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25 Feb 2009 11:17 am

Jindal's Fatuousness

A reader captures it:

"Americans can do anything". This was the title of Jindal's speech and its refrain. I'm almost too exhausted by it all to work up an appropriate amount of outrage. But come on!

When will everybody let go of these vacuous, egotistical stabs at patriotism. Americans can't do anything. And it is the notion that we can (democracy in the Middle East, pyramid schemes on Wall Street, deficits don't matter) that has gotten us into the problems we have now.

What was a necessary pep-talk in the 1980s from Reagan became calcified into a dogma that verges on national self-idolatry. The point of the American founding was not that Americans are somehow better than any other people on earth, but that they had figured out a way to make government more amenable to freedom, stability and prosperity. Many other countries have figured this out too. But not many others have dug themselves into the ditch the US now inhabits. I don't think more cant on the Jindal lines helps.

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