeah, or his children.
Frothing: No, I want to see him fight it.
Yes, yes, raise up national leaders who will march at the head of their armies, just like in the histories of the European Dark Ages, which, after all, were one unbroken chronicle of tolerance and peace.
The Chickenhawk Meme: If you choose or advocate military action, you must go and fight in it. The decision to employ military force must be made only by those who serve in the military, so none not in military service may participate in the decision. The result of that would be, the military alone controls what the military does.
A more pernicious policy in a free republic can scare be discovered. "Only the U.S. military says what the U.S. military does." In asserting that, you flush 500 years of hard-learned political experience.
Yet assert it they do, with mechanical regularity every time they brush up against a supporter of the overthrow of Saddam.
Who's "they?" Not the Democrats as a mass, or even to the few who occasionally, in a fit of anger, invoke the CHM curse. I'm willing to write that off. I mean that faction in the Democratic Party, extending well beyond it and looping around even into the fringes of the libertarian far right, whose sure badge of identification is reaching for the CHM at every opportunity. But I cannot hold blameless the more moderate Democrats who let this sort of nonsense go unchecked.
Even a few seconds' reflection on the consequences of this demand, without regard to the present political enmities, unseams it. It would be the death warrant of American freedom and democracy.
Anyone who upholds it deserves the dreaded label "unpatriotic." Unpatriotic, not in the innocent, reflexive "support our troops, my country right or wrong" sense, which the CHM bullies mock. But betraying the true and advanced patriotism which the enlightened left claim to embody: they would destroy the common values and constitutional structures of their country, simply to punish political enemies.
But only if you take them seriously, only if you believe they mean what they say. And of course they don't, any more than a child in a temper fit who yells "I'm going to run away and join the circus" really means it. That's their out, and they know it. The CHM is nothing but a scourge to those who disagree, unrooted in reality or policy or thought.
They're taking none of this seriously, in terms of acting on principles they would follow and policies they would implement if they should find themselves in power. Which is why I hope they never do. Reckless disregard for constancy, disavowal of guiding principles, and willful refusal to think of consequences hardly are advertisements for election to political high office.
Which makes me wonder what kind of fools play this way? Are they permanent minoritarians in their hearts? Or does the CHM embody the old hippie/Yippie tactic of childish playfulness to nonplus humorless authority? Are they still acting out the Merry Pranskters vs. the California sheriffs?
(Another recent Frothing Co-Worker quote: "Whenever I hear this patriotic shit, I want to quote a scene from 'Easy Rider.' ")
Or is it a residual tactic of Leninist revolutionary strategy: Say anything to undercut an enemy, then deny you ever said it the second a dogma becomes inconvenient?
Labels: chickenhawk meme, journalism
