alternative hippopotamus

progressive cyberdadaism from our nation’s capital

November 13, 2007

The Red Coats Are Coming!

by AltHippo @ 12:15 pm. Filed under Uncategorized

The Red Coats, assuming the form of the Federalist Society, intend to invade our fair city starting Thursday:

The theme for this year’s convention is “Shining City Upon a Hill: American Exceptionalism.”

Winthrop’s “City on a Hill” sermon meets American Exceptionalism. One of these things is not like the other thing.

As you probably recall from high school English, the sermon was actually named “A Model of Christian Charity.” Here’s the part alluded to:

For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken…we shall be made a story and a by-word throughout the world. We shall open the mouths of enemies to speak evil of the ways of God…We shall shame the faces of many of God’s worthy servants, and cause their prayers to be turned into curses upon us til we be consumed out of the good land whither we are going.

Winthrop is admonishing us to behave as if we are an example to all humanity. To behave as a constant source of illumination and good will. To be, as suggested by one Jesus of Nazareth, the light of the world.

The American Exceptionalists have managed to mangle this idea until it means just the opposite: that somehow we have been granted a special relationship to the Omnicient, so that we operate not under the laws that the rest of the world is obliged to, but under our own special set of laws. So, we can invade countries, torture fellow human beings, rig elections, bomb our enemies, etc., all with complete impunity because we’ve been given that divine right.

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