Been nice knowin' ya, America



By Dimitri Vassilaros
TRIBUNE-REVIEW
Sunday, May 7, 2006


Will the next generation of U.S. citizens consider themselves Americans or post-Americans? Better still, why wouldn't they consider themselves post-Americans? Considering how quickly this republic is unraveling, is it too late to ask rhetorical questions?
"Post-Americanism is the state of having moved beyond loyalty to the U.S.," according to Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies. Mr. Krikorian believes he coined "post-American."

"Somebody for whom the interests of the U.S. are not paramount and no longer feels greater loyalty to his fellow Americans. They have become cosmopolitans," he says.

Blame the defenseless border with Mexico for the 11 million-plus illegal aliens who didn't have to swear allegiance to America, the White House and Wall Street demanding illegals get rubber-stamped citizenship, allowing them to access government programs, school districts allowing them to vote, teachers using patriotism and jingoism interchangeably, forcing callers to push "1" to hear messages in English, allowing foreign companies from hostile nations control of vital parts of American ports -- and that's just since January.


The elites in Washington, D.C., New York City and the United Nations seem to have plotted a journey to lead America into the New World Order where a cosmopolitan global citizen is no more connected to his country than a sociopath to his fellow man.

Take Strobe Talbott (and the sooner the better).

Mr. Talbott -- Brookings Institution president, old hand at the State Department and former editor at Time magazine -- was preparing America for its inevitable irrelevance with his "The Birth of the Global Nation" in 1992.

He said "nationhood as we know it will be obsolete; all states will recognize a single, global authority. A phrase briefly fashionable in the mid-20th century -- 'citizen of the world' -- will have assumed real meaning by the end of the 21st century. All countries are basically social arrangements, accommodations to changing circumstances."

The Founding Fathers risked death for a social arrangement?

This America thing was quite a concept. It had a nice run -- certainly longer than anyone in 1776 could have predicted.

Self-evident truths about equality and whatnot, God-given rights, slaves eventually emancipated, great batting average in wars, cures or pills for most illnesses known to man, the Super Bowl, walking on the moon, the Sports Illustrated swimsuit edition, the Mother of Exiles lifting her lamp beside the golden door -- not bad in little more than two centuries.

Not quite the staying power of Rome but certainly better hygiene.

Been nice knowin' ya, America. Remind the last cosmopolitan to turn off Lady Liberty's lamp before that nowhere man jets to Geneva since America's defenseless borders make the Statue of Liberty a quaint redundancy and this nation almost unrecognizable.

"Younger people probably are more likely to be post-Americans given how bad the public education system is," Mr. Krikorian says.

It would be surprising to find more than a handful of elites in education being patriotic Americans instead of post-Americans, he said.

"A lot of people sense what is going on but it has not been clearly expressed and classified yet," Krikorian says.

Dimitri Vassilaros is a Trib editorial page columnist. His column appears Sundays, Mondays and Fridays. Call him at 412-380-5637. E-mail him at dvassilaros@tribweb.com.

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