The Pollyanna Follies

“Freedom Follies” often take the form of “Pollyanna Follies,” when the issue of individual liberty is center stage in the American political drama.  The crucial importance of preserving personal freedom from the ravages of government is currently being upstaged en masse in the United States of Americana by those individuals  who adopt a kind of idealistic “pollyannaism.”  Individuals who manifest this overly glowing attitude toward the  “Promised Land” of “Hope and Change,” that was previously promised by the current occupant of the Oval Office, remain blind to the reality of the clear and ever increasing threat, not only to personal liberty, but to the survival of Constitutional government bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers.

The oft-used term, “Pollyanna,” derives from the best-selling, 1913 novel (Pollyanna), by Eleanor H. Porter, now considered “a classic of children’s literature” and the basis for the Disney movie of the same title.   “Pollyanna” is:

A person regarded as being foolishly or blindly optimistic.

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2009. 

Arguably, a prime example of a “Pollyanna” in the political realm is, Neville Chamberlain, Prime Minister of Great Britain when Hitler was threatening Europe (1937-1940).  Chamberlain will be forever known for his policy of “appeasement.”

The main purpose of this policy was to avoid war at all costs. Chamberlain once said that “in a war, no matter who is victor, no one wins, everyone loses.” He was thus determined to avoid war in Europe, even if that meant making certain concessions to the dictators. Chamberlain believed that he could appease Hitler and escape military confrontation with some concessions and man-to-man dialogue.

I submit that a modern day example of the Pollyanna character is very likely to be found in Dan Boylan, Midweek columnist and University of Hawaii, West Oahu professor of history, as well as  sometimes commentator on local television stations during election seasons.  Professor Boylan, it seems, is a quintessential example of an “intellectual  Pollyanna,”  judging from the fact that he shows week after week that he cannot see the forest because he is blinded by the gleaming trees of liberal wisdom that he beholds.

In his most recent column, “America As The World Sees Us,” Boylan writes admiringly of the Swedish sociologist, Myrdal, and in so doing, appears to inhabit a “World” that is limited to European, or at least Western, values, because he conveniently ignores the less than glowing perception of the U.S. in other parts of the planet.  Myrdal, he asserts:

…examined the great contradiction of egalitarian America in the mid-20th century: The failure of the United States to fulfill the promises of its founding documents and the Civil War.

Myrdal wrote about persisting racism in the United States, which, it is certainly true, conflicts with the U.S. Constitution.  However, Boylan’s liberally-biased belief system, which, ostensibly, regards “group rights,” rather than “individual rights” as guaranteed by the Constitution, directs his attention away from the massive violations of civil rights that have been visited upon ALL American citizens, regardless of race, since at least 1913, when the American public was bamboozled into believing that they were required to pay an income tax by the 16th Amendment to the Constitution, an interpretation that is still taken as the gospel truth today, despite the fact that no one has ever been able to produce corresponding legislation that mandates that one must pay a direct, unapportioned tax on personal income.

Boylan’s idealistic “Pollyannaism” leads him to seeming disbelief regarding “the shrill criticism from some quarters of President Barack Obama.”  He reveals his wide-eyed infatuation with his “favorite son” in describing his befriending of a couple of German tourists and giving them his “25-cent tour of Honolulu,” which as the state capitol  has been overwhelmingly dominated by the Democratic political machine for almost fifty years.  And, should the near existence of total legislative control continue for another two years, and there is no compelling sign that it will not.  If so, then “Hawaii Five-0,” the police drama of the 1970s, which “showcased the nation's 50th state and attracted millions of tourists to its shores,” will be imbued with a new, prophetic meaning.

Boylan describes stopping to drink German beer and highlights the conversation that ensured with his enamored companions. “We don’t understand it,” said the husband. “Europe loves him. In Germany, hundreds of thousands turned out to hear him speak. Our German politicians these days are not very exciting. If you don’t want Obama, send him to Germany. We would make him chancellor immediately.”

“Sadly,” Boylan muses in the article, “some of my countrymen would be happy to do just that.”

Sadly?  Is this a chink in Pollyanna’s armor?  Or, is it, rather, a reflection of the partisan myopia that leads Boylan to have, ostensibly, little, if any appreciation of the constitutional issues that the Obama administration has thrust in the faces of the American people time and time again over the past ten months?

I suggest that it is the latter explanation that obtains.  It is the idealistic, progressive perspective that structures Boylan’s perception of the situation in American political culture.  He is the intellectual observer at the Emperor’s celebratory parade who cannot perceive the raw nakedness of the political forces that make up his entourage and which seek to co-opt increasingly more power for the central government of the United States and transmute the constitutionally structured federation of independent states into an all powerful national government that has absolute authority and domination over the American people, not unlike the domination of the Democratic machine in Hawaii politics.

Boylan speaks of the United States as “the world’s most egalitarian society,” and then he  appears to lament, as pointed out by Myrdal:

…the great contradiction (sic) of egalitarian America in the mid-20th century: The failure of the United States to fulfill the promises of its founding documents and the Civil War.

Boylan might well turn his skills as an historical scholar to the roots of egalitarianism in Paleolithic hunter-gatherer groups and the way in which they developed “leveling-down mechanisms” to keep leaders in check.  We need this evolutionary wisdom today to keep Presidents and legislators in check.  But, this part of the forest, Boylan has not seen while enamored with the “Towering African Blackwood Tree,” which grew prodigiously out of nowhere during the last national election season.  It is rather ironic that this tree is threatened in Kenya, President Obama’s country of original citizenship.  An omen, perhaps, for the future of its political "incarnation" in America?

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