Leftists who normally couldn’t care less about personal morality are behaving as if Tony Hinchliffe’s joke at a Trump rally in NYC (about Puerto Rico being a ‘floating island of garbage’) was a grave sin.  Moon Griffon is right about these folks:  They have no sense of humor.  And they have no sense of humor because they have no humility.

Humble people don’t mind laughing at themselves, nor do they mind when others laugh at them.  In fact, they often invite others to have a laugh at their own expense.  Most Southerners are humble people.  It is one of our main character traits that have helped bring forth a continual line of great Southern comedians – from Augustus Baldwin Longstreet to Jerry Clower to Jeff Foxworthy.  We don’t mind making fun of ourselves, and the more folks we can entertain with those jokes, the more laughter we can evoke by tellin’ on ourselves, the more fun the whole experience is for us.

But pride leads in a starkly different direction.  The soaring sense of self-importance of these people completely obliterates any inclination toward humor in their souls.  They receive little joy from telling jokes, and they are badly offended if you poke fun at them in any way.  These are the kinds of people you typically run across in New England and in the rest of Yankeedom (Hillary Clinton is a good representative of them).

We recommend caution when it comes to CIA-connected National Review, but one of that magazine’s former writers, Jonah Goldberg, did once give a good piece of advice regarding humorless politicians – Beware of them; they are often dictators/tyrants in-waiting.

One joke about Puerto Rico thus sheds revealing light on the important dyad of humility and pride.  And upon those two opposites the future of Puerto Rico herself depends.

The island is one of a handful of far-flung island territories of the US that remain in a subordinate status to full-fledged States.  The others are American Samoa, Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, and the US Virgin Islands (‘Territories of the United States’, wikipedia.org).  Promises of Puerto Rican Statehood surface from time-to-time during federal elections, typically from Left-leaning politicians, as a way to increase their share of Spanish votes.  This is unfortunately her main value for the States:  a political football to throw around to drive up voter turnout.

Puerto Ricans deserve better.  They should be able to look ahead to a future which is not clouded by a vague, uncertain status in a union that rarely ever acknowledges their existence.

This is where pride and humility come into play.  It is pride that keeps the States from turning loose of territories like Puerto Rico, Samoa, etc.  ‘We have become the hegemon of the world, and we must remain in that position at all costs,’ say the expansionist hawks.  To grant independence to US territories would be a betrayal of American greatness for these folks because it would mean a diminution of American influence in the world.

But such global influence and control come at a high cost, a cost that more and more people in the States are unwilling to pay:

‘What is most striking is that Zakaria largely misses the cause of the resurgence of an “America First” ideology: a recognition of the costs of empire. While some members of the America First movement of the 1930s and its later iterations were motivated by bigotry, most were animated by a desire to preserve liberal domestic order and freedom of maneuver on the global stage.

‘On the domestic front, the America Firsters, informed by the antecedents of the 19th-century populist movements, believed that dramatic increases in military spending benefited the few at the expense of the many. They similarly recognized, informed by their experience during the Great War, that global power came at the cost of civil liberties in the form of the Sedition Act, increased policing power, and violent private mobs. Lastly, they believed that entry into the Great War and the potential signing of the Versailles Treaty hooked their country to the imperial desires of the Old World. The total costs were just too much to bear for a country that saw itself as a republican nation set apart from the bickering powers of Europe.

‘None of these issues have been or can be resolved, as they are persistent tradeoffs at the core of the country’s activist foreign policy. “Isolationism” is ever-present because U.S. foreign policy relies on the resources of the American people, through the shedding of their blood and the expropriation of their treasure. As in the past, their reluctance provides policymakers feedback on their assessment whether the game is worth the candle, and whether they are willing to pay the costs.

‘If the United States is to maneuver through this period of global turmoil with its institutions intact and some measure of global influence, its leadership class needs to adapt the nation’s foreign policy aims in light of domestic constraints and recognize the limits of its own power’ (Brandan Buck, ‘America Was Never Isolationist’, theamericanconservative.com).

Being a global empire is too costly, in a number of ways.  The US ruling class need to recognize that and make significant policy changes that correspond to that recognition.  Releasing territories that have no chance of attaining Statehood is a good place to begin.

Imperialist (Yankee) pride will desire to hang on to Puerto Rico.  Localist (Southern) humility, which puts the well-being of actual people in the States and elsewhere in the world ahead of ideological dreams and fantasies, which desires to ‘lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and honesty’ (St Paul’s First Letter to Timothy 2:2), will let her go.

And not just her, but Hawai’i and Alaska, too.  Hawai’i in particular has seen a strong resurgence of interest in becoming an independent island-country again, as the US-backed overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani has been recognized even by the US federal government as an unlawful act (Christine Hitt, ‘While US celebrates its independence, Hawaiians still wait for theirs’, sfgate.com).

As we narrow our focus back upon the Lower 48 States here in North America, we will have a better opportunity to improve conditions for the peoples of the States, rather than squandering money and energy on fighting foreign wars, maintaining outposts in far-away places, doling out foreign aid (bribes), interfering in the elections of Bolivia, Thailand, Georgia, and other countries, etc.

And the people of Puerto Rico, mostly invisible to the US, but who are very well-known to the saints, will be able to go forward with a clear goal:  not to be sublimated more deeply into the Global American Imperium but rather (if they are wise) to be conformed to the image of the wonderful saint for whom their island was originally named by Christopher Columbus – St John the Baptist (San Juan Bautista; the capital city of San Juan retains his name.  ‘Puerto Rican History’, discoverpuertorico.com) –

‘The memory of the just is celebrated with hymns of praise, but the Lord’s testimony is enough for thee, O Forerunner, for thou wast shown to be more wonderful than the Prophets, since thou wast granted to baptize in the running waters Him whom thou didst proclaim. Then having endured great suffering for the Truth, thou didst rejoice to bring, even to those in hades, the good tidings that God Who had appeared in the flesh takes away the sin of the world, and grants us the great mercy’ (‘Synaxarion of the Synaxis of the Honorable Forerunner and Baptist John’, johnsanidopoulos.com).