“We fight to be free.” George Washington
“Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”
Me and Bobby McGee, written by Kris Kristofferson, made famous by Janis Joplin in her “Pearls” album.
Judging from the adulation that most liberals are raining down on the recently deceased John McCain you would think that they voted for him in 2008 when they had the chance. But of course, they didn’t. Instead the prospect of a McCain presidency had them resort to their go to playbook of slashing attacks and smears. Maybe the worst of it was an evidence-free suggestion by the New York Times that McCain had an affair with a lobbyist who had business before his committee. Anyone who doubts this should check out the Times stories in the links here and here.
It is absolutely true that McCain reached across the aisle to promote what he believed to be good policy. It is also true that the favor was not returned. And there is a reason for that. Despite all the rhetoric, progressives simply do not believe what McCain believed about the promise of America.
Consider McCain’s rhetoric when he was awarded the Liberty Medal in 2017.
“We are living in the land of the free, the land where anything is possible, the land of the immigrant’s dream, the land with the storied past forgotten in the rush to the imagined future, the land that repairs and reinvents itself, the land where a person can escape the consequences of a self-centered youth and know the satisfaction of sacrificing for an ideal, the land where you can go from aimless rebellion to a noble cause, and from the bottom of your class to your party’s nomination for president.”
Now consider the (recent) rhetoric of Andrew Cuomo.
“We’re not going to make America great again. It was never that great.”
By now it should be obvious that the America that John McCain believed in is not the America that progressives see. They see an America shot through with injustice and riddled with race, class, gender and sexual oppression. The grim social justice warriors of the left can never reach across the aisle to do what’s best for America because they fundamentally reject the founding principles of what they still think of as Amerika.
Fifty years of progressive attacks on the culture and institutions of American society have left their mark, and not for the better. Who doubts that the degradation of the culture was a factor, and maybe the most important factor, in the election of Donald Trump as President?
John McCain was different because, without being doctrinaire, he defended those institutions and traditions that made America great. And he understood that freedom isn’t just another word for nothing left to lose; that there is a reason why 13 small colonies on the Atlantic Coast grew to be the mightiest and wealthiest nation on earth.
It’s called Freedom.
JFB
