The Ming Report

AND AMBER WAVES OF GRAIN

July 16, 2003 - This morning driving the 20 miles to work I looked out across the Illinois prairie. That view is a sensual delight. The greens and yellows of the tasseling corn contrast the checkerboard of solid greens of the soybean fields. Along the road splashes of blue mark colonies of cornflowers and flocks of russet and yellow daylily greet the mid-July sun. Willow groves mark the rivulets growing into streams surrounded by oak and hickory forests, each with their own subtlety of color. Lift the eye to the horizon and outlined against that spacious sky are the castle spires of grain elevators awaiting a harvest. It is the 16th of July and summer is half over. Driving along the Ridge Road I marveled at its beauty, even now when the hand of man has replaced the hand of God in painting its landscape.

This, I thought, is my country. I have seen her purple mountains and marveled at them. I have seen her shining seas and sailed them. I have walked her cities streets and listened to her people sing. This is my country and I love her so. Perhaps at the closing of my sixty-fifth year I have come to understand what patriotism means. It is simple love of my country; love of the sweet smell of new-mown hay laid out in windrows; love of sight of golden stubble marking the harvest of oats and wheat; love of the sound of her cities’ hub-bub and of silence broken only by the meadowlarks song; that, my friends, is patriotism.

Patriotism lies not in pride in a nation’s power nor in its quest to possess an empire. Patriotism is not acquisitive. It is protective. It is not expressed in blind obedience to the adventuristic directions in which first one administration and then another seeks to point us. It is expressed in a dedication to the coasts of the shining seas, the majesty of the purple mountains and the amber waves of a promised harvest spread as nature’s tablecloth between.

A barn, its faded and peeling red serving as a background for a fading Stars and Stripes is what focused my thoughts on Patriotism. I have seen that patriot’s flag hanging there since September 11th, the day from which we mark the modern century. That day my country was attacked, not by a rival nation, not by a sovereign, but by shadows. And patriots of very different political persuasions came together in a resolve to protect our country. And patriots of every political hue took pride that our staunch allies and erstwhile enemies stood with us in the response. If there was criticism of the Afghani Expedition it was that we wondered if our enemy was really understood or that the resources we committed were sufficient to the task. But as the mission changed and the objective blurred, that patriotism and international solidarity was squandered.

An expedition to protect America became transmogrified into a war of empire, founded on deception and misdirection. The mission to protect America failed and we are paying the price in blood and treasure and in the wastrel dissipation of that most precious commodity - Trust.