A Blast From the Past - America, Love It or Leave It, Said Socrates

Today, I'm going to dust off an old post of mine from a couple of years ago. It's made more relevant by the recent events around the world, particularly in the Middle East.

I'd like for y'all to click on this link to The Urban Infidel's coverage of the Muslim Day Parade held recently in New York City. The images there should concern you greatly.

Here's a video from Tom Trento that shows only a small part of what occurred that day.



Aside from these people's refusal to recognize our laws, their open contempt for America and our laws and values should shock you. It certainly did me.

If it seems like we are under attack, it's because we are. Still not convinced?

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Not only are our embassies under physical attack abroad, our laws and the principles that govern us are under attack at home as well. Nothing about this is new, as you will soon discover.


In a sane world where everything wasn't backwards, the concept of good citizenship would be honored everywhere. Those who desire to be governed by whatever cultural norms appeal to them would congregate where those values are, essentially, the law

If your desire is to live under a theocracy, that's fine.

If you wish to be free, you can choose a free society in which to live.

But, that's not what we have in today's world.

I certainly hope that you don't think what we're seeing today is anything new. Indeed, the ink was barely dry on our Declaration of Independence when anti-Americanism began. Most of Europe at the time wasn't exactly cheering us on, especially England.

It's a basic human need to seek out and seek to be surrounded by people who agree with each other. Were this not the case, there would be no separate nations and certainly no cultural diversity. As there are people of different abilities, there are also nations of different abilities. Each nation has contributed its part to the world we know today, for better or for worse.

America is unique for many things. We are known as the Melting Pot of the World because, well, we are. What unites us is the desire to live freely according to our own potential, guided by our conscience, in peace. And for a long time, that's what we had.

But others, driven by envy, aware of their cultural failures, greedy, have sought not freedom for themselves, but instead to bring us down to their level. This is the vile reasoning behind today's calls for "fairness."

Their wish is not for peace. Their desire is not respect. Their wish is to control you: what you think, what you do, and how you live. In other words, what they want is the opposite of freedom.

I'm being simplistic in order to make a point.

The reason why we cannot live is peace lies in the darkness of the human heart. Have you ever been robbed? I have. The first thing that crossed my mind upon the discovery that about half of what I had worked for was gone, was, "Why would someone do this to me?" I couldn't understand why someone thought it was better for them to take something that didn't belong to them than to take that same effort and apply it towards themselves. It did, after all, take some doing to take my stuff.

Here lies the basic difference between good people and bad people. Multiply this by the seven billion or so inhabitants of Earth and you have the bloody history of mankind: the peaceful versus the aggressors. Anyone who thinks that all cultures are the same and equally good is, quite frankly, an imbecile.

As I mentioned earlier, none of this is anything new. The Ancients struggled with this, too. Socrates, in his incessant pursuit of goodness, laid out the ideal of citizenship in his work entitled Crito.

In short, Socrates approached the idea of citizenship from a mature, enlightened standpoint. A citizen either agrees with the place where he lives, or he moves on to a place more to his liking. The moralistic and intellectual underpinning of his argument is respect for his fellow man and the culture established by those who preceded him.

For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of us laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like us and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, and take his goods with him. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are wrong; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us; that is what we offer and he does neither.
 

I would add that there is a fourth wrong. It's God's Desire that we live in peace, which is the reason why civilization was established originally. This is also why our legal foundation embodies the directives of the Ten Commandments.

If you do not wish to live among us as an American in peace, then please leave us in peace. Do not attempt to change us.

You will fail.

America, Love It or Leave It – Said Socrates

It was a familiar bumper sticker to baby-boomers during the counter-culture revolution of the sixties. The phrase was embraced by those who felt under attack and despised by those who considered themselves to be cerebral. It was the perfect expression for the time: short, easily remembered, and notable for the visceral reaction of anyone who read it. There was no way to avoid the reaction. You could react one of two ways (as it asks you to) because there was no way to remain indifferent to the concept.

You either loved your country or you didn’t.

The Sixties aren’t over quite yet. In many ways, the counter-culture revolution is ongoing. Try typing that phrase into your favorite search engine and you’ll find the same opinions and reactions to it today. It’s the line that still divides us. The terminally hip among us, in their effort to appear intelligent and at the forefront of modern society, look down their nose at such a concept. To them, anyone who subscribes to that notion is a knuckle-dragging, Bible-thumping, bitter-clinger, hopelessly out of touch and quite possibly a product of inbreeding.

These self-described intellectuals would be surprised to discover that the phrase they smugly denounce was expressed by one of the worlds’ great thinkers, Socrates.

That’s right, Socrates.
In Plato’s Crito, Socrates is visited by his friend of the same name who has come to free him from prison. As you may know, one of the reasons why Socrates is considered one of the world’s great philosophers is that he was always seeking the good in everything. His discourses consisted of questions framed by logic with his eye fixed on positive results for the individual, his family and the state.

Here’s a short synopsis;


The exchange between Socrates and Crito shows the thinker unafraid to die and convinced that to allow himself to be freed from prison would show him to be a hypocrite for betraying his beliefs. Interestingly for the sports fan, Socrates also makes the case for an athlete needing a good coach. But I digress.

Holding in his heart the deeply held belief that he should do what is right regardless of the opinions of the masses, Socrates lays out the model of responsible citizenship along with an argument for goodness.

Goodness first…

Socrates. Are we to say that we are never intentionally to do wrong, or that in one way we ought and in another way we ought not to do wrong, or is doing wrong always evil and dishonorable, as I was just now saying, and as has been already acknowledged by us? Are all our former admissions which were made within a few days to be thrown away? And have we, at our age, been earnestly discoursing with one another all our life long only to discover that we are no better than children? Or are we to rest assured, in spite of the opinion of the many, and in spite of consequences whether better or worse, of the truth of what was then said, that injustice is always an evil and dishonor to him who acts unjustly? Shall we affirm that?


Crito. Yes.


Socrates. Then we must do no wrong?


Crito. Certainly not.

And now citizenship, from the point of view of the city…

Socrates. … For, after having brought you into the world, and nurtured and educated you, and given you and every other citizen a share in every good that we had to give, we further proclaim and give the right to every Athenian, that if he does not like us when he has come of age and has seen the ways of the city, and made our acquaintance, he may go where he pleases and take his goods with him; and none of [our] laws will forbid him or interfere with him. Any of you who does not like us and the city, and who wants to go to a colony or to any other city, may go where he likes, and take his goods with him. But he who has experience of the manner in which we order justice and administer the State, and still remains, has entered into an implied contract that he will do as we command him. And he who disobeys us is, as we maintain, thrice wrong: first, because in disobeying us he is disobeying his parents; secondly, because we are the authors of his education; thirdly, because he has made an agreement with us that he will duly obey our commands; and he neither obeys them nor convinces us that our commands are wrong; and we do not rudely impose them, but give him the alternative of obeying or convincing us; that is what we offer and he does neither.

Sound logic, no? As they say, read it all.

And I just added another "P".