My thoughts about the matter have changed considerably the past eight years.
I used to be the "we're all in this together" sort of person.
I used to be the "an American is an American" sort of person.
However, not being a statesman or a soldier, both of whom are obligated to maintain such an attitude, I no longer feel this way.
In time of crisis, not being a statesman or a soldier, I would have the luxury of picking-and-choosing whom to defend, whom to protect.
And I would be most interested in defending and protecting those those who wish to uphold the principles, the ideals, the traditions, that made, or make, America great.
The primitives would be a deadweight, a hindrance; their own fates, which inevitably must be ignominious, are no matter of concern for me any more.
When I was in college, I used to haunt the section of the main library where master's and Ph.D. theses were kept; the University of Nebraska had a requirement that two hardbound copies of every thesis written there, since the beginning (1869), had to be donated to the institution, for study by future scholars.
Of course, no one paid attention to that section; nearly all the time, I was the only person in that part of the library.
Among the collection were various theses, master's and Ph.D.s, written during the 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, about the domestic situation in France the spring of 1940; both history and sociology, just before the occupation of Denmark and Norway, or the invasion of the Netherlands and Belgium.
It appears that on April 9, 1940 or May 10, 1940 (either one is applicable), about 25% of all Frenchmen took the war seriously; 15% had no opinion, and 60% were against the war, and thought the boys should come home to plough the fields for spring planting.
Yes, they had polls in those ancient days.
This created all sorts of convulsions and divisions within Frenchmen.
What happened after the invasion and occupation of France is too variegated to describe here, although anyone with a fundamental idea of history has at least the general idea.
But generally, usually, most of the time, those Frenchmen who had been the domestic Fifth Column (as opposed with the "German tourists") met with bad ends.
Those Frenchmen who had not been seditious, but at the same time not taken the war seriously, failed to flourish and prosper, and in fact constituted the bulk of those sent to "labor" in Germany, or endured other material deprivations.
Those Frenchmen who had taken the threat seriously, either paid the ultimate sacrifice in the Resistance and the Free French, dying heroes to both God and man, or if they survived, flourished and prospered in post-1945 France.
One characteristic of the third category was how sharply and quickly they discarded the other 75%, the deadweights, being utterly indifferent as to their fates, France being more important to them than these Frenchmen.
I love America, what America stands for, what America is supposed to be, with a passion and an ardor, but there are some Americans one can't stand, and so one no longer gives a **** about them.
