Liberty

Statue of Liberty (by O Caritas)

Are we losing our face as a nation? Has the United States of America become such a melting pot that we have lost any sort of identity?

Are we the self-centered, bombastic bastards that mock the country of France for taking a moralistic stand against aggression or are we the charitable people that are ready to lend a hand in time of need, regardless of political or religious persuasion?

It's unclear to me why we can't always (or at least more often) be the latter.

It's unclear to me why our so-called leaders feel the need to denigrate and belittle such countries as France. What has the United States – as a nation, as a people, as a picture of democracy – gained by mocking the French as the miserable failure did with his reference to french fries as "freedom fries"?

Why didn't he simply look out to the Statue of Liberty in New York Harbour and say, "Send it back! We don't need it anymore."?

No doubt Bush's intent was to light the fire under the worst element in this country – those whose deepest thoughts would have trouble filling even one of the bumperstickers on their gas-guzzling cars and SUVs; those who think Toby Keith's songwriting poses are an act of patiotism and heroism.

George W. Bush is all about polarization: "You're either with us or you're against us." He appeals to the baser instincts in people – instead of appealing to the more charitable, side.

As always, Sydney J. Harris had something to say about this...

Hate Is Simple, Love Complex

WE THINK OF OUR EMOTIONS as being either positive or negative — love, on the one hand, or hate, on the other. But there is another important way in which emotions divide: They are also simple or complex. And this is what creates much of the trouble in the world.

Love, for example, is difficult to sustain not because it is a positive emotion, but because it is a complex one. Hate is easy to maintain for a lifetime, because it is a simple one.

That is, love requires the addition of other elements in order to play its proper role; it needs understanding, patience, tact, the willingness to be hurt or disappointed from time to time. Love alone, in its simplicity, is not enough to carry the burden of relationship.

Hate is a totally different matter; it is not the opposite of love. (As St. Augustine pointed out long ago, indifference is the opposite of love.) Hate is a supremely simple emotion that makes it enormously attractive to a certain type of mind and personality.

First, hate makes no demand on our mental processes, and doesn't call on us to expand or change our views. In fact, it tends to remove doubt, and gives us a sense of decision and a feeling of righteous well-being.

It doesn't call on any of the other emotions for support; in-deed, it puts them quite out of court. It rejects understanding, despises tact, condemns patience, and will endure no hurt or disappointment without quick revenge.

Besides being the simplest of emotions, hate can also be the most fulfilling for a certain kind of person, because it provides him or her with a meaning to life, something to oppose, to blame, to relieve the sense of frustration or failure.

Most of all, because of its seductive simplicity, hate seems to remove the need for reasoning (an intolerable burden to many people) and for any of its auxiliary efforts, such as reading, analyzing, estimating, and judging. Hate has only one function and only one object.

Love might be compared to the building of a tall and elaborate sandcastle, taking many hours of painstaking effort, cooperation, balance, and persistence; and hate might be compared to the foot that comes along and with one vicious or thoughtless kick destroys in a moment what has been built up.

There is so little love in the world compared with the amount of hate — both expressed and latent — not because it is harder for us to be positive than negative, but because it is harder to combine and coordinate a complex emotion in a creative act than to live blindly by blaming and attacking some "enemy" for our dissatisfactions and disappointments. It takes a dedicated genius years to build a great cathedral; any desperado can bomb it to obliteration in a second. Why shouldn't hate, being so much easier, be so much more popular?

Somehow, "dedicated genius" is not a phrase I would use in describing George Bush; miserable failure, yes.