Joel Stein Once Again Proves Himself An Honest Leftist

You remember Joel Stein, don't you? The man who was honest enough to write these words:

"I don't support our troops {...} being against the war and saying you support the troops is one of the wussiest positions the pacifists have ever taken — and they're wussy by definition.

`..The truth is that people who pull triggers are ultimately responsible, whether they're following orders or not. An army of people making individual moral choices may be inefficient, but an army of people ignoring their morality is horrifying.'

`...when you volunteer for the U.S. military, you pretty much know you're not going to be fending off invasions from Mexico and Canada. So you're willingly signing up to be a fighting tool of American imperialism, for better or worse.'

Those pearls of wisdom appeared in the Los Angeles Times almost three years ago, and he caught a lot of crap for them, but not from me.I simply commended him for being honest enough to articulate the beliefs of himself and his peers...most of whom are just as unpatriotic and disloyal as he is but lacked the fortitude to admit it.

Another occasion like that arose today, as the LA Times published another piece by Stein in which he plainly admits he has no love for his country:

"I don't love America. That's what conservatives are always telling liberals like me. Their love, they insist, is truer, deeper and more complete. Then liberals, like all people who are accused of not loving something, stammer, get defensive and try to have sex with America even though America will then accuse us of wanting it for its body and not its soul. When America gets like that, there's no winning.

But I've come to believe conservatives are right. They do love America more. Sure, we liberals claim that our love is deeper because we seek to improve the United States by pointing out its flaws. But calling your wife fat isn't love. {...}

Fox News' Sean Hannity loves this country so much, he did an entire episode of "Hannity's America" titled "The Greatest Nation on Earth." In that one hour he said, several times, "the U.S. is the greatest, best country God has ever given man on the face of the Earth." One of the surest signs of love is it makes you talk stupid.

Conservatives feel personally blessed to have been born in the only country worth living in. I, on the other hand, just feel lucky to have grown up in a wealthy democracy. If it had been Australia, Britain, Ireland, Canada, Italy, Spain, France, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Japan, Israel or one of those Scandinavian countries with more relaxed attitudes toward sex, that would have been fine with me too.

When I ran the idea that liberals don't love America as much as conservatives by talk-show host Glenn Beck, who will move from CNN Headline News to Fox News next month, he totally agreed with me, which is precisely why I called him. "It's absolutely true, deep love. As a parent loves a child," he said. "But I think liberals laugh that off, the way the rest of the country laughs off the love Texans have for their state. Texans don't think, 'Oklahoma, you suck.' Well, yes they do -- but they don't think other states suck. They just have a love for the republic of Texas. I don't have disdain for other countries. Well, except for France."

I asked Beck why Democrats rarely share his overwhelming sense of American exceptionalism and Francophobia. "I think it's because in the late 1800s up until the 1930s, the progressive movement started to think the European ideals are pretty good, that it's one big world," he said. "Well, it's not. If you look at all the countries like people, there are differences between people. And I happen to like this person the best." When I look at the countries like people, I love Sweden the best."

I'll bet you do love Sweden best, Mr. Stein...although I have to wonder if you've ever actually lived there. But I admit to being curious about how long you think Sweden and the other European democracies you and you fellow Leftists adore so much would survive as free countries without the US military, those...what was it you called them? 'Fighting tools of American imperialism?'

Another aspect of this I can only characterize as Stein's sheer ingratitude.

Although I would venture to guess that Stein is hardly observant in his religion in the least, the fact remains that he's a Jew who's parents, or more likely grandparents emigrated to America from someplace like Poland, Russia or Germany. They didn't come here totally out of choice - they came here because life where they came from had become intolerable because of whom they were by birth, because their horizons were limited by law and by ingrained custom, and because they knew that whatever else awaited them in America, there was a chance for a better life for themselves and their children if they worked hard and became part of the American family.

And America accepted them, something a lot of those liberal European democracies weren't prepared to do in the least. America may not have welcome them with a red carpet, and if Jew hatred was a fact of life at least it wasn't done by government fiat. And as the Jews became part of America, it blossomed for them like a flower. Stein, with his Stanford education is a direct beneficiary of America's willingness to accept the other and allow them a shot at upward mobility and the pursuit of happiness.

That's a part of what makes America exceptional that Stein is clueless about, and it applies to Jews fleeing the ghetto, the Irish fleeing famine and oppression, and Vietnamese and Cubans fleeing regimes that people like Stein and his ideological soulmates consider the epitome of radical chic.

The other part of American exceptionalism that Stein simply has no clue about concerns our willingness to spend treasure and blood for the freedom of not only ourselves but for others. When the Nazis came for the Jews, most of Europe either willingly cooperated or turned the other way. America did not.

The USA didn't fight WWII for the Jews (sorry, Pat Buchanan) but it damned well kept Hermann Göring from washing his fat behind with Mr. Stein's parents and grandparents. And the men and woman who did that were those stupid knuckledraggers in uniform he despises so much....motivated by love of country.

The same sort people do the same today for Stein himself, someone the jihadis would murder in a heartbeat if those 'mercenary tools' weren't around to defend him.

When you see someone like Stein who's sucked up the immense gifts America has given him with parasitical impunity and still has the nerve to to remain ungrateful, callous and indifferent all one can do is despise him and pity him in his ignorance and emptiness.

But I am compelled to again commend him for his honesty, if nothing else.