Apparently columnist Gersh Kuntzman has recovered from the PTSD produced by firing an AR-15.
It’s time for God to stop blessing America during the seventh-inning stretch.
Welcome to the July 4 holiday weekend — when once again, baseball fans will be assaulted by the saccharine-sweet non-anthem “God Bless America” at stadia all over this great land.
But no matter which home team you root, root, root for, “God Bless America” should be sent permanently to the bench…
Part of my outrage stems from ponderous Mussolini-esque introduction of the song, when fans are asked to rise, remove their caps and place them over their hearts…
“God Bless America” is as divisive as American politics: Kaskowitz’s research found that 83.8% of people who described themselves as “very liberal” dislike the song, while only 20.5% of people who called themselves “very conservative” have a problem with it.
And more than 88% of atheists dislike the song, Kaskowitz found. (Quick aside: We atheists also hate having “In God we Trust” on the currency and in the courtrooms of a country whose Constitution bars the “establishment of religion” — but that’s a fight for another day.)
…Fans of the actual other National Anthem!: Unlike “God Bless America,” the better seventh-inning song, “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” captures the essential joy of American life: You go to a baseball game and you don’t care if you ever get back. And, sure, you root for the home team, but who cares if it wins or loses? You’re at a BALLGAME! With peanuts AND Crackerjack!
So this July 4, join me at the Church of Baseball by not rising and not doffing your cap for a song that is not the national anthem of a nation that is not uniquely blessed by some deity that doesn’t exist anyway.
If you want to thank God for blessing America, you can do it on Sunday in the other church.
Great! Another left-wing Jew wants to destroy the goyim’s national and religious identity. I am so glad that the goyim have even more reason to think of Jews as aliens in their midst.
As soon as I read that headline in the Los Angeles Times today, I prayed, “Let the author not be a Jew.”
My prayer was not answered.
Why do many Jews fear gentile patriotism? Because the stronger the goy gets in his national, religious or racial identity, the more likely he is to see the Jew as alien.
Jews often love Jewish nationalism but fear gentiles nationalisms.
I come from flag-ambivalent America. My neighborhood is peopled by gays and Jews, professors and social workers, and Catholics of the Dorothy Day persuasion. Yoga practitioners and yoga teachers. Vegetarians. Bicycling enthusiasts.
We love the Fourth of July, with its long weekend, its parades, its backyard barbecues (veggie burgers available). It wouldn’t be Independence Day without flag bunting on floats, flags lining our Main Streets, flags adorning houses. But we aren’t much for patriotic symbolism the rest of the year. For us, it’s an article of faith that crude patriotism quickly turns on the underdog, the minority. We know how the flag is used to impose loyalty tests, which we find un-American.
In Mark Oppenheimer’s America, they’re fine with a holiday, but they don’t want to celebrate America too much. They don’t like loyalty tests because they’re “un-American.” So on the one hand, he states he comes from “flag-ambivalent America”, another way of saying “ambivalent about America”, but he is happy to use the “un-American” argument when useful.
So where are his loyalties? They certainly are not to the United States of America. This country is just something to use.
The Judeo-Christian tradition has a name for that heresy: idol worship. Like many houses of worship, my synagogue hangs an American flag in the front (and an Israeli one, too). I wish we wouldn’t. If I face the Torah scroll, I’m confronted by those two schmattes on sticks. Yet the Torah is the opposite of a crude symbol. Like other great books — like the U.S. Constitution, for that matter — it invites us not to simplify but to enlarge our thinking. It invites, indeed has been improved by, interpretation.
On the Fourth of July, flags make me think about a war fought for democracy, a subsequent struggle to make that democracy better and more inclusive, and, most immediately, a holiday, a day off, so a free people can enjoy some extra leisure. But the rest of the year? Flags make me uneasy. I know their owners are checking out my lapel, and probably my front porch. And I know what they’re not seeing.
They’re seeing an alien among them.
The United States hasn’t fought any wars for democracy.
As American democracy has become more inclusive, social trust has steadily declined. Diversity and inclusivity destroy social trust.
I wonder if the Israeli flag makes him uneasy? It seems to. So Oppenheimer is consistent. He’s more of a leftist than a Jew. As a good leftist, he accords little importance to race, religion and ethnicity as core factors in creating nations. Jewish leftists who don’t like the Jewish state of Israel are not evil. They’re simply consistent with their left-wing approach to life which does not like ethno-states.
Mark Oppenheimer does not like loyalty tests but the Torah does. “Hear, O Israel! The LORD is our God, the LORD is one! 5″You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. These words, which I am commanding you today, shall be on your heart.…So you shall put these, my words, on your heart and on your soul; and you shall bind them for signs on your hands, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.”
My hotel, The Lotte, is reputed to be the best in Korea. Clean, posh, with very good service. The buffet is famous. Though a bit expensive, of course. Which made me wonder how come so many guests are young. My one complaint is that there is no lobby where one can sit comfortably and meet a guest. Unless one pays, of course.
In China, hotels in this class often have a so-called KTV, meaning a brothel, built in. Here they don’t. The Seoul Lotte does, however, have a “ladies’ floor” where men are not allowed. I doubt that I missed much.
Young Korean women are stunning. Many have sweet faces. Small breasts, but well-shaped asses and legs. Among them the shift back from pants to skirts (or shorts) is well under way. Makes them look even better.
Even a short-time visitor can see that this, at bottom, is a Confucian society. What makes it tick is deference; the boss is always right. Perhaps that is why, at the conference which I attended as the keynote speaker, there was hardly any Q&A.
