OK, it’s patriot time; let’s unfurl the flags and get out the trumpets. Two-hundred fifty years and all that, and I’ll begin with my favorite American, Thomas Jefferson. Did he really believe that all men are created equal? Being the gentleman that he was, of course he would say so, but as you and I know, some are created more equal than others. Some have better brains, others have better physiques, there are even those who have more moola to begin with. My, my, the latter gets people very angry, so we won’t mention it any more.
A classic, if syrupy, definition of America is that she’s a creed, an idea, rather than a people. Many so-called thinkers support this theory, but I tend to disagree. I call it a saccharine attitude that ignores the facts—namely, that the white Europeans that emigrated west from a white Europe eventually became the Americans in America. Period. Mind you, it wasn’t easy. After being unreasonably taxed but not heard back in London by the Brits, white men decided that “We the people” meant men, not women, with property, schooling, and money were to lead the new country. Oh yes, there was something else. These white men were unwilling to bow down before some authoritarian figure like a king. Nor were they willing to subordinate themselves to some wig-wearing buffoons of dubious sexuality. They defied the authoritarian Brits who looked down upon them, and, well, you know the rest.
As a child I first learned about America as a country inhabited by northern Europeans, Anglo-Saxons, Germans, and Scandinavians who revolted against the Brits and afterwards massacred the indigenous Indians. Back then, historians were not obliged to include blacks in every other sentence they wrote, so they didn’t figure much until America became a proper country. But what stuck out even back then, when I was learning about America as a child, were the moral and social values of the American leaders: Washington, Franklin, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Adams. My favorite general was Benedict Arnold—and still is—and I cheered when I read about Yorktown and Cornwallis’s surrender.
Eighty and some years later I laugh out loud when some clown publishes a total fiction about 1619, a lie so outrageous it belongs to the pantheon of historical falsehoods and untruths. Never mind. Displacing history by ideology is nothing new. Dictators have been doing it since time immemorial, but what drives these leftists crazy today is that the Founding Fathers were as close to perfect humans as it is possible to be. No wonder they had to invent something outrageously false to counter them.
There’s something else that I find very important: John Jay, America’s first Supreme Court Justice, wrote that Americans are one united people descended from the same ancestors and speaking the same language—in other words, white people speaking English who wished to be free of monarchy and foreigners. Nothing about immigrants or the country being an idea or a creed. The Founders wished for a country made up of people like themselves, “punto basta,” as they say in Italy. As previously noted, the nation was conceived by freedom-loving people who were not about to become subjects to a foreign king and pay taxes to a foreign power.
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America today is called a nation of immigrants because the country was so large it had to welcome foreigners. Thomas Jefferson bought millions of acres from France, doubling the country’s size, then James Polk began a war with some Mexicans and Texas and California followed as states. All this has made America what she is today, a nation whose idea of liberty was first imagined in France and Britain by people like Rousseau, Voltaire, Diderot, Thomas Paine, and John Wilkes. What also helped was the fact the Brits back then were busy fighting the French and the Spanish around Gibraltar, which tied down redcoat power. What makes one wonder is the utter authoritarianism practiced by the Brits, believing they could rule the world by force.
Which brings me to today’s America. Uncle Sam at times gives the same impression of spreading himself out too far, although he’s never been so blatant as the Brits two and one half centuries ago. Where has the good uncle gone wrong? I’d say he’s allowed too much freedom, however contradictory this sounds. Freedom to purposely lie by the news media for political purposes is a case in point. It has weakened and split the nation. Two mendacious journalists brought down the great president Richard Nixon, and lying by the lefty media has become standard. Race in America is also inversely proportional to mendacity. Great Americans like Clarence Thomas and Thomas Sowell have been depicted as Uncle Toms, whereas race hustlers like Al Sharpton are depicted as heroes. Resisting the siren song of victimhood has thus not found many black adherents.
Too much freedom has allowed a drug culture to flourish and ruin cities and lives. Hollywood needs to be reined in, as does citizenship. The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 must be replaced with one that avoids dependence on public handouts. Thanks to media doctoring, the public has turned against ICE and is on the side of violent criminals. Denaturalization for foreign-born criminals is a must. Otherwise it is still a hell of a country 250 years young.
