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America Has Changed Since I Was a Boy

The Blackened Soul of America Suffers from Conservatism's Complete Corruption of Our Ideals of Moral Behavior

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION
by Peter Coulombe

I was born in 1958; started school right before my fifth birthday. John Kennedy was president, the nation was at an amazing crossroads" -- the vitality and can-do attitude of the "greatest generation" was transforming America and the world, economically and socially. Our nation was feeling its oats. We were strong, growing and inspired by our ascendancy on the world stage and our young president. We were reaching for the stars, literally and figuratively.

It was in this world that I grew up. My parents, staunch liberals both, instilled in me a strong sense of right and wrong, fairness, justice, and the importance of defending your beliefs and supporting the underdog. We marched together against the war in Vietnam. I trick-or-treated for UNICEF, grew my hair and stuffed envelopes for George McGovern as a young teen. We thought we could change the world; make it a better place.

At the same time, in school, I learned the lessons of America, the parables of our nation that taught all of us what it meant to be an American, what we believed in as a people, what our nation stood for, what generations of Americans had fought, and died, to preserve.

We learned the value of honesty from the story of George Washington and the cherry tree. We learned about liberty from Patrick Henry, free speech from Thomas Paine, and hard work from Ben Franklin. We were inspired by the passionate words of Thomas Jefferson's Declaration, and took great pride in saying "this is a free country," as we had learned from the Bill of Rights.

We were also taught three overarching moral imperatives, three key ideals that defined the American character, and that we were supposed to live by. You've heard them.

Two wrongs do not make a right.

The end does not justify the means.

Might does not equal right.

We were taught that those were the philosophies of people like Hitler and any number of oppressors and tyrants, both historical and contemporary (such as the dreaded communists of the era). We read Machiavelli, and understood that The Prince was a lesson in the very worst kind of selfish behavior.

These principles, these three powerful core ideals, were there at the heart of our national identity, our belief that we were a good, fair-minded people who did not trample the weak, who played fair, who reached our goals by doing the right thing, even if it was harder. These ideals were drummed into us at school, at church and at home.

When we craved revenge or tried to justify violence by saying that "he hit me first," we were told "two wrongs don"t make a right."

When we were caught doing something unethical, like cheating, we were reminded that "the ends do not justify the means."

When we used superior size or strength to get what we wanted, or to gain some advantage over a weaker child, we were scolded that "might does not make right."

Of course, on a national scale we did not always play by those rules; I sincerely believe, however, that most individual Americans shared those ideals and tried to live by them. In fact, it is my opinion that the whole experience of the 1960's was driven in part by a generation of young Americans who felt a growing dissonance between these ideals and the actions of our government, our corporations and our institutions.

During that era, the very core values that legitimized our society were in conflict with reality, and young people sought to create a new set of cultural values through their rejection of materialism, capitalism, imperialism, racism and sexism. They attempted to create a "counterculture," a new world that valued community, fairness, justice and, probably above all else, a desire to understand, appreciate, support and cooperate with others -- to live by "The Golden Rule."

But something has changed.

We don"t believe in these core ideals anymore, at least not most of us. Somehow in the years since my childhood, our nation has come to embrace the opposite. And I lay the blame squarely at the feet of conservatism.

Ever since the 1960's, a gradual evolution has been taking place in the U.S., a steady slipping away from the respect for fairness, justice, equality, cooperation, respect and even basic honesty. And now, with as we watch the new breed of Republicans put their stamp on what it means to be an American, we can see mounting evidence that they simply do not play by these rules. They have tossed aside these ideals in favor of their own, completely self-serving, agenda.

Today's "war on terror" is entirely predicated on the notion that "two wrongs make a right." The so-called "neocons" place high worth on a hyper-macho sense of revenge against anyone they perceive as having wronged them. Not only terrorists and "axis of evil" nations, but even fellow Americans who do not toe the party line. Whenever they feel wronged they exact revenge, ruthlessly.

Watching their behavior on both the national and international stages, one can see that they very clearly believe that "the ends justify the means." No tactic is too unethical, no lie too shameless, no principle too easily discarded, no foe safe from savage demonization, no torture too abhorrent, no principle safe from destruction. They are quite content to twist the truth to further any goal, perfectly happy to cause tremendous suffering for their own benefit, unworried about living lives of cynical hypocrisy. They are pathologically shameless in their greed, and their lust for power and dominion. They are even willing to kill to advance their ambitions.

And they also seem to feel that they have the right to do whatever they please, justified only by the fact that they can. One look at the Project for a New American Century, or a reading of the Bush Administration's "National Security Strategy" documents and one could sum it all up as "might makes right." They have a sense of empire, of being in the position to simply impose their ideology on the world, through force if necessary.

And they certainly operate as if "might makes right" in the domestic arena. The state of affairs in Congress, with Democrats struggling simply to even play on the same field with the ruling party, shows how arrogantly the GOP uses power when they hold it.

This rejection of the three core values is playing out throughout our entire society. From the local soccer field to talk radio and Fox News, from road rage to the WWF and misogynistic pop music, our society has turned its back on the old values. We seem to revel in cruelty and the humiliation of others. We laugh at appeals for fairness, roll our eyes at the silly notion of justice. We are entertained by violence, and condone torture and aggression. We equate arrogance with leadership, ignorance with strength and intellect with weakness.

Make no mistake. The rejection of these once-cherished ideals of behavior is a destructive force in our country. How could it not be?

Believing that "two wrongs make a right" will produce a society without the ability to even tell right from wrong, that can rationalize any action it chooses to take as an acceptable response to some perceived wrong. It strips us of rationality, reason and self-control, and starts spirals of violence.

Embracing the belief that "the ends justify the means" puts us on the road to complete anarchy or, probably more likely, to fascism. It is the rationale of criminals, tyrants, dictators, terrorists" -- and the neocons.

Accepting the idea that "might makes right" allows us to behave as bullies, pushing around the world to get our way because we can. And heaven help anyone who dares cross us.

And what is perhaps worst is the contempt in which the right now holds those who still cling to these basic ideals of moral behavior. Those who still try to live by these ideals -- and believe that America should as well -- are scorned as weak, spineless, cowardly, immoral, unethical and, worst of all, anti-American. We are ridiculed, belittled and branded as unpatriotic, unprincipled and worse.

While talking about the Terri Schiavo spectacle, Tom Delay complained about the "do-gooders" on "the other side." How revealing. Now being a person who seeks always to do good makes you the target of scorn and derision, the enemy on the "other side" from the Republicans.

This perversion of character is at the core of modern conservatism. While liberals still believe in the three ideals of behavior, the conservatives now enthusiastically and shamelessly embrace the opposite. And the blackened soul of America suffers from this complete corruption of our ideals of moral behavior.

The world sees us for who we have become, and wonders what happened to America, why we are so consumed with arrogance, greed, anger and violence. They are appalled at our utter disrespect for the truth, for ethical behavior, for partnership and shared progress. They are bewildered that we apparently cannot see who George Bush and his corporate pirate cabal really are, what they are doing to our nation. They no longer see us as the standard bearer of freedom and liberty, the hope of the future, but rather as an arrogant bully and a shameless criminal.

The ideology that profits from this moral fall from grace is that of the right. It supports it, rationalizes it and needs it to survive. If Americans were still the people who embraced the three ideals, they would reject the Republican philosophy of heartless greed and selfish exploitation, of arrogant bullying and blind nationalism.

But we aren't those people anymore, at least not enough of us. Oh sure, the three ideals still live on in the hearts of most liberals, but is that enough? Can we somehow remind our fellow Americans of the three ideals, and find a way to make them sound like something to live by and not something to ridicule and scorn?

For the sake of our children I hope we can. I would like them to grow up in an America that once again recognizes a difference between justice and revenge, believes that the end does not justify the means and knows that might does not make right.

In other words, the America we thought we were going to live in, once upon a time.

Peter Coulombe
San Leandro, California

A BUZZFLASH READER CONTRIBUTION