A local veteran talked about his service in Afghanistan. He had seen ancient relics destroyed by the Taliban. Huge Buddhist statues had been blown to bits. Taliban leaders knew little about Buddhist history, but they wanted its symbols annihilated.
I don't need to say where my mind went.
The Wall Street Journal describes what we're witnessing as "a ferocious campaign of political conformity sweeping across American artistic, educational, business and entertainment institutions." Also churches and sports clubs.
"Political conformity." Everyone agreed that the George Floyd case demanded justice. But we continue to hear Floyd's name while hearing nothing or very little about the businesses ruined by rioters in that name--about the innocent people killed and assaulted in that name--about the crime enveloping areas where police have been attacked in that name. Poor George Floyd has become a prop in a moral coercion campaign designed to extract cultural obedience from every institution in the land--and you've noticed that businesses, churches and schools are bowing and sounding just alike.
These reflections come on the country's 244th birthday, but few are in a Yankee Doodle mood. We see that a sub-population of nice kinds went to college and then came out hating the country and wanting it overturned. History has witnessed similar things. The radical phase of the French Revolution and China's Cultural Revolution involved mobs and the mindless destruction of history.
I wonder if the mobs could tell us why the kids in Hong Kong struggling for basic rights are waving American flags. I wonder if they could explain why a language teacher in Saigon told me last week that, the riots notwithstanding, many Vietnamese would give a lot to emigrate to America. The country birthed by the American Revolution has done far more than any other to liberate people around the world: Cuba (1898), Italy, France, and Belgium (1944), the Philippines (1945), South Korea (1953), Kuwait (1991), along with the peaceful rebuilding of Germany and Japan after the Second World War, and the chances given to South Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, among other cases.
But, like every conflict, the American Revolution also symbolizes a human inability to mend differences. Ultimately, the gap between British authority and men like Washington, Jefferson and Franklin became unbridgeable.
Right now, it seems that the gap is unbridgeable between the bring-it-downers and others who think the U.S. is flawed but good. When a personable and normally upbeat guy who works in town watches the news and says, "This isn't the country I immigrated to," and then speaks of mental preparation for civil conflict, then it feels like we're circling a point of no return.
There's a connection between the virus lockdowns, with their associated protocols, and the chaos in the streets. By historical standards the pandemic is minor, but what the elite have done in response to the pandemic is earth-shaking. The loss of 126,000 Americans to the virus from a population of 328 million is terrible. The long-term economic and psychological mauling of an entire society in response to a disease that has killed .038 percent of the population is more terrible, particularly since we've known all along who is most endangered. (For perspective, last year more than 480,000 Americans died from smoking-related diseases.)
It's hard to believe what we've done in the name of "safety" -- the educations wrecked, funerals disallowed and 21 million Americans unemployed, though not at liquor stores, where one local employee tells me sales have been up 30 percent. It's also hard to believe what's been done in the name of "justice" -- the destruction, violence, sloganeering, bullying and mass conformity.
When did we forget that a society can't function well if it lacks a wellspring of reason and calm courage? When did we forget that there's a difference between prudent caution and anxious weakness? What do we suppose our forebears would say of us? How do we hope our children will face their own times of adversity?
-- Preston Jones is a Siloam Springs resident and history professor. The opinions expressed are those of the author.