Does Obama Love America?

Of course President Obama loves America. How is it possible to believe otherwise?

Where else on earth could a bi-racial man, son of an African father and an American mother, raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, rise to attend America’s most elite universities, amass staggering wealth through a book about himself, and become the first black president in American history, without a single legislative accomplishment, after barely two years in the Senate, with the middle name “Hussein.”

“Unprecedented” doesn’t quite capture how staggering the odds were against Obama doing what he has ultimately accomplished.  This truly epic achievement would be impossible anywhere else but here. POTUS says as much himself.

And when President Obama talks about the future, his vision is roughly inter-changeable with other American politicians across the political spectrum. Security from threats abroad. Health, advancement and prosperity at home. Good schools, a growing middle class, higher wages, access to higher education. Clean air, a safe workplace. To leave a society where the next generation can live better than the last.

So far, the President has achieved the extraordinary and preaches the conventional.

So why do we ask this question about love of country?

The question itself is a uniquely American query. Can we picture anyone asking Francois Hollande whether he loves France, or David Cameron whether he loves England?

The question is relevant to Americans because we were founded not on a blood line but a set of principles and ideas. What those principles mean and how they have been implemented over the course of our history, and how well we are judged against them, is a matter of interpretation.

So, in this new super-charged debate, Obama’s love of country is not the issue. What is suspect is whether Obama’s  love is informed by the mainstream narrative of America, accepted by the vast number of citizens, or something very different.

What could be different?

Check out The People’s History of the United States, by Howard Zinn. Zinn, who described himself as equal parts anarchist and socialist, was a political science professor, playwright and social activist who in 1980 became a free-lance historian of what is effectively, an alternate American history.

For Zinn, American history can only be properly understood through the historical lenses of race, class and gender. At the heart of Zinn’s premise is a critical view capitalism as an economic system that is the root cause of racism, sexism, militarism, as well as other “isms;” an eternal struggle between those who selfishly own and direct the system for their further advantage, and those locked out from it, trying to secure a decent life.

To his credit, Zinn’s book does shine a light on chapters of the American story that are rarely taught in detail in American schools –  US government treatment of Native Americans; the genuine anti-war movements during the Civil War and WWI. The internment of Japanese Americans during WWII.

But Zinn’s preposterous conclusions and shoddy scholarship outweigh the value of his fuller historical record.

Zinn posits that Columbus’ landing in the New World triggered what became the Western Hemisphere’s first genocide. That racism was intentionally created after the start of the slave trade to separate poor whites from black slaves, as a tool to enforce the capitalist economic system. That the American Founding Fathers agitated for war against England to distract poorer people in the colonies from their economic problems, and to prevent the threat of growing domestic movements that the Fathers could not control. That the Civil War was fought, not to ultimately abolish slavery but to preserve capitalism, with the Federal government dictating (and limiting) the rights of African-Americans.

For Zinn, the Industrial age saw the dawn of the corporate robber barons and the war profiteers who have been inside players, moving the political pieces, through much of the 20th and 21st centuries. As the sole super power at the end of WWII, Zinn has seen only the most nefarious motives as the US has regularly overthrown popularly elected governments and supported repressive regimes, all in the service of capitalism, justified on national security grounds, that the public willingly accepts.

Far from being a that “Shining City on a Hill” that Reagan spoke of,  Zinn believed that America had much to answer for in its organization and shameful conduct over its history. A record of enduring selfishness, its inflicted deprivations at home and abroad. While America’s founding had held the promise of true justice and equality, those ideals have gone unmet.

Now, back to President Obama.

Doing my best impression of Scott Walker, I don’t know whether POTUS has ever read Zinn’s book, or if he had, whether he agrees with parts or all of it. But Zinn’s book is nevertheless a  reflexively accurate view of the world as articulated by today’s American progressives, a view that would be consistent with those of Obama’s teachers, known professional associates and his well-known pastor, in the years leading up to his election.

And writ broadly, it is a view reflected in his policies. Obamanomics, at its heart, is a gigantic wealth redistribution scheme. The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and the Justice Department have taken engagement on worker rights and race consciousness to a new level.

In foreign policy, the President has sought to publicly admit “errors” in past US actions around the world as a cleansing exercise to more authentic – and humble – US international participation. Whether it be US culpability in the 1953 coup in Iran that installed the Shah, or POTUS’ more recent comments noting millennia-old actions by European Christians to discuss the modern threat from ISIS, President Obama misses no opportunity to point out to the world that America sins like everyone else and is by implication, no different and certainly no better. As the President said, Americans are exceptional in the same way that Greeks believe they are exceptional.

For President Obama, it is the struggle that is great about America. The ability to challenge racism, sexism, the military-industrial complex. To battle the structural, entrenched interests that prevent America from living up to the potential of the Declaration of Independence.

So, with every respect to the former mayor of New York, I do believe President Obama loves America.  I think he loves you and me. But that is not the same a loving America for the ideals,  principles and accomplishments that I, and a very broad cross-section of America value.

An against-all-odds struggle to win independence and establish the first republic since Rome. The genius of our Founders in creating an enduring government based on a sovereign people, guaranteed rights, limited government and separation of powers. A country as imperfect as any, but dedicated to perfecting its union. Abolishing slavery and establishing woman’s suffrage, the civil rights movement, each in its own way advanced America’s collective interests. Serving as an arsenal of democracy world-wide, and founding an international order that in less than a half century has created more wealth and lifted more people out of poverty than at any time in human history.

That’s my America. Imperfect but perfecting. A fallible country, but a decent, generous and tolerant people, dedicated to founding principles, who continue to strive, proud of epic accomplishments and sacrifices. An exceptional country, not because we are better than everyone else, but because our founding was the “exception” to all others that came before it, and remains a light for a world filled with darkness.

That’s probably not how the President would see it, if he were being candid. But that does not mean that POTUS doesn’t love his country – he just doesn’t love it for the same reasons as many of his fellow countrymen do.

If you didn’t know that, remember hard when we vet the next candidates to assume the nation’s most consequential office.