By Barry Rubin
When people get depressed about America’s future, they might listen to patriotic songs or watch a football game. I replay “Casablanca.” But don’t forget the 1943 film, “The Human Comedy” either.
If you’ve been raised on the indoctrination that America is an evil racist country and multiculturalism is some bold new invention indoctrination, “The Human Comedy” will shake you up. Nowadays such a film is dismissed as “sentimental” which means it has heroes, shows love of country and community, and has some real and non-cynical feeling for average people.
[Inevitable leftist response: Ha, and that's when they were rounding up Japanese-Americans so that proves America is racist! I'll deal with that distortion of history some other time.]
Watch the first scene (two minutes) in which Mickey Rooney as the Western Union messenger boy delivers a telegram that her son has been killed in battle to a Hispanic mother. Maybe that’s something that should be shown in Hispanic identity classes today.
But the really amazing scene is when Rooney’s boss takes his girlfriend on a ride. It’s July 4 and as they pass the town’s big park, he points out every celebrating the freedom and democracy of America using its own customs. Now that’s pluralism. (Unfortunately, I cannot find a clip on the Internet of this scene. Let me know if you can.)
Read it all:
http://pajamasmedia.com/barryrubin/2011/10/04/what-to-do-when-you%e2%80%99ve-temporarily-given-up-hope-for-america%e2%80%a6and-the-world/
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
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