I don’t know if Franklin Graham is a Christian. Or if he loves America. I don’t know if Rudy Giuliani is a Christian or if he loves America. And I don’t know either of those things about Mitt Romney. Or George Bush. Or Ronald Reagan. I don’t even know if Pope Francis is a Christian.
Just as I don’t know if anyone who claims to be Muslim, is truly Muslim.
I do know whether a person is Jewish, because that status is defined in objectively-verifiable ways: being born to Jewish parents; or conversion, which can only be done after a ruling from a Bais Dina court.
But whether a person is a Christian; whether a person is a Muslim; whether a person loves America, are all matters purely of the heart, not subject to objective testing.
A person becomes a Christian by publicly professing that Jesus Christ is Lord and by believing in his or her heart that God raised him from the dead. Romans 10:9.
To become a Muslim, a person must publicly profess that there is no God except Allah; that Muhammad is his messenger; and, believe this in his or her heart.
And if “patriotism” is defined as “love of country” – and, it is – it, too, can only be verified by examining the contents of a person’s heart; something we mortals are ill-equipped to do.
When Giuliani was stammering around under the withering questioning of Megyn Kelly for the basis of his (baseless) assertion that President Obama doesn’t love America, he finally resorted to bringing up Frank Marshall Davis, a man to whom President Obama, as a young boy, was introduced by his WWII veteran grandfather and a man who, in many ways, served as a substitute father for President Obama.
But surely a person is not to be judged on the basis of his family members. At least not by Giuliani, whose own father became a resident of Sing Sing after having been convicted of felonious assault and robbery and whose daughter shoplifted from Sephora.
In the 1972 movie “The Candidate,” left-wing liberal actor Robert Redford, playing left-wing liberal candidate Bill McKay in a mostly-satirical comedy, wore a flag pin on his lapel as he ran for US Senate. This caught the eye of H.R. Haldeman, Nixon’s Chief of Staff, and soon all of Nixon’s aides were wearing flag pins on their lapels. Nixon sported one as he lied to the American public about his involvement in Watergate. Haldeman went on to spend 18 months as a chemist in the sewage treatment facility at Lompoc Federal Prison in California, after having been found guilty of conspiracy and obstruction in the Watergate debacle.
Surely, the wearing of a lapel pin cannot be a measure of patriotism.
But that is exactly what it became in 2007 in Iowa when conservatives and Clinton-supporters began pitching conniption fits over President Obama’s decision not to wear one, as he felt such symbolism had become a shallow substitute for deeper heartfelt patriotism.
He underestimated the public’s reliance on the shortcuts of symbolism as life hacks for the mentally more cumbersome tasks of studying and analyzing and comprehending issues on a deeper level.
Perhaps he thought America had evolved since the days when Ronald Reagan was heralded as a strong leader based purely on his shallow symbolic swagger-talk against Iran – delivered publicly, as he privately winked at the Ayatollah and sold arms to him behind the backs of the American people.
Perhaps he thought America was tired of meaningless symbolic swagger, having seen Bush jet onto the deck of the USS Abraham Lincoln wearing a flight suit – a stunt described by the Wall Street Journal as “appearing credible as commander in chief” and “virile, sexy, and powerful” – as he assured the American people that the worst of the Iraq war was over...in a record 40 days...with almost no casualties; when, the deeper truth was, the seven-year war with 5,000 American deaths and a trillion dollar debt...had only just begun.
But, no. Americans love shallow symbolism.
In 2005 the Bush administration had advance intelligence regarding the time and place of an al-Qaeda meeting of the highest level to be led by Ayman Al-Zawahri, second only to Osama bin Laden. With Navy Seals already in parachute gear headed into Pakistan on a C-130, the Bush administration called off the raid, concerned that it was too risky and fearful that Pakistan would be upset, as the target was in the tribal area which Pakistan had specifically barred the US from entering.
On May 2, 2011, President Obama ordered two stealth-configured Black Hawks to fly nap-of-the-earth below radar 120 miles into the sovereign airspace of nuclear-armed Pakistan without a “please” or a “thank you” to the Pakistani government. When Pakistani fighter jets were briefly scrambled during the 38-minute raid, a chilling message was crisply broadcast over their radios: “This is the United States Military. Return to your base or you WILL be engaged.” Osama bin Laden was sliding off the end of the gang plank on the USS Carl Vinson with 300 pounds of chains in his burial shroud before they mustered the courage to fly again.
But Bush is “strong” and President Obama is “weak” because Bush talked big and swaggered around in a flight suit.
And because of that same eschewing of meaningless symbolism, President Obama is doing “nothing” against ISIL, in the shallow perception of all conservatives and way-too-many liberals.
As of February 4, President Obama had conducted 946 airstrikes against ISIL inside Syria, while Jordan, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE had conducted a combined total of 79. That’s 92.3% of the airstrikes.
Beginning February 5th, the fed-up King Abdullah II of Jordan donned a flight suit – apparently he takes the Wall Street Journal – and swaggered around and engaged in a lot of big talk about destroying ISIL, as Jordan embarked on a three-day “ramped up” response to ISIL by conducting an additional...wait for it...56 airstrikes.
A still-woefully-inadequate response compared to what President Obama has been doing on a steady and consistent basis.
But King Abdullah’s use of shallow symbolism immediately endeared him to American conservatives who heralded him as a strong and decisive leader and lamented that our own President Obama could not be more like him. Which, would be a surprising development, if we had not already heard Giuliani frothing praise for Putin’s "strong and decisive" actions in Crimea and Ukraine.
The sad truth is, they passionately hate President Obama, as a person. So nothing he does and no change he makes, will ever please them. He could debase himself and jump through their hoops to their glee and delight, but they would still criticize him. He could acquiesce and use the wording they are presently demanding, but they would simply change their demands to different wording, just as Jim Crow elections officials would change the questions on voter literacy tests, once the original questions were answered correctly. He could talk big and engage in a purely symbolic swagger-stunt, but they would laugh him off the stage, as they did when the “diminutive” Dukakis put on a combat helmet and took a staged ride in a 68-ton M1 Abrams Battle Tank.
But in the final analysis, it is because of President Obama’s impeccable uprightness; his undeniable positive achievements; his first-in-modern-history-to-be-scandal-free presidency, that they are relegated-down to criticizing (their perceptions of) the contents of his heart.