VIEW from behind the plow

Happy Thanksgiving to all. May there be a turkey in every oven and plenty of bi-carb after you’ve over-eaten.

The Case for Nationalism

Author Richard Lowry has written a new book, “The Case for Nationalism: How It Made Us Powerful, United and Free.”

The identity politics of recent years has driven a wedge between two major groups of Americans – Conservatives, who remain determined to keep a Constitutional Republic, and so-called “Progressives” who seem equally intent on changing the nation into a socialist miasma.

In a column in National Review (of which Lowry is editor), “The Treason of the Elites,” it is observed that the nation’s clerisy (our learned-literary people) considers the U.S. an anachronism or disgrace.

The column refers to Howard Zinn, a little-known left-wing professor and activist who in the 1970s decided to write a history of the United States to balance the alleged patriotic bias in American Historical Writing.

Zinn’s book became “A People’s History of the United States.”

The book didn’t make much of a splash when it was first published with only 5,000 copies printed.

However it gained favor from pop culture and positive references in the movie, “Good Will Hunting,” and in the HBO show, “The Sopranos” and sales increased year after year until it had sold more than two million copies and was translated in 20 languages and became a go-to book on colleges campuses.

Totalitarian regimes praised the book highly.

Lowry comments that the Zinn work is built on a tendentious or partial accounts of events, not to mention outright falsehoods.

Harvard University professor Oscar Handlin commented that “Zinn is a stranger to evidence bearing upon the peoples about whom he purports to write” and derided the deranged quality of his fairy tales which are concocted to fit the legend.

In common speak, Zinn’s “history” fueled the left-wing propaganda that is force-fed college students today and turns up not only in history classes, but also political science, economics, literature and, of course, Women’s Studies...and the mass media (fake news).

Zinn’s influence is responsible, in part, for the current calamity of young people graduating from college with no marketable skills, a useless diploma and tons of college debt.

Regarding Lowry’s book, which is available from Broadside Books, it is written:

“It is one of our most honored clichés that America is an idea and not a nation. This is false. America is indisputably a nation, and one that desperately needs to protect its interests, its borders, and its identity.

“The Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump swept nationalism to the forefront of the political debate. This is a good thing. Nationalism is usually assumed to be a dirty word, but it is a foundation of democratic self-government and of international peace.

“National Review editor Rich Lowry refutes critics on left and the right, reclaiming the term “nationalism” from those who equate it with racism, militarism and fascism. He explains how nationalism is an American tradition, a thread that runs through such diverse leaders as Alexander Hamilton, Teddy Roosevelt, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Ronald Reagan.

“In The Case for Nationalism, Lowry explains how nationalism was central to the American Project. It fueled the American Revolution and the ratification of the Constitution. It preserved the country during the Civil War. It led to the expansion of the American nation’s territory and power, and eventually to our invaluable contribution to creating an international system of self-governing nations.

“It’s time to recover a healthy American nationalism, and especially a cultural nationalism that insists on the assimilation of immigrants and that protects our history, civic rituals and traditions, which are under constant threat. At a time in which our nation is plagued by self-doubt and self-criticism, ‘The Case for Nationalism’ offers a path for America to regain its national self-confi dence and achieve continued greatness.”

The Constitution is based on Christian principles and marked a sharp break from the past when rulers were often the meanest guys on the block and the “citizens” were little more (if any more) than slaves.

The mention of the nation’s recovery after the Civil War could refer to the Christian precepts that remained strong on both sides of the Mason-Dixon line, possibly deeper on the South side than the North.

Today, the so-called Progressive leadership is attacking Christianity on every front.

Our preacher on Sunday commented on the unbalance in the nation when Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, which can be easily disproven, can be taught in schools but Intelligent Design, which requires a blief in an omniscient God cannot.

Christianity is the glue that has kept the nation together since the Constitution was ratified June 21, 1788.