Still, we believed America was a great and good land, and that its principles were true and right - worth fighting for and, if necessary, dying for. We were under no illusions that our country was perfect. We believed in the God-given dignity of the human person. We deeply denied that we must overthrow the bourgeoisie and establish the dictatorship of the proletariat.
We rejected the Marxist dogmas of atheism, dialectical materialism, the class struggle and the idea that history is driven by conflicts of material interests. We knew communism was evil and it was our ideological foe. Not one of us was in any doubt about which side was in the right and which in the wrong. The Cuban missile crisis had occurred less than three years before JFK had been assassinated by a communist less than two years earlier. We believed in - and cherished - our country. And we were proud to be Americans - proud of what America and its citizens had done, proud of what America stood for.
#Inspireme korea full#
But all of us were accepted as fellow citizens, and we treated one another with respect.Īll differences among us vanished, and we united in our love for our country and in gratitude to those who had given “the last full measure of devotion.” What mattered - all that mattered - was that we were Americans. There was one Black family in the local community. We were the only family that was not Protestant - my mother’s family is Catholic, my father’s Syrian Orthodox.
The parade stopped at the little war memorial in the center of town between the volunteer fire department and the bank, the colors were presented, and one of the local preachers prayed an earnest prayer, praising the courage and sacrifice of the fallen soldiers and thanking God for freedom and democracy. There were Gold Star mothers riding in convertibles and a marching band from the high school. We were waving flags and cheering our heroes. At the head of the parade and in the color guard were the World War I vets. The “youngsters” in the parade were the Korean War vets. They risked their own lives to protect the lives, freedom and dignity of others - not only their fellow Americans, but Europeans and everyone else. Two decades earlier, these sons of farmers and coal miners had helped to destroy the Nazi war machine.
My father, who was then only 39 years old, was marching in the parade with his fellow World War II veterans. My four younger brothers and I, together with my mother and grandparents, were attending the Memorial Day parade in the little mountain town of Mount Morris near the West Virginia-Pennsylvania border, in the heart of the Appalachians. His words, simple yet profound, transported me. Toward the end of the conversation, Robinson asked his guests why America’s Big Tech companies, whose profits now come largely from overseas, should nevertheless prioritize America’s interests or at least avoid undermining them.ĭeMuth responded with four words: “Because they are Americans.” Recently on his “ Uncommon Knowledge” broadcast, Peter Robinson of the Hoover Institution at Stanford interviewed Matthew Continetti, author of a fine new book on American conservatism, and Christopher DeMuth, a distinguished public policy scholar and former president of the American Enterprise Institute.
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