Love of country must always be qualified these days, lest anyone think you are unaware of slavery, insufficiently regulated railroad stock offerings, Lester Maddox or the attempt by Philip Morris to conceal the addictive nature of cigarettes. Say “I love this country” at a dinner table with strangers, and it’s like shave and a haircut without the two bits. But? But? We are an exceptional nation, to be sure, but you can’t leave it at that. We are exceptionally misguided, exceptionally lazy and xenophobic, shot through to the pith with bilious perfidy, and our sole redeeming quality is our ability to constantly remake ourselves. We’ll either perfect society so we can perfect human nature, or do it the other way around. Either’s fine. Whatever works.
And what, you might wonder, caused me to prop that straw man up and jerk his jaw up and down? The Freakonomics blog on the NYT site has a contest: a six-word motto for the US. It was no doubt tendered in good faith, but reading the suggestions is like licking a corroded battery. The latter-day sub-Menckens will always get off the sharpest lines, of course; you can’t draw a laugh with something Grandma might knit on a pillow, and drawing a laugh – or a mirthless snort of appreciation, which counts as a laugh nowadays – is the prime objective. Go on: read. It’s not just a lefty thing; the hard-core Ron Paulites are there as well, luxuriously immersed in simon-pure certainties.
I do have to say, I enjoyed some of them, but most were tired.
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