![]("http://api.ning.com/files/Xj3VhxK09cw2AyVBl3fiq49YUpddjkGp8fCz*IRtjK6C46-lufJY0sALiXqtlO*FnCjZ8dojkVNdMDKRzG2d4W9OoTDi4XHw/LivingtheDreamCircle.jpg") |
| Living the American Dream (Townhall.com) |
One crucial tenet of the American Dream, and by extension
our country’s political temperament, is the notion of “self-made man.” From the
Puritanical and then Protestant Work Ethic, to Emerson’s featured essay
“Self-Reliance”, to latent talent of young immigrants turning into wealth,
fame, and influence now celebrated on “American Idol”, making something of
ourselves is a theme as American as apple pie (and Johnny Appleseed, by
extension).
something. Poor people became rich legacies: The First Families of Virginia,
the Vanderbilts, the Rockefellers etc. Powerless families turned into powerful
dynasties: Washington, Lincoln, Kennedy, Clinton.
has taken on distorted extremes. Narcissistic preeminence crowds the Internet,
from YouTube to Twitter. Now men and women believe that they can remake
themselves into a different gender, too.
A blatant manifestation of this radical yet ridiculous self-transformation?
Bruce or “Caitlyn” Jenner. Bruce the
Olympic Gold Medal winner graced the covers of Wheaties boxes in the early
1980’s. Disappearing for a few decades, he turned up on reality TV shows with
the dysfunctional Kardashian family. Then he started looking more lady-like, strange,
with controversies swirling around him, Kim, and their frustrating private
life.
she, and was transforming himself.
The “Self-made man” has become a woman.
![]("http://www.truthrevolt.org/sites/default/files/images/Jenner%202.jpg") |
| Bruce Jenner on Vanity Fair cover (Truth Revolt) |
Let’s review some unchangeable facts. I cannot make myself a
woman no more than an apple can unpeel itself into an orange, or the government
create natural resources or wealth. Every human being born into this world
carries distinct, determined, and essential different characteristics, genetic
and ingrained. DNA is indubitable if inscrutable, XX or XY. All the cosmetic,
plastic, or analgesic surgeries will not transform a male into a female.
Hormones galore no more can undo the ribbons of genetic data.
covers of “Vanity Fair”. “Vanity” is an appropriate term for the magazine. It
is vanity to believe that we can change so much about ourselves. “Caitlyn” is
still a man, and he can’t change that. Another recovered transgender, Walt Heyer not only described the
pain and horrors of sex-change surgery and back again, but the growing
awareness that gender reassignment is really a mask for mental disturbances
and emotional imbalance.
A broader issue emerges. There is so much about our
identities, about ourselves which fall outside of our power. Who we are depends
on much more than “who we are”.
Csanad Szegedi railed against Jews, while seeking the top post in his ideologically
extremist Party. Driven to expelling foreigners and their reported criminality
from his home country, he particularly targeted Jewish people.
Hungary's far-right Jobbik Party, Csanad Szegedi was notorious for his
incendiary comments on Jews. . .Then came a revelation that knocked him off his
perch as ultra-nationalist standard-bearer: Szegedi himself is a Jew.
![]("http://vipmedia.globalnews.ca/2014/03/nazi.jpg?w=720&h=405&crop=1") |
| Csanad Szegedi, now Dovid (Shawglobalnews.com) |
Grandmother survived Auschwitz, with the numbers still
tattooed on her arm. His grandfather was a veteran of the harsh World War II
labor camps all over Central Europe. Those are the facts, that is the history,
and so they are Szegedi’s, too. Despite
his deeply-held beliefs, however offensive or immoral, however long he held
them, the would-be leader of far-right
Hungarian politics found himself with an identity he would have never
embraced. No matter what his deranged hatred of European Jewry, Szegedi was a
Jew, losing his standing in his political party.
Dovid Szegedi, eats kosher, is learning Hebrew and goes to the Synagogue every
Friday. "This is my true identity," says Szegedi, who is almost two
meters (6" 6') tall. He wears an Italian designer suit, scruffy stubble
and a black kippah.
a profound understanding of his true, proper, fact-based identity. Revealed,
not created. Our parents, our cultural heritage, but more important the brutal,
honest facts determine who we are more, far more than our sentiments. The
point? Identity at its core is not a finality determined by the individual.
![""]("http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/59/Ben_Affleck_2008.jpg/640px-Ben_Affleck_2008.jpg") |
| Ben Affleck (Gene Bromberg) |
his ancestors’ slave-holding past. He later apologized for attempting to suppress
this information on the PBS program. Regardless of his feelings on the matter,
Affleck has this history.
attempts to change or cover up oneself connect larger political undercurrents
roiling the United States?
Change we have been waiting for” and his frequent self-references — the
bankrupted argument is rising, one of self-definition and redefinition, as
though we own nothing to past generations, or future considerations.
not a vacuous emergence ex nihilo. The
Framers of our Constitution stood on the brilliant revelation of prior
philosophers, who deduced republican principles of democratic participation
based on Christian tolerance from successful, self-sustaining societies.
choices to what worked, and what was unworkable.
![]("http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Hectorstjohncrevecoeur.jpg") |
| Hector St. John de Crevecoeur |
Who can forget Hector St. Jean de Crevecoeur, who wrote
“What is this American, this new man?”
man;. . . .Here [in America] individuals of all nations are melted into a new
race of men, whose labours and posterity will one day cause great changes in
the world. . . .
A new man, not self-made, but made from individuals from all
over the world.
becomes a misnomer, even misleading. Bruce will still be Bruce, Szegedi is a
Jew. We are more than we think of ourselves. Our history defines who we are,
and We the People must accept this.