Published by: Sarah Barnes on Tuesday February 4th, 2014
Everything means whatever, so nothing means anything.
I did not watch the “big game” because I just don’t care which body part the name-of-the-week celebrity decides to shake in between half-second clips of football. But I did notice the long stream of articles related to the Coke commercial on Facebook today. I wasn’t going to watch it, which is what I always tell myself. I promised myself I was absolutely, no-way-no-how, going to watch that stupid commercial.
But six hours into an unexpected day of being snowed-in, I caved. Having seen it, I noticed that a lot of people clearly had a problem with the ad, but many struggled to put their fingers on exactly what the problem was.
That’s ironic, because failure to communicate is exactly the problem with this ad. We no longer communicate if communicating means defining anything. Nothing has a definition because everyone now invents their own definition for everything. And that’s what Coke did in this ad: It invented a new definition for America.
That’s a problem, because America actually has a real definition connected to its founding and history. And we need the America of that definition. The real one.
This is not about the different languages used in the ad. It’s about something more.
I had a dear friend e-mail me seeking my opinion after she viewed the commercial. She has dedicated a large portion of her life to raising awareness and funds for orphans in countries all over the globe, but she felt the need to precede her comments with clarifying that she is not racist. She travels to orphanages and holds children of every ethnicity by the hand. She works to become engrained in their lives as well as engraining them in hers.
Why did she feel the need to say she isn’t racist? I know that she is far from racist. Everyone who knows her knows that to be true. She felt the need because racism is no longer known by its original definition, or almost any definition at all. It’s a catch-all for: “I’m not going to take the energy to listen to you or think about what you are saying to me.”
The goal of communists and socialists is to destroy our ideals from the inside out. Redefining words is child’s play. They have moved beyond that. To take a word and assign it another definition would still make that word usable. It would leave us with the ability to communicate effectively, allow us to hold on to our culture, heritage, ideals and goals.
What the left has very slowly done is not to redefine words, but to un-define them. Important words we use to structure the very basis for our society have become useless. What is a structure without sound building blocks? We live in a society where father is replaced by words like child-support payment, sperm donor, male role model. Disagree is replaced by hate, loathing, anger. The word different becomes devalue, belittle, diminish. Americans are never sure which word has which meaning and when, so Americans have stopped saying anything. The fear of rejection has caused us to keep our mouths shut. Go with the flow. Keep our heads down. The word family could have an endless combination of players: mother, stepmother, egg donor, birth mother, birth father, male role model, two fathers, three fathers.
No wonder kids don’t respect their parents anymore. What is a parent anyway? Nobody is really sure! We can’t even agree on what a baby is or when it is alive. To take it a step further, we don’t even know when a living baby is considered a human being, or when it is not OK to kill one!
The problem? The unease? What is it? American culture is something children grow up to love. They feel faithful to a country that has sacrificed to provide freedom and liberty. Lives were lost to establish safety for our bodies and our minds. We are grateful! We are willing to die to protect the gift! We send our best, the very best we have to offer, to the front lines of life or death because we believe so strongly in our ideals. We believe so strongly in the culture we have painstakingly built, using building blocks of the lives lost by our best!
It is a part of every single true American. Why then is Coke not glorifying the culture that began this great nation, the spirit that is struggling to stay alive today? Why does Coke need to tell us that those building blocks aren’t good enough anymore? In just over a minute they told us that multiculturalism, political correctness, and forced equality should replace our time-honored culture and heritage.
Some would say that it was a tribute to America. Some will buy into the lie that 61 seconds of a traditional anthem of patriotism being sung in words we do not know is a tribute.
I disagree. I am not a liberal. I am a member of a nation that does not want me anymore. I am a member of a family that is replacing me with a second dad, or female role model, or egg donor. I am a conservative woman. I am descended from the first families to enter this nation from England. They fought to survive the winters and diseases, the pain and death. They were the founders of this great nation. They wanted liberty from government interference. They wanted others to be safe from oppression.
I know some will say that isn’t true – and that’s exactly what I’m talking about. History is being re-written, over and over, until nobody has a past. You can’t know where you are going, until you know where you came from. We built this nation on a culture of liberty, hard work, ingenuity, strong selfless men and women. Why not honor America and Americans without trying to change our culture? I still remember who we are. I still have that knowledge in my heart. We are not some Frankenstein national cadaver of half dead cultures, stitched together by some godless bureaucrats in Washington (or wherever they happen to be vacationing this week.)
If we un-define America, if we make it an ever-changing mesh of ideas, if everyone is an American and everything is American then nothing is American. When America can no longer be defined, then America ceases to exist. That is the goal. America is being stolen in definition, so it can be stolen in possession. If the definition of America and Americans is not known, then how can our rights be known either? Don’t those too then become changeable to whatever half-dead cultural body part we sew on this year?
We shouldn’t melt. We should welcome those who see the greatness. America shouldn’t change, because this nation is needed. We have made it possible for others to exist and greatness to be achieved!
It isn’t the language that is the problem, but a small symptom of a larger disease. Identity is the most important thing we can own. My identity defines me as a daughter of the Most High, Ever Lasting, Prince of Peace, King and Creator of the Universe, the great I AM. Without that identity I am nothing. Without that identity, this nation is nothing. While a language or the color of skin is not something to fear, loss of identity, of our definition, is something to be mourned. It means the loss of greatness and the possibility of greatness for generations of people.
What was Coke trying to say? I’m not 100 percent sure, but I know what it felt like. I know it’s a bigger problem that needs to be noticed. I notice. What are you afraid of, and will it keep you from greatness? Will it keep you from remembering your identity? Will it keep you from remembering your national identity?
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