Don't Chant USA!

This has been a great week to get the liberal message out to everyone. Mayors of two major American cities, Boston and Chicago, threaten to curtail Chick-fil-A operations if they can because president and chief operating officer Dan Cathy affirmed to an interviewer that he is "very much supportive of the family -- the biblical definition of the family unit." In response to these and other Democrat liberals, hundreds of thousands of Americans responded to a Chick-fil-A appreciation day on Wednesday. On Friday, homosexual advocates, raging with anger over Mr. Cathy's "hateful" remarks, responded with "kiss-in" protests. Let's see, hundreds of thousands of American go to Chick-fil-A to do what people do at restaurants - order their meals and eat - and libs go to take up space and kiss. Yeah, it's their middle-finger "take that, America" moment. But, hey, that's the message that the liberals want Americans to know.


Now, during the most well-known international sporting event held, the Olympics, David Sirota, writing at salon.com, declares that liberals should not be chanting, "U.S.A.!" Yes, he means American liberals.


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And yet, as I’ve grown older, I find my “U.S.A.!”-chanting reflex increasingly interrupted by pangs of discomfort, and not because I’m ashamed of our country or our Olympians, but because the relationship between American nationalism and the Olympics has been slowly infused with a different — and politicized — meaning. In short, chanting the initials of our nation seems less like it did in 1984 than it has since 1992.
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Actually, Mr. Sirota DOES mean that we are to be ashamed of our great nation:


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The hyper-patriotism surrounding the modern Olympics, then, is just a reflection of that national character. When that TV screen flashes the list of athletes and we inevitably profile the competitors by nation, we do so not just because we experience natural feelings of solidarity with fellow countrymen. We likely do so also because of that deeper desire to publicly showcase American preeminence — a desire we’ve been programmed to haughtily express since the end of the Cold War, a desire we’re led to believe we must express in this “love it or leave it” era for fear of being labeled traitors.
Missed in the ensuing red-white-and-blue hoopla, of course, is the fact that we are not so exceptional outside the Olympic village.

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This is what passes for patriotism in the land of left-believe. Try not to forget that the next time you have a chance for voting for the men and women who hope to lead and shape this nation in accordance with their expressed ideologies.