Northwest Herald editor Dan McCaleb weighs in on the controversy over reciting the Pledge of Allegiance at a recent Melissa Bean event. How dare the great unwashed wish to rise in praise of old glory, one they’re intent on recapturing and waving proudly in the modern day.
He, like Tate-Bradish, just recognizes that incivility masked as patriotism is, in fact, not patriotic at all.
Never was. Never will be.
McCaleb’s tongue clucking and putting on airs is bad enough. That it’s laced with such ignorance and condescension smack in the middle of a rejuvenated and rejuvenating Tea Party era in American politics only makes it worse. One might imagine this milquetoast of the American spirit standing on the docks in Boston circa 1773 with his hands up, yelling, careful boys, ya doesn’t wants to get your feets wet, mates!
McCaleb displays his ignorance in multiple ways. He would have you believe that large numbers of American citizens riled up about and engaged in politics, many of them for the very first time, represent a decline into “pettiness,” to use his word. Bollocks!
America’s history is rife with periods in which McCaleb’s so called “incivility” reigned, with the vast majority of them contributing hugely to the greater American good. Were the patriots who first stood down King George at Lexington and Concord civil in McCaleb’s small-mindedness? Surely that and other patriotic actions and events were predicated on an untold number of somewhat uncivil outbursts by patriotic Americans, whether on street corners, at political meetings, or in local pubs.
Perhaps a too comfortable McCaleb, safely bought and ensconced in an increasingly statist Illinois and America, simply doesn’t have the stomach for the equivalent of today’s fight in political terms. The notion that he doesn’t deem the Pledge of Allegiance as a worthy banner behind which today’s resurgent, deeply held patriotism on the part of some should muster and march, suggests a shallowness to the emotional depth of McCaleb’s own dedication to individual liberty, to go along with his ignorance.
The Northwest Herald is part of Shaw Media. It’s a pity that an enterprise claiming roots dating back to perhaps the most uncivil, yet forward thinking and moving, time in American history, would have one of its publications edited by one so invested in today’s unacceptably bankrupt periods for the status quo. Or, perhaps in McCaleb’s mind, B.F. Shaw, Abe Lincoln and friends got just a tad carried away in their quest to extend individual liberty to blacks in the face of the blight of slavery that tarnished this great nation’s history? Their efforts did lead to the single greatest instance of American incivility of all in terms of the eventual Civil War, after all.
1856 – B.F. Shaw, along with 11 other newspaper editors–and Abraham Lincoln–meet in Decatur to form the Republican Party of Illinois in response to the growing concern over slavery.
Before you deem such a comparison over-wrought, make no mistake, the root cause behind so many proud American patriots standing up to be heard at rallies, debates and townhalls across the nation today is individual liberty. In the face of an ever encroaching state invested, not in liberty, but a creeping and now rushing statism designed to snatch liberty from all Americans, black, white red, or brown, who the hell is Dan McCaleb to tell them to stand down because they wish to honor the American flag?
No one, that’s who. Just another paid hack of a media organization that itslf seems to have lost touch with the cause of individual liberty, presumably at the heart of its very own founding over 100 years ago.
If Shaw’s McCaleb represents anything, it’s the rise and decline of a dead tree media far too out of touch with America today. No wonder patriotic, well meaning Americans continue to abandon it in droves. I suspect there are plenty of Dan McCaleb’s at Shaw Media and elswehere to be thanked for that. Though they are increasingly likely to be spanked, instead, one day soon finding themself out of a job.
While incivility is not patriotism, McCaleb would have his readers believe that patriotism must somehow always be civil. Call it bollocks, or bullshit, it’s nonsense, as has been the case throughout America’s rich history. We can and should all thank God and our Constitution for that. Just don’t thank our flag, Dan McCaleb might think you impolite.