Does McCain love our country and want to preserve it? An exchange with Andrew McCarthy
LA to Andrew McCarthy:
Andy,
You write:
“McCain, moreover, is an authentic American hero who loves our country as it is and would essentially preserve it.” [Italics added.]
Really? The man who said that what makes America great is its putative lack of any heritage or culture inherited from the past? Here’s my Number One McCain quote, which I’ve posted many times, from a speech he gave to the Al Smith Dinner in October 2005:
[O]ur one shared faith is the belief that a nation conceived in an idea—in liberty—will prove stronger, more enduring and better than any nation … made from a common race culture or to preserve traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity.
The man sees any tradition of a people, whether that people is conceived in ethnic or even just in cultural terms, as a bad, inferior thing. Andy, not that long ago mainstream conservatives and neoconservative were making the preservation and defense of America’s common culture one of their main causes. McCain doesn’t believe in that. To the extent that we have a common culture, he would want us to get rid of it. For him the highest, supreme value, perhaps the only value, is an “idea of liberty.” But if liberty is the unqualified and highest value, then the liberty of other people to come to our country and change it into their image and their culture must be the inevitable result. So McCain’s idea of liberty means the extinction of our culture.
And it’s not just I who say this. He made the consequences of his attack on our culture explicit when he said to a Hispanic group in May ‘06, during one of the big immigration debates:
This [is] one of the defining moments in American history that really does define what kind of nation we are.
If there was ever such a thing as a noble cause, it is the one we are embarked on now. Anyone who is afraid that somehow our culture will be anything but enriched by fresh blood and culture, in my view, has a distorted view of history and has a pessimistic view of our future.
So, on one hand, he’s against our having a long-lived national heritage based on culture, and on the other hand he looks forward to our country being “refreshed,” i.e., transformed into a different culture, by the “blood” and culture of Hispanics. Their invading culture is good and to be welcomed. Our historical culture is trash, consisting of “traditions that have no greater attribute than longevity,” and is to be cast aside.
Do you still say that McCain loves our country as it is and would essentially preserve it?
Larry
Andrew McCarthy replies:
Larry,
As you know, I am not a McCain fan. Aside from his other flaws, I don’t think he is a deep thinker. In that vein, I don’t think by “culture” he means what you take “culture” to mean. I think he is simplistically using the word “culture” as the functional equivalent of something like “ethnic tradition”—i.e., expanding the circle beyond “race.” This is borne out by (a) his infatuation with “liberty” which is—in his mind, I think—a form of what you and I would think of as culture, and (b) his reference to our “culture” in the May ‘06 statement you excerpt—i.e., his acknowledgment that we have a culture in that statement collides with his suggestion that we don’t in the first statement. Not a ton of thought went into this, clearly.
Moreover, when McCain talks about “no greater attribute than longevity,” I take him to be referring to monarchy or other forms of governance that are entrenched in countries where McCain would try to spread democracy. The McCain family, we know, is drenched in military culture and tradition, going back generations. McCain’s heroic performance in captivity is explainable only by courage and a sense of honor, born of the culture from which he comes. He is obviously not against all forms of tradition and culture. That doesn’t mean I’d expect him to be able to explain culture very well.
As you know, I don’t agree with McCain on things like democracy promotion and immigration. And I admire how deeply you have thought about these issues and how you relate them to culture in the true sense. But I think when you attach a sinister connotation to McCain’s thoughts here, you are giving him more credit for searching insight than he rates under the circumstances. He is a senator and self-identified “maverick.” He frames these tropes in order to push the policy of the moment—and maverick is just a euphemism for unpredictable or erratic, which, again, is indicative of someone who does not have a coherent, comprehensive world view.
Finally, my rueful point here is that we only have two choices. McCain would not be mine, but faute de mieux …
Best,
Andy
LA replies:
Andy,
You make good points in your analysis of his quotations. But the issue is not whether McCain is a coherent thinker or understands the deeper meaning of what he has said. The issue is what he has said. Politics consists largely of the positions that people publicly take. A person who says that America is not or should not be defined by any culture, but only by an idea of freedom, has stated a radical liberal idea that puts him on the side of radical liberalism and helps advance radical liberalism. Period. And, as proof of what I just said, there is McCain’s actual immigration policy, which puts into concrete practice the philosophical principles stated in his quoted remarks, namely the rejection of our culture, and the embrace of that which will destroy it.
He is also big supporter of transnational bodies like the North American Union which is intended to become like the EU, a transnational behemoth becoming a sovereign power over nations. He’s a globalist, Andy. So how can you say that he “loves our country as it is and would essentially preserve it”?
This doesn’t necessarily mean I won’t vote for him. If you have followed the debates at my site, you’ll know I’m wrestling with that.
Larry
Andrew McCarthy:
I do know that, Larry. I have been following, and I salute you for the rigor you are holding yourself to. I realize that you are not asking of me anything more than you are demanding of yourself. It is a very hard election.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 01, 2008 05:11 PM | Send