SARAH HOYT: OCCUPIED! “I don’t think there has ever been a country like ours, where our elites are deliberately taught – in our best schools – to hate and despise everything that we are, everything that makes us unique. I don’t think there has ever been another country where our elites are taught to be ashamed to call themselves by our national name.”
UPDATE: Seth Barrett Tillman emails:
Sarah A. Hoyt writes: “I don’t think there has ever been a country like ours, where our elites are deliberately taught – in our best schools – to hate and despise everything that we are, everything that makes us unique. I don’t think there has ever been another country where our elites are taught to be ashamed to call themselves by our national name.” Ms Hoyt may be correct about the United States, but she is wrong in embracing the mantle of American exceptionalism.
Look at the United Kingdom – the Cambridge 5 were recruited at Cambridge University, not the University of Lower Upsala at Hoople-on-Tyne. (Just read Smiley’s People or any other LeCarré novel.) The Scots will vote on independence in 2014, to coincide with the Battle of Bannockburn: a 1314! Scottish military victory against the foreign (English) invader. The British government has mandated devolved legislative entities in Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland: creating (or, at least, reifying) incipient national identities. The devolved Scottish legislature is considering making Scots-Gaelic required in primary schools. Somehow being British and speaking English is no longer enough.
And you’d be wrong to believe these attitudes are local only to the English-speaking world. See, e.g., Ze’ev Chafetz, Heroes and Hustlers, Hard Hats and Holy Men: Inside the New Israel (1986): “[Amos] Oz … is often referred to as Israel’s foremost novelist …. Like a number of other Israeli intellectuals, Oz lives in a state of perpertual dissatisfaction with his country and its people ….”.
The Cambridge 5 did not betray their country because they embraced communism, they embraced communism as a means to undermine a country and a people they already despised.
Perhaps our ruling class, in its (justifiable) self-loathing, wants to punish those who empowered it. Note that this self-loathing seems largely to afflict leftists; but then, that’s where it’s most justified.