Calling America 'Great' Triggers the Left
Many of us in the immigration sanity movement have a bit of difficulty understanding what makes leftists / progressives tick. Take, for example, Obama's infamous agenda of fundamentally transforming America. We asked: from what? To what? And Why?
The following article discusses this conundrum and provides some insight as to what conservative immigration patriots are up against:
Why Calling America ‘Great’ Triggers the Left -And why “MAGA” is the perfect political slogan for our time, by Mark Tapson, FrontPage Mag, April 11, 2019:
When then-presidential candidate Donald Trump seized upon the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again,” he could not have more shrewdly marked the battle line where the election and the next four years of his term would be fought. Resonating with Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan “Let's make America great again,” “MAGA” was perfectly calculated to galvanize Americans on the right who were fed up with eight years of predecessor Barack Obama apologizing for our country, denying American exceptionalism, alienating our allies, and empowering our enemies. It also was the perfect phrase with which to expose the seething hatred leftists feel for this country and its supporters....
For example: last week in an interview with MSNBC, a question about American greatness prompted a rant from Obama-era attorney general Eric Holder. "I hear these things about 'Let’s make America great again' and I think to myself, ‘Exactly when did you think America was great’?” he said on the network. “It certainly wasn’t when people were enslaved. It certainly wasn’t when women didn’t have the right to vote. It certainly wasn’t when the LGBT community was denied the rights to which it was entitled… It takes us back to what I think, an American past that never in fact really existed, this notion of greatness....
We should pause to consider that slavery existed on the continent for 150 years prior to America's inception as a nation. Slavery in America started in 1619, when a Dutch ship brought 20 African slaves ashore in the British colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Slavery has existed in many countries for thousands of years. Muslims enslaved a million Europeans.
Our founding fathers created America as a nation that could - and ultimately would - abolish the established institution of slavery. That's a mark of true greatness.
Tapson explains:
For the left, on the other hand, Americans cannot be great because we aren’t yet perfect; not only that, we aren’t merely imperfect but evil because we came by our unparalleled power and prosperity through the exploitation and oppression of others. Thus, we will never be truly great until we atone for those sins by diminishing our greatness....
What is it about "MAGA" that scorches leftists like holy water on demons? What is so triggering about a slogan every American should be able to get behind?
Two things. First, as the examples of Holder and Cuomo above demonstrate, the notion that there was ever a time when America was great enrages and unhinges the left because they have been indoctrinated to despise this country and its history. They reject the concept of American exceptionalism. They no longer see the Founding Fathers, for example, as the architects of the freest country in history but merely as sexist slaveowners.
Second, the left assumes that making America great again means turning back the clock to some Edenic rightwing fantasy of 1950s-era segregation and pre-feminism, when women and minorities knew their places and the white patriarchy ruled unchallenged. “It takes us back to what I think, an American past that never in fact really existed, this notion of greatness,” Holder had said. This misconception enables leftists to scorn and marginalize the whole idea as nothing more than bigoted nostalgia.
The left can't embrace the concept of American Greatness. Yet, as Tapson concludes:
The truth is that making America great again means turning back the clock to before the advent of Barack Obama, the divisive, anti-colonialist radical who was hell-bent on fundamentally transforming the United States from its leading role as the preeminent superpower into merely another ensemble player on the world stage. It means reviving a patriotic spirit of pride in our nation’s essential goodness, its unequaled generosity, its international leadership in promoting freedom and prosperity. It means reuniting Americans of all colors and creeds in a national vision that embraces rather than denies our exceptional role in history – and that is why “Make America Great Again” is the quintessential political slogan for our time.
Bull Moose Progressives and the liberal paradigm