Last week most of America was commemorating the 50th anniversary of the first landing of men on the moon. The constantly energetic former lunar visitor Buzz Aldrin was interviewed non-stop on the news channels and the moon landing was also the theme of my own patriotic Wednesday column.

When the actual day of observance was upon us, I was shocked, then disappointed to learn there are people among us who believe the US moon landing shouldn’t be celebrated at all. Assorted people somehow equate our shared pride and patriotism with sexism, racism, colonialism and just about any other derogatory word ending in ‘ism.’

This is how the New York Times reminisced about landing men on the moon; “America may have put the first man on the moon, but the Soviet Union sent the first woman, the first Asian man, and the first black man into orbit — all years before the U.S. would follow suit.” Those are all factual statements, but c’mon, what a wet blanket of a comment. And, just for the record the Soviet Union, our Cold War enemy no longer exists.

The Washington Post, not to be outdone by the Times’ effort to rain on our parade wrote; “The culture that put men on the moon was intense, fun, family-unfriendly, and mostly white and male.” Again, what’s with the bashing of our home country? If the new anti-America fad is going to be hyper-critical comparing past activities to the standards of today, we should also mention that NASA allowed smoking in the control room – oh my! Where’s my fainting couch?

At first, when I heard the occasional anti-American comment, I would just shake my head and move on. Now it is happening so frequently, it is tough not to comment. I don’t know where this rationale got its start, but it needs to stop soon because it’s a dangerous slippery slope and plenty of people are getting sick of it. These counter-culture feelings have been slowly creeping along and it has to end before it becomes main-stream, acceptable thinking. Patriotism is not racism.

Here’s another recent crazy but true example; the University of Colorado published a guide to on-campus language usage which has America and American on its list of offensive words to avoid. The guide tells us using the word American to describe a person from the US assumes “the United States as the dominant American country.” Let’s see, there are North, South, and Central America – of those three which country is the most dominant today? Even the New York Times chose to use America when they slandered our “racist” space program achievements. We probably shouldn’t take the Colorado list of offensive words too seriously though, because it also includes the phrase “hip, hip, hooray.”

Someone should remind the academia in Colorado of our First Amendment right to the freedom of speech. And while on the topic of free speech, the huge American corporation, Google, has decided it would rather work for China by developing a communist-friendly search engine instead of earning money from the US Department of Defense. Google’s efforts in China are being used to filter internet search results preventing billions of people from viewing things from free market countries. Make no mistake, China is preparing for a war with the US. It may or might not be a shooting war, it could only be a war of economics, but either way, Google is aiding and profiting from a country which is not friendly to our way of life.

And one last case in point is the recent case of the former NFL kneeling quarterback who convinced shoemaker Nike the Betsy Ross 13 star flag is a racist symbol. How the heck did that flag’s transformation happen in the few short years after the Betsy Ross flag was prominently displayed at President Obama’s second inauguration ceremony?

In just weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the industries of America stopped production of their normal consumer items and began churning out vital necessities to protect our country. Instead of sewing machines, Singer made pistols. Instead of cars, General Motors built airplanes and tanks. Instead of eating, American people rationed their sugar, meat, and flour. Using today’s standards to measure our grandparents’ actions make me wonder if the US citizens and corporations were being unfairly racist toward the Germans and Japanese?

If World War Two were juxtaposed into our current calendar, I’d like to think we could still pull off the same victory we achieved 75 years ago. But with today’s way of thinking by some people and the media, the situation might be in doubt. If patriotism was racism back then, our country certainly had a lot of racists of all colors, religions, and nationalities working well together for a common cause.