The Fourth OF July - A Day Of Patriotism And Old Glory Despite Progressive Hysteria

America has always been a patriotic country, one proud of its heritage, principles, ambition, opportunity, and enterprise.  Ronald Reagan expressed this sentiment best:

I’ve spoken of the shining city all my political life, but I don’t know if I ever quite communicated what I saw when I said it. But in my mind it was a tall proud city built on rocks stronger than oceans, wind-swept, God-blessed, and teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace; a city with free ports that hummed with commerce and creativity. And if there had to be city walls, the walls had doors and the doors were open to anyone with the will and the heart to get here. That’s how I saw it and see it still

In the post-WWII period, America was universally respected and admired for its collective courage, determination, and will.  Not only was tribute paid to the American military, to the civilian leaders who had quickly mobilized industry and managed the economy in difficult times, and to the American people who had joined the war effort on the home front without complaint or cavil.

Americans felt rightly proud of themselves.  They had given their lives to defeat Hitler and his genocidal, arrogant, and mad effort at world domination, and had fought back against the Japanese after Pearl Harbor with an absolute will to annihilate the enemy.

The Fourth of July was a celebration of American victory, but also a loud cheer for the greatness of America itself.  The world was a better place after  George Washington and his colonial armies defeated the British and the Founding Fathers declared independence.  From 1776 until 1945 the history of the United States was one of unparalleled economic growth, social ambition and diversity, and military strength.  

Commitment if not devotion to the principles of democracy and private enterprise never wavered and America was indeed exceptional.  Not only did the national economy recover quickly, but thanks to American aid and support, both Germany and Japan were helped back on their feet.

Freedom was not just a vague concept, a given right, part of an American’s legacy.  It was a responsibility, and there was always the danger of falling from freedom to ‘abject slavery’.  Adams and others, particularly Jefferson who was influenced by John Locke, believed that freedom and ‘the pursuit of happiness’ had little to do with personal satisfaction or venal interests.  They were the foundation for civic liberty and justice to be nurtured and cared for.

This nurture and care was everyone’s responsibility.  If freedom, justice, and fairness were to be guaranteed for all Americans, then each American had a duty to promote them, secure them, and protect them:

I know of no safe depositor of the ultimate powers of a society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them, but to inform their discretion by education.  This is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power (Thomas Jefferson).

The once-celebrated principles of the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights have become eroded by political and social divisions.  The polity of the nation has fractured.  The individualism that Jefferson envisaged – individual enterprise within the context of community and civic responsibility – has been replaced by a more venal and selfish one.  Alexander Hamilton would be shocked by the radical populism that characterizes the United States today. He deeply suspected Jefferson’s ‘will of the people’ and argued strongly for a buffer of elite, intelligent, and insightful men against it.

Today freedom, justice, the pursuit of liberty and happiness, fairness, equality – all 18th Century principles enshrined in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution – have been co-opted and misused.  Little thought is given to what they really meant or mean.  The words alone are enough when couched in the call to patriotic duty.  The words to Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, and Hamilton were not empty but vital:

The sum of all is, if we would most truly enjoy the gift of Heaven, let us become a virtuous people; then shall we both deserve and enjoy it.  While, on the other hand, if we are universally vicious and debauched in our manners, though the form of our Constitution carries the face of the most exalted freedom, we shall in reality be the most abject slaves (Samuel Adams).

The chaotic America of 2023 is a divided country, acrid, contentious, and bitter.  Patriotism, say the Left, is a sacrilege – honoring a country responsible for the enslavement of millions and the discrimination of millions more; a country of adventurism, greed, and white hegemony; a country of self-importance, righteousness, and international arrogance is not only ignorant but counter-revolutionary.  The country and its outmoded, irrelevant principles must be reformed and made into a new, more socially just and equitable place, and patriotism for the past is obstructionist and wrong.

America, they insist is a corrupt, racist nation; a white supremacist colony, a brutal, oppressive regime of greed, social indifference, and ingrained, systemic prejudice.  There can be no greatness here as long as the black man is condemned to perpetually slavery, social and sexual minorities are marginalized, and the poor robbed of their dignity. America, they say, is a shameful, pitiful example of the worst that humanity has to offer.  This is The Year Zero shout progressives who, echoing Pol Pot, the Khmer dictator who forced millions into involuntary servitude to his Maoist state in a radical effort to erase the past and create a new, better, communitarian world.   America deserves no less. 

So-called civil liberties are nothing  more than vain fantasies perpetuated by a corrosive elite.  Our so-called cultural heritage, the legacy of Jefferson and Hamilton, the philosophy of the Enlightenment, is only a reminder of our slave-owning, murderous, incivility and must be erased.

America is a shameless, pitiful giant, aimless, soulless, and morally irrelevant.

Yet for the millions waiting on America’s southern border, America is no such thing; and if borders were universally opened, tens of millions more would clamor to get in.  To those who have suffered from civil war, autocratic rule, despotic family dictatorship, predatory, uncontrolled exploitation of resources, imprisonment, torture, and exile, America’s troubles are inventions, imagined threats to give credibility to arrogant posturing and arrogation of moral authority.  

America has become a place of deliberate nightmares.  To those waiting on the border America still is, more than ever, the land of opportunity.  Racism, misogyny, and homophobia are little more than political constructs designed to keep parties in power, to sow fear and doubt, and to deter real economic progress.  

They laugh at the January 6th ‘revolution’.  No one mouthing that fantasy has ever lived through the brutal civil wars of El Salvador, Nicaragua, Angola, Ethiopia and a hundred more countries of incoherent rule and devastating conflict.  They laugh at cries of oppression and deprivation of civil rights when democracy in their countries means little more than rigged elections and a political slogan or two.  They laugh at howls of predatory capitalism when rulers in their countries have deprived them of any wealth and all opportunity.

The new immigrants are the ones whose lawns are festooned with American flags, who march in parades, who volunteer for military service, who work hard and expect no support from the government.  They are the new American patriots while older Americans carp and whine and whinge over nothing.

The Fourth of July has become ironically an immigrant’s holiday – an unrestrained ‘thank you’ for the privilege of citizenship, residence, and the chance to work.  The rest of America barbecues, bitches, and bites at American nastiness.  Shame on you!