One-time home run king had an ignorance of language

We must define our terms

To make us love our country, said Edmund Burke, our country ought to be lovely.

Indeed, most of the land mass is beautiful. I’m a native Oregonian and the natural beauty of my home country, as far as I’m concerned, is second to none.

Beauty and loveliness don’t equate, however.

Burke was concerned with a country’s “distinct system of manners.” The national character.

Manners have eroded in the United States while patriotism is crumbling as well. For a statistical majority of Americans, it is hatred for the other that drives their politics or perhaps motivates them in general.

What remains of national character?

One half of the country—ironically the side with the collectivist strain infused into its politics—thinks the other is “fascist.”

The “Dobbs case” was the latest litmus test for fascism.

Yet, Stanley G. Payne, Professor Emeritus of History at University of Wisconsin-Madison and perhaps the foremost scholar on European Fascism writes in his 1980 tome, Fascism: Comparison and Definition

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