It is a gift, as Robert Burns wrote, to see ourselves as others see us.
One of those “others” is Caroline Glick, who writes on her webpage from Israel: “Americans are now expected to kneel for the Star Spangled Banner and disavow American history while swallowing whole a false, malicious new history that claims America has been a force for evil at home and worldwide since it was nothing more than a sparkle in a racist colonialist’s eye.”
Regimes in China and Iran, who violently repress even peaceful demonstrators, are mocking us and claiming we are no better than they when police and the National Guard put down street violence.
These are the inevitable consequences when a nation forgets who and what it is and when some of its citizens reject the values that built and sustained it. Have we forgotten that the evil of slavery and Jim Crow laws throughout the South have been mostly corrected and, in some cases, atoned for in blood and legislation? Perfect we have not yet become, but our journey is advancing, not retreating, or “sheltering in place.”
The current anarchy started with justifiable outrage over the killing of George Floyd. After peaceful demonstrations, things turned violent. Political correctness and censorship of speech quickly followed as mob rule became the norm.