Ever since Barack Obama infamously announced his intention to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d America, the merchants of Big Conservative media, i.e. The Big Con, have seized upon this as proof of Obama\u2019s disdain for America as it has traditionally conceived itself.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s true, of course, that this assessment of the 44th<\/sup> POTUS couldn\u2019t be more correct: It is inconceivable that, being a proponent of Blackism<\/a> and socialism, Obama could find anything worth conserving, much less loving, in the predominantly white, Christian, Constitutional Republic that America was originally meant to be and that it actually succeeded in becoming for much of its history.<\/p>\n Yet, while it will doubtless come as a shock to many to hear this, the fact of the matter is that the cogs in the wheel of Big Con are no less guilty than Obama of striving to fundamentally transform their country.<\/p>\n Before proceeding further, however, there are a few points that must be made.<\/p>\n First, whether it is a person, an object, or a whole society, the \u201cfundamental transformation\u201d of a thing is a change <\/em>in that thing.<\/p>\n Second, the fundamental transformation of an entity is a change of a specific sort, a dramatic<\/em> change.\u00a0 Whatever it is that undergoes a fundamental transformation changes, well, fundamentally, in the most basic, rudimentary of respects. When, for instance, a caterpillar changes into a butterfly, or an acorn changes into an oak tree, both undergo a fundamental transformation.<\/p>\n Third, as these last two examples illustrate, while fundamental transformation is a kind of birth, it also marks a sort of death. The 20th<\/sup> century philosopher Michael Oakeshott wrote that change, any <\/em>change, is \u201can emblem of extinction.\u201d\u00a0 Change, in other words, is a threat to identity.\u00a0 Thus, according to Oakeshott, virtually everyone, knowing that change is inescapable, has a \u201cdisposition,\u201d a conservative <\/em>disposition, to abate its flow.<\/p>\n Fundamental transformation, being of an abrupt, radical nature, is that much more frightening than those changes that occur gradually. The fundamental transformation of an acorn into an oak tree requires the dissolution, the extinction, of the acorn, just as the transformation of the caterpillar into a butterfly requires the death of the former.<\/p>\n So, when Obama expressed his and his supporters\u2019 desire to fundamentally transform the United States of America, he put all Americans on notice that the left desires to, in effect, extinguish the only America that had ever existed.\u00a0 Obama\u2019s \u201cAmerica\u201d (if we could still even call it by this name, a name ascribed to the New World by European explorers and settlers in honor of one of their own, another dead, old white guy), the product of the feverish swamps of the leftist imagination, promises to be as fundamentally<\/em> different from historical America as the oak tree is fundamentally different from the acorn.<\/p>\n As any student of revolutionary movements knows all too well, the project of fundamentally transforming a society requires the radical revising of its past.\u00a0 To put it another way, the ideologue determined to fundamentally transform a society can\u2019t possibly be interested in the past for the past\u2019s sake.\u00a0 Quite the contrary, even \u201cthe past\u201d is of value to him only insofar as it can be enlisted in the service of his mission to inaugurate the Eschaton, the future state of affairs for which he aches.\u00a0 But this in turn means that the ideologue has no alternative but to bend, and even break, the past so as to fit it into his Master Plan of Fundamental Transformation.<\/p>\n In short, the transformer must lie<\/em> about the past in order to actualize the future of his imaginings.<\/p>\n As should be obvious to anyone who has been paying attention to events for any length of time, the official political right has been no less guilty than the official left on this score.<\/p>\n Both Democratic \u201cprogressives\u201d in the political and media classes as well as their Republican \u201cconservative\u201d counterparts not only incessantly lie about America\u2019s past; they promote one and the same Big Lie.<\/p>\n The Big Lie is comprised of two components, both of which are equally, thoroughly, deceptive.\u00a0 The first is that America was \u201cfounded\u201d upon an Idea or Proposition, the Idea, say, of Equality, of equal Natural or Human Rights.\u00a0 Let\u2019s call this the Propositional America Thesis <\/em><\/strong>(PAT).<\/p>\n The other is that America is \u201ca nation of immigrants<\/em>.\u201d\u00a0 This is the Immigrant America Thesis <\/em><\/strong>(IAT).<\/p>\n As we\u2019ll see, though each is logically independent of the other, PAT lends support to IAT: According to PAT, America is actually the first a<\/em>historical or supra<\/em>historical nation, for the abstraction upon which America is \u201cfounded,\u201d or the concept that is America, being both timeless and universal, transcends history.\u00a0 In doing so, it transcends race, religion, ethnicity, culture, and even language.\u00a0 Yet this in turn means that anyone, irrespectively of their origins, can become an American\u2014as long as they are willing to embrace the principles upon which the nation is \u201cfounded.\u201d<\/p>\n And this, according to the peddlers of the Big Lie, is exactly what has happened from America\u2019s inception until the present.\u00a0 No people can claim America as uniquely their own, for the Idea that is America, being an Idea, is without a history and without borders.<\/p>\n Hence, anyone from anywhere in the world who affirms the proposition or propositions that are said to constitute America can <\/em>become an American.<\/p>\n That both the left and Big Con subscribe to this lie can be gotten readily enough by the fact that their agents only ever express concern over illegal <\/em>immigration\u2014the implication being that as long as immigrants to America arrive legally, their origins are inconsequential.<\/p>\n America is Nation of Immigrants.\u00a0 We hear this from Fox News, National Review, <\/em>and talk radio as much as we hear it from NBC, Slate, <\/em>and Salon. <\/em><\/p>\n Now, while Republican politicians and their apologists among the scribblers and talkers in Big Conservative media don\u2019t tell the exact same version<\/em> of the Big Lie as that told by their leftist counterparts, they do indeed endorse the same Big Lie:<\/p>\n Both leftists and \u201cconservatives,\u201d for example, erase from history the Christianity of America\u2019s founding stock.\u00a0 While leftists would have us think that America\u2019s Founders were deists and atheists who sought to emancipate America from centuries of Christian superstition by enshrining within their Constitution a clause prohibiting any and all public expressions of (Christian<\/em>) religiosity, the official right in Big Conservatism characterizes America\u2019s roots as \u201cJudeo-<\/em>Christian.\u201d \u00a0This latter move has the same effect as the leftist\u2019s version of the Big Lie by obscuring the religious-specific character of the men and women that settled and pioneered\u2014that founded\u2014America.<\/p>\n Both the left and the Big Con affirm that American is but an Idea.\u00a0 The only difference is the manner by which each goes about doing so. For instance, it is obvious that the left is affirming PAT whenever leftists refer to illegal migrants as the \u201cundocumented.<\/em>\u201d\u00a0 Sometimes leftists will go so far as to refer to illegals as \u201cundocumented Americans<\/em><\/a>!\u201d\u00a0 The implication is that the only thing separating illegals in America from American citizens is a matter of some paperwork, some boxes to check off and lines on which to leave signatures.\u00a0 Illegals, that is, are <\/em>Americans inasmuch as they affirm American \u201cvalues<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n Big Conservatives, on the other hand, betray their commitment to PAT whenever they identify the doctrine of \u201cAmerican Exceptionalism\u201d (AE) with America and the espousal of AE with patriotism.\u00a0 AE is the creed that America is exceptional economically, militarily, politically, and so forth, it\u2019s true. Yet it\u2019s true only so far as it goes, for AE\u2019s champions insist that America is exceptional in these respects precisely because it is exceptional in being the only country ever to have been \u201cfounded\u201d upon an Idea or Proposition.<\/p>\n And here we have come full circle.<\/p>\n Neither the left nor Big Con is willing to acknowledge that the Declaration of Independence was a declaration on the part of English colonists<\/em> of their <\/em>independence from the Mother country of England. It was a declaration of secession<\/em>. The rights to which Jefferson referred he and his compatriots knew full well belonged to a historically, culturally, and ethnically-specific constellation of chartered prerogatives and duties extending back centuries, the legacy of an English tradition.\u00a0 The rights that they valued and which they felt the government of England had violated were not \u201cthe Rights of Man.\u201d\u00a0 They were the rights of Englishmen<\/em>.<\/p>\n America\u2019s founders never intended to produce a so-called \u201cmelting pot\u201d of races, religions, and ethnicities from around the planet.\u00a0 It\u2019s correct that many of them were willing to accept some<\/em> immigration for the purpose of building their young country, the founders were well aware of the potential dangers that immigration posed, with several of them\u2014Hamilton<\/a>, Franklin<\/a>, and Jefferson<\/a>, to name but a few\u2014expressing concerns regarding immigration that couldn\u2019t be more Politically Incorrect by today\u2019s standards.<\/p>\n