Flags of Our Fathers: On Patriotism and Lies

On one fundamental maxim all professional propagandists would agree: It you repeat a lie often enough and loudly enough, sooner or later it becomes accepted truth. Considering the long ignoble record of relentless and vociferous attacks by the Communist-inspired left on our American history, it's a wonder that there can be any true American patriots left.

Immediately following World War Two, and up until this present hour, we have been, and are still being, assaulted with vicious and totally unsubstantiated lies and distortions about the history of our great nation. These outrageous falsifications have been repeated so often by so many that they have indeed become accepted truth. What is worse, however, is the almost total lack of counter arguments and effective rebuttals. The voices of truth, that is, the voices of dissent, have been so weak and limp-wristed that they have been all but useless against this cynical onslaught of manipulative slander. To be an unabashed patriot in this present atmosphere of self-loathing and eagerly embraced guilt is to be an extremist, an ignorant, chest-thumping redneck. The cynics hold the high ground now: they have raised their flag of anti-Americanism, and the knowledgeable world applauds.

The simple patriotism of even the most sincere and committed patriot amongst us is invariably tainted by these insidious lies. We love America, we say to ourselves, despite its failings, despite its long list of tragic and monumental blunders. None of us is perfect, we say. But America comes closer than most. And, besides, we have for the most part admitted our past mistakes and, where possible, made reparations, or at the very least issued heartfelt apologies to our purported victims.

This, my friends, is how deeply we've been penetrated by the enemy's successful propaganda assault. We have embraced their ingenious lies and incorporated them into our national narrative. Seldom, if ever, do we take the time to actually investigate them. After all, we have received these lessons from some of our most credible sources, our teachers, our politicians, our historians and our media. Why should we doubt them?

The tedious litany of America's bloody blunders, that well-publicized list of American mistakes and American atrocities is just too long to attack, item by item, here in this limited space. But perhaps by tackling just a few of the most popular lies in our anti-Americanist's propaganda arsenal we can hopefully raise some doubts about the veracity of some of the others. Maybe, with just a little research into this worthy subject, we can learn -- as I have learned -- to love America because of our history, and not despite it.

Let's start with that infamous and unconscionable internment of our Japanese-Americans in WWII. Was it really necessary? Were we wrong to do it?

In 1942, some 112,000 Japanese were living on the Pacific Coast. About 40 percent were resident aliens and the remainder, by virtue of U.S. birth, were American citizens. The citizens, however, were mostly children, and when the U.S. declared war on Japan, their parents became enemy aliens. Moreover the Japanese emperor claimed all Japanese, wherever born, as subjects. They were referred to as doho, meaning countrymen. Japanese residents in the U.S. sent their children to “Japanese school” on Saturdays. A teacher in one of the schools told his American-born students, “You must remember that only a trick of fate has brought you so far from your homeland, but there must be no question of your loyalty. When Japan calls, you must know that it is Japanese blood that flows in your veins.”

Resident Japanese also sent their children to Japan for schooling. By 1940, more than 20,000 American-born Japanese had been educated in Japan. Known as kibei, they were fluent in Japanese, steeped in Japanese history and culture, and supporters of Japanese expansion in the Far East. They could hardly be distinguished from young militarists in Japan. Lt. Cmdr. K.D. Ringle of the Office of Naval Intelligence had been investigating the kibei for several months when the Japanese perpetrated their sneak attack on Pearl Harbor. In January 1942, he submitted a report saying:

[T]he most potentially dangerous element of all are those American citizens of Japanese ancestry who have spent the formative years of their lives, from 10 to 20, in Japan and have returned to the United States to claim their legal American citizenship within the last few years. Those people are essentially and inherently Japanese and may have been deliberately sent back to the United States by the Japanese government to act as agents.

The notorious Kokuryukai (Black Dragon) Japanese espionage network had been operating since at least the early thirties throughout North America. They had successfully penetrated the Boeing Plant and stolen the blueprints for a new American bomber. Their extremely effective espionage operations in Hawaii had assured the success of the Pearl Harbor attacks.

Question: Given this known threat, how was our government expected to deal with the Japanese population on the West Coast? What possible tests could they have improvised to determine with any degree of certainty whether a Japanese-American's loyalties lay with the US or with their original homeland? According to the best statistics found on this subject, approximately 80-85% of the interned Japanese were actually loyal American citizens. But this still would have left us with the threat of 15-20% (or approximately 15-20,000) of those Japanese of questionable loyalty -- not to mention the unknowable threat from the Kokuryukai network. Faced with an extremely difficult situation, with major moral ramifications, our American government, rather than overreacting, did the best job it could do under the circumstances to protect Americans. We have been morally chastised by the universal Pacifist Left relentlessly for over a half century for having had the courage to make these difficult wartime decisions.

This of course would most likely be followed by the shameful reminder of the thousands of innocent Japanese civilians we slaughtered in Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 1945. It was, after all, the United States of America who used the first atomic weapon in anger.

This argument could be, indeed, should be, answered by a lengthy rebuttal, but let's just mention two or three verifiable, but conveniently ignored, historical facts. Almost all of the major players in WWII were working on an atomic bomb program. Britain, Germany and Japan all had programs in place, furiously driven to be the first to achieve an actual atomic weapon. Britain gave America its unequivocal approval to its reluctant decision to use the bomb to end the war. Can any America-bashing critic honestly believe that if Nazi Germany or Imperialist Japan had gotten the bomb first that they wouldn't have enthusiastically used it on America or Britain? Is there any America-bashing critic out there who would have wished for the Axis Powers to have won that particular arms race? Add to this the undeniable facts of the Nazi and Japanese chemical and biological warfare programs that were ongoing throughout the war -- and in Japan's case, were actually implemented in Manchuria, resulting in the horrible deaths of thousands of innocent civilians - an enormous atrocity about which we hear virtually nothing.

The atomic bomb was dropped to end the seemingly endless bloodbath of the War in the Pacific. And end it it did. I have personally talked with GIs who were on troopships headed for Japan for the planned great invasion of the Japanese Home Islands who heard of the attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the subsequent surrender of Japan, and were thus turned around in mid-sea, and instead of continuing on to what could have been their almost certain death (estimates of American casualties on the planned amphibious assault on the Japanese Homeland ran as high as 600,000, or even higher), they were heading back to America. Ask these GIs how the felt about America dropping the bomb.

Finally, a few words about our enemies.
It is said that a man is known by the friends he has. It is also, I believe, possible to tell a lot about a person, or in this case, about a nation, by its enemies. Take just a moment to ponder that repugnant rogue's gallery of our most recent enemies and see if this tells you anything about our national character. Look closely at those faces, those historical adversaries of ours, and tell us what you see. There's our old friend Adolf and belligerent Benito, and savage little Tojo. Then there's Ho Chi Minh, Mao Tse-tun, and kindly old Pol Pot. I could of course go on and on, but is it really necessary? Is there anyone out there who would wish that any these fine fellows had been victorious against us?

Obviously, we have not the space here to go into any lengthy analysis of their respective evils. But what of our unwavering ideological enemies, what of those sworn enemies of democracy and freedom and capitalism? Those devious players on the world's stage, who are still, to this very day, adroitly manipulating the strings of the world's anti-Americanists? What of our proverbial and unrelenting adversaries, the Communists? Those indefatigable foes who have been behind virtually every leftist, antiwar anti-Americanist movement in the Twentieth Century, both abroad and on our own soil, all with the eager complicity of our very own homegrown useful idiots. What can we learn about their character? And what will it tell us about ours?

Consider this.

It is indicative of the criminality of the Communist Party and the Soviet regime that all three of its “Founding Fathers” used aliases. The infamous Leon Trotsky's real name was Lev Davidovich Bronstein [pictured above]. Vladimir Illich Ulyanov had at least a half-dozen pseudonyms before eventually choosing the name of “Lenin”; and our friendly “Uncle Joe” began life as Iosif Vissarionovich Djugashvili; he then used the rather undistinguished alias “Koba” for a time, before finally settling on his sexy new moniker “Stalin” (man of steel). Nor were these merely harmless non-de-plumes used to protect otherwise innocent political dissenters. In Stalin’s case, in particular, he was known by the Tsarist police to be a dangerous criminal with a long “rap sheet” -- for everything from general hooliganism to bank robbery. It would be fascinating to contemplate how the course of American history might have been altered if, say, Washington, Jefferson and Hamilton had had similar backgrounds.

As I said, I could go and on. The true significance of the Korean War, our eminently justifiable and honorable mission in Vietnam. But this is not the proper venue for such an ambitious project. Hopefully, however, this small essay will help to contribute to the beginning of a new attitude toward our shared history. A new attitude of honestly founded love of country. A new sense of patriotism deserved. And perhaps some useful ammunition to fight back against those relentless detractors and devious propagandists. We've been taking it on the chin for six long decades now from self-appointed moralists and armchair generals. Our exhaustive record of uncommon generosity and human decency has been all but completely forgotten, and our fictitious evils have been wantonly glorified. Now more than ever, we must learn our own value and believe in ourselves. It's time to stop this self-immolation. Now more than ever, we must learn how to fight back against those who wish to shame us with their outrageous falsehoods and their cynical deceptions. We must learn all over again what it means to be a patriot, what it means to truly know one's country and to truly love it.

God bless America.

For Lenin: Lenin Robert Service (Macmillan 2000). For Stalin: Stalin -- And the shaping of the Soviet Union Alex de Jonge (William Morrow 1986); also: Stalin -- The Court of the Red Tsar Simon Sebag Montefiore (Alfred A. Knopf 2003).

See also Radarsite's The Outrage of Patriotism in the Chicago Sun Times