Guest post by Ted Malloch
The phrase love it or leave it is essentially as old as time. Prehistoric cavemen presumably said more or less the same thing about their evolving tribal societies. Are we allowed to call them primitive? Certainly not racist.
In ancient Greece philosophers urged fellow countrymen to contribute or leave the early city states like Athens spreading their ideas and traditions all over the Mediterranean world and to later Roman civilization.
In Biblical Israel King David expressed similar thoughts. Reread 1 Samuel 16 through 1 Kings 2 in the Old Testament.
Of course, our ancestors, the Pilgrims, left England to Holland first and then onward to the shores of Plymouth as they named it in Massachusetts.
People have down the ages in in almost every country relayed similar national feelings.
It is a natural trait of human existence and of social psychology to want to be part of a group, to associate with likeminded others, and to set criterion and rules for membership and exclusion.
The church does this as in communion and excommunicating dissidents and those who break the faith; political parties have prescribed policy programs and ideologies, schools set standards for entrance and dismissal, called failing, and clubs for blackballing applicants, accepting or exiting others.
The words Not Invited Back were always hard to hear.
I had a badge much like that pictured above sewn on my backpack; others had it as a car bumper sticker.
So why is it that when Donald Trump utters a truism all the pundits, pollsters and the ruling political class go berserk?
My father, grandfather and uncles (and aunts for that matter) all who proudly served in WWII said, America, love it or leave it, during the 1960s and the protests against the Vietnam War.
Hell, Archie Bunker of All in the Family fame, said it every week on TV to a huge audience that laughed out loud.
National adherents be they in Italy or Zimbabwe, Belgium or Malaysia, say versions of the very same thing.
When a person, a subgroup, or a so-called “squad” attack your country, its traditions, customs, and way of life it is profoundly understandable to say well — leave, then.
This is particularly more so if they are foreigners, recent immigrants, radicals, anti-capitalist or racially motivated.
In poll after poll, we see that America is one of the most tolerant places on earth and it has been historically.
It remains so.
But it is a melting pot where people come to contribute, not tear down.
They become Americans—without any hyphen.
It is an opportunity driven society.
A merit-based economy where you get what you put in.
Maybe our patriotic President who grew up in the 1950s recall, was reminiscing about what he fondly remembers?
Maybe he was ticked off and said what people anywhere and everywhere have boldly stated for centuries on end.
It is now politically incorrect to be American? It would be un-American to be otherwise.
Or maybe Donald Trump was just replaying country music and happened across the classics of Ernst Tubbs?
Have a walk down Memory Lane and listen up:
