In light of yesterday's 9/11 anniversary and last night's Move America Forward rally in Niles, a Chicago Sun-Times columnist much better (but who isn't?) than Jay Mariotti, north suburban resident Neil Steinberg, wrote a terrific column about the state of patriotism in America.
Conformity, the suburbanite's sin. So what if people aren't rushing to fly their flags? Their loss. It's a shame that patriotism is usually left to patriots, who give it such a bad name by their mistaken belief that loving the country means blindly supporting any folly its leaders can conceive and heaping scorn on any fellow citizen who misses some conformist benchmark of behavior.
Patriotism isn't cool, but it should be. Forget suburbanites; you'd think the cutting edge would embrace it. You'd think the artists and the radicals, the malcontents and the visionaries, college students and tree-worshipping cultists would be the most patriotic of all, understanding that it is this great country that accepts their deviation, while in many other places they would be stoned to death or, more likely, never even exposed in the first place to the ideas that so overwhelm them.
But no. College professors, free-thinkers, vegans, Marxists all sneer at their country. They are young, or so dazzled by the sheen of their beliefs they fail to appreciate the soil they sprouted in, and they let flag-waving, misty-eyed patriotism be dominated -- present company excluded -- by exactly the sort of narrow, hidebound reactionaries who'd thrive under any dictatorship.
More...
Rebellion has been redefined by a generation that would rather sneer at a country that embraces their individuality than display some patriotism. (Bold print for emphasis from Steinberg, not me.)
The photograph of the Chicago Sun-Times temporary home was taken a few hours ago. The next post will explain why I was in downtown Chicago this morning.
Hat tip to friend of the blog Pat Hickey.
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