Fred LaSor: A country I used to know

“I feel like I’m an expatriate living in a country I used to know,” said comedian and political commentator Dennis Miller on Fox News a few weeks ago. Political humor is frequently funny because it’s accurate, yet just a little beyond belief. For me, this was one of those moments. Miller is right: this is not the country I remember from the days of the Eisenhower or Kennedy presidencies.

Miller was speaking before America was hit by its latest epidemic of political correctness. I refer, of course, to the idea public restrooms may be segregated by gender, but the definition of gender is left to the individual. Feel like a woman? Help yourself to the ladies’ loo, no matter what your birth certificate says. Followed closely, of course, by the charge you’re a bigot if you find this latest bit of social engineering crazy.

Well it isn’t crazy, I’d opine, but I have to wonder if it’s really necessary for the emotional well-being of a small percentage of the population who claim discrimination because they can’t use the facilities of the opposite sex. And I have to wonder too where we’re headed next. We’ve changed the meaning of the word “marriage,” and now we’re going to change the meaning of the words “lady’s room.” Yet the same people who tell us gender identification is a social fiction would have us elect Hillary because she’s a woman. I totally understand Miller’s comment.

To cement his social revolutionary credentials, Democrat President Barack Obama wants to remove from our twenty dollar bill the face of the founder of the Democratic Party, Andrew Jackson, and replace it with that of Harriet Tubman, a leading light in the Abolitionist movement. Jackson played an important role in our history, but is not without controversy. Tubman’s role in our history is important too, but she was apparently chosen for her gender more than her activity in the Underground Railway. This from an administration that claims gender identification isn’t important.

Another event that preceded Miller’s statement was the chalked inscriptions around the Emory University campus of the words “Trump 2016.” Now I’m not a supporter of the real estate mogul, but I have to wonder just how threatening a chalked campaign slogan really is. Emory University president James Wagner met with a group of students who protested the chalked inscriptions and reported they “felt intimidated” by the inscriptions. Really? These protesters are the same age as the men sent onto the beaches of Normandy in 1944. I wonder if the Emory students felt as intimidated by the chalked statements as the boys being machine-gunned from the cliffs they were storming.

There’s a Bernie Sanders yard sign on my daily walks. Regular readers know I’m vehemently opposed to Marxism and its offshoots, no matter how benign their name. Do I feel intimidated by the political sign? No, I feel sad someone in my neighborhood is so ignorant of world history as to believe Sanders’ political philosophy is either workable or good for our country. But I’m not going to call the sheriff and ask to be defended from the sign.

A foreigner in a country I used to know; Dennis Miller has it right. Socially and politically, America has changed in ways that are intellectually inconsistent and politically pointless, except to demonstrate just how much power our government has over us. While our “betters” practice their social engineering the economy staggers along and ISIS cuts off heads. George Orwell predicted all this.