Keep Right — Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
“America! Heck yeah!” These stirring words, in reality a more salty approximation, begin the bombastic anthem to the 2004 film “Team America: World Police”.
To be clear, this is absolutely not a movie fit for most people! In places, it is utterly vulgar. The writers and directors went out of their way to appeal to an emotionally adolescent audience.
Despite featuring Gerry Anderson-style puppets, it is in no way fit for children. Do not see this movie without researching it, or you will be unpleasantly surprised.
The movie’s ultra-vivid and shockingly earthy aesthetic does presage the rise of Donald J. Trump. If one compares the way Trump publicly speaks with the official utterances of any other US President in living memory, the differences between “Team America” and any traditional movie becomes clear.
Recall Trump’s recent statement that Israel and Iran have fought each other for so long and so hard that they no longer know what the F%@# they are doing.
This self-consciously conspicuous vulgarity is, for better or worse, a part of contemporary America. Perhaps this is in part a reaction against the Politically Correct speech controls with which the Woke have been trying to shackle us.
Despite all of this, “Team America” captures something crucially important about how the United States of America differs from every other society. Our national history is extraordinarily masculine. To many in today’s feminized societies around the world, our willingness to sternly fight to protect freedom is problematical.
By reason or force, our forebears wrested control over the wilderness from the natives and made of it a blank canvas upon which we Americans could paint our wildest dreams. One dream was that even within the most common of people there existed uncommon valor and subtle wisdom. If human beings have value because we are made in God’s image, and if individuals can learn reason sufficient to make thoughtful choices, then citizens should be free.
In what Pilgrims called “God’s New Israel”, our cultural ancestors fought for freedom from the most powerful world-empire of their time. Their victory created a new Constitution, under which every citizen could pursue their best destiny under God. Americans could do this without undue interference from the kinds of hereditary and self-made elites that rule most Old World societies.
Our uniquely American identity was not worked out for us by experts in royal palaces or bureaucratic offices. Instead, from the countless obscure struggles of rough common citizens to tame the wild frontier in pursuit of their personal dreams, a unique American character took form.
Simultaneously, our nation split over two questions of liberty. As tragically ironic as it may seem to us, most Southerners fought for local autonomy against an intrusive and potentially tyrannical Federal government. They worried that a government that was empowered to end slavery would have the power to end liberty itself.
Meanwhile, the North fought to preserve the Union, and later to end slavery everywhere within America. Countless people on both sides who could not read, and who would never have the wherewithal to own a farm or a slave, fought, killed, and died for what they were each certain constituted genuine freedom.
Even when the United States fought Spain and acquired an empire, most Americans did so to free Cuba from brutal Spanish rule. Americans then fought Filipino Rebels to keep the Germans out as well as to shoulder the civilizing mission which Rudyard Kipling called, “The White Man’s Burden”.
In World War I, most Americans fought to stop another threat to our Union. Fearing that the US would join the Allies, the Kaiser’s government promised Mexico a return of the desert southwest if they joined the war on Germany’s side. This promise provoked American intervention.
Before Pearl Harbor, the US fought an undeclared war to protect Britain-bound convoys from U-Boat attack. After Japan’s Sneak Attack, in World War II Americans fought and won two simultaneous struggles against National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan.
Then, when Stalin’s Soviet Union expanded its control over Eurasia by both political and military means, Americans waged a long, twilight struggle in defense of the Free World. In1947 with the Truman Doctrine, America accepted the responsibilities of global hegemon to keep the peace; the baton passing to us from a declining Britain.
In Berlin and throughout Europe, the US committed itself to deter Communist aggression by protecting our NATO allies. In Asia, Americans fought Communists in Korea and Viet-Nam, as well as in countless less famous places.
From the Cold War’s end through President Trump’s decision to destroy Iran’s subterranean nuclear facilities, Americans demonstrate an ongoing willingness to step up to fight for what seems to be good against evil. Since 1945, a Pax Americana has existed because we have deterred the commencement of a new General War.
Does some of this sound naive? Certainly! That is because the motives of most Americans are not steeped in Old World cynicism. For better or worse, a critical mass of Americans truly, genuinely, and unapologetically believe that we are a virtuous nation trying to do good.
Such idealism is precious. Like any form of innocence, once lost it can never return. There is a special place in Hell reserved for those who exploit innocence.
In the film “Gettysburg”, Maine Colonel Joshua Chamberlain is given to say: “If you look back through history, you will see men fighting for pay, for women, for some other kind of loot. They fight for land, power, because a king leads them or — or just because they like killing. But we are here for something new.
This has not happened much in the history of the world. We are an army out to set other men free.”
With the exceptions of many of our wars with America’s natives, the choices of a few in the South to perpetuate slavery into the industrial era, and perhaps our fight with Filipino rebels, these words still largely ring true. Since World War II, we have even done so without making colonies. Instead, with the Marshall Plan and its analogues, we rebuild friend and foe into free and independent states.
In our willingness to extend freedom so widely and to actually fight for liberty so strongly, America is fundamentally different from every other nation on Earth.
We are a redeemer nation out to set and keep others free. Happy Independence Day! AMERICA! HECK YEAH!
