I don't know why it needs to be said but
I'm going to say it anyway. It is a big deal that America is turning 250 this
year.
Think about it. (I know most people don't
and I'm going to deal with them.) How many countries 250 years after they came
into formal existence are still around in basically the same form? Siam,
Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire? No longer around. Most of the countries
that are still around from that period, they sure as hell don't have the same
form of government: France and Italy doesn't have a king, China doesn't have an
emperor, there isn't a sultan in Egypt. And the Soviet Union didn't survive the
twentieth century. (Russia has changed a lot and not at all in two hundred
fifty years.)
Basically the same form of government
exists that started in 1789. I'm not talking about it working perfectly or as
it should, I mean its still here. Many of the countries that are not Western
are frequently unstable, and let's not talk about colonialism or intervention
by the West because there's an expiration date. At a certain point the reason
that governments in Africa keep falling apart can't be blamed on colonialism
and I don't think we should be thrilled at the 'stability' of Saudi Arabia or
North Korea.
America still functions. It may not be the
ideal country that we sing about or write about in so many books but there's a
reason that there are so many people risking their lives to come here,
illegally or otherwise. (Perhaps when refugees come to this country they should
do exit interviews. "Reason for leaving Venezuela?" might have some
enlightening things to say to those who would have voted for Hugo Chavez.)
And yet this entire 250th
anniversary celebration is not getting the attention or cheers it should, and
that is overwhelmingly coming from the same people: those who are too rich, too
educated, and have too much time on their hands. I admit to being among group
three, I don't think I'm in group 2 and I sure as hell am not in group 1. So
I'd like to believe my opinion might count for something.
Now the majority of those people will tell
you its because of who is President that they have 'issues' with
patriotism. Let me assure you like
almost everything else in the last decade Trump is just an excuse, their latest
in a seemingly endless line of them.
I've seen a lot of them firsthand. They
were on display during W's administration when they argued that patriotism was
being used to do horrible things in their name (back then those people were
firm believers in the Constitution and everything it stood for). Before that
the Chomsky's and Zinn's and Vidal's of the world were arguing about the 'myths
of American exceptionalism' and making a lot of money and prestige about how
the country had no real value. Before that they mocked the idea of Reagan and his
believe of America as a shining city on a hill.
And that's just in my lifetime.
Ever since the time of abolition – not long
after our country was founded – there have always been a group of wealthy,
educated and overwhelmingly white people who spend their time and energy
arguing that the country they live in has no value in it and that the people
who believe in it are by far the biggest suckers of all. Many of their
colleagues, to be clear, spent their time in politics trying to end slavery,
trying to bring about women's suffrage, trying to bring about rights for the
working man, battling for civil rights and trying to push America forward. And
at every stage you could find people further to the left who argued that those
people were wasting their time and the best thing to do was burn the whole
country down and…well, they never got that far as to what the next step was.
The AOC's and the Nikole Hannah Jones and
so many of the other 'thinkers' of today who write for publications like The
New Yorker or Harper's or if you want to go further left, The
Nation or Jacobin, going out of their way to write that the American
dream is for suckers. Its one of those deep ironies that the people for whom
America has certainly worked out for the best for feel free to write to other
like minded people to say that every institution has failed the less fortunate.
Personally I would love to be in a business where you could write a few
thousand words every month on how late-stage capitalism has failed and draw
$10,000 an article. It seems quite lucrative.
Perhaps these people are bitter about the
fact that the masses, who work two jobs or are trying to send their kids
through college, are too busy trying to pay the bills to overthrow the system
and put them in charge. Because I hate to tell them this but spending your time
and energy concerned about just how badly America has failed everybody is the
kind of thing that only the wealthy and privileged can spend time doing.
You may claim to speak for the 99 percent but at worst you're in the top five
percent. Rich people can afford to spend time worrying about the
problems of society – and more importantly are among the few who can do things
to fix them. That you seem to spend so much of your time only doing the latter
– and more importantly looking down on the people who hold dear to the
institutions you despise – is a contrast the left hasn't realize in two hundred
years and I don't expect them to learn it now.
But the thing is as someone who has studied
history – something I'm pretty sure most of these latter day leftist have only
seen on TikTok at best – I take a longer view and a different one. And that's
why I'd like to discuss certain parts of the document those 'dead white men'
the left so scornfully refers to as the founders of our country wrote. Because
I'm pretty sure they haven't read it themselves and if they did, they were only
looking for their names.
First of all, let's remember that thing
that the left always forgets: time and place. 250 years ago, there was no
running water, no air conditioning, no indoor plumbing, no antibiotics, no way
of preserving food, no electric lights and the only way to get from a town
(calling it a city would be ridiculous) such as Boston to Philadelphia was on
horseback. All of those who look down on the Founders and say they could have
come up with something better need to be remind that to a person, they think
it’s a hardship to have no wi-fi for five minutes.
Now to be clear, yes these were a bunch of
white men. But make no mistake: they didn't have the benefit of hindsight the
left always chooses to use. Many of them were not comfortable with the idea of
armed combat against what was the greatest force on earth in 1776. For all of
their anger they weren't idiots. They were in the midst of plotting a
revolution. A revolution in which the enemy had the biggest navy and biggest
army in the known world. Many of them had seen what they could do twenty years
earlier in the French & Indian War.
And yes they knew that their actions were absolutely going to send many
young men to die.
They also knew the consequences if they
failed. If they lost, they would be executed for treason and brought back to
Britain to hang if they were lucky. And no one was even clear what would
happen if they succeeded. There was not a model democratic state to use
as an example before them and they didn't have a lot of examples ahead of them.
If they failed, their deaths as well as those of their families were certain
and just as important America would continue to be the subject of the British
crown, possibly forever. Certainly no one would be lining up to do it for a
very long time.
And this involved trying to unite thirteen
colonies whose citizens didn't like each other and who the only thing they all
had in common was they were on the same continent. That was meaningless: European conflicts had
gone on for centuries before that. Trying to get 'all thirteen clocks to chime
at the same time' as Ben Franklin put it was not going to be a small
accomplishment, and after that they were going to have to find a way to unite
hundreds, if not thousands of small militias together to form an army and a
navy to fight, again, an Empire that was going to stop them. That's a real
revolution, not a bunch of protestors in a street.
So eventually those men made a Declaration
of Independence. And they had to spend a lot of time and energy coming up with
the right words to say to George III and more importantly, a message that would
manage to unite thirteen colonies. This was a deadline in a near literal sense
and I'm astonished under all of these conditions they came up with exactly the
right thing to say.
And I'd like to deal with what is deservedly
the most quoted line of that Declaration, something that in 250 years despite being
more educated and learning from all the trial and error in our history none of
these incredibly educated men and women have managed to top:
We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit
of happiness.
As Aaron Sorkin says in The West Wing: "Strangely
enough, this was the first time it had occurred to anyone to write this down." So perhaps its best not to think of this so
much as gospel from up high but a rough draft for future generations.
The left is a big believer in deconstruction.
So let's break this down, section by section:
We hold these truths to be self-evident
To be clear in all the thousands of years
of civilization previous – which the Founders had all studied and I doubt the
naysayers today have – no one had ever said that they were.
That all men are created equal.
No this wasn't about the patriarchy or about
white men. It was a direct line at King George III. They were telling the King
of England, who ruled over not only their country but 2/3 of the world, that
his subjects were his equal. Remember all those people who went to 'No Kings
protests" and thought they were being brave?" These guys were going
further to an actual king. Back then if you said that kind of thing
Kings had a habit of locking you up without a trial. (Due process was still in
its foundational stage as well.)
They were saying that these men who lived their
lives in another country were the equal of someone of royal birth. The British didn't see it that way, to put it
mildly. That line alone was enough to be
a charge of treason and they all knew it.
That they are endowed by their creator.
This line is somewhat misunderstood by the
religious right. Like the previous one it has more to do with a swing at the
man who was the head of the Church of England and who had his power in part by
'divine right'. To say that God gave the same rights to men like Jefferson and
Ben Franklin would have been considered heresy in some parts of England. They
might not have burned at the stake if things had gone south, but only because
the previous line meant they'd have been hanged first.
Now let's get to those unalienable rights
because I'm pretty sure its those that the deep thinkers on the left absolutely
get wrong or take for granted. Specifically let's look at them in America
today.
Life.
Relatively speaking America's a pretty safe
country. I'm aware there's something of a breakdown depending on race, gender
and sexual preference, but I have to tell you even by that standard, in far
more countries then you think, that's far less of a guarantee than the United
States.
Because in a lot of countries – far more
than the left will ever acknowledge – living at all is far from safe. And in many cases the government is actively
working to make sure the life within the borders of their country is not safe,
whether it comes to civil or religious fighting within the country or wars with
neighboring countries that will almost certainly lead to the average citizen
dying when they go out on the street or even if they stay in their homes. Say
what you will about America – and the left will say a lot – but we don't have
to listen to the news every night to know if roving militias are roaming the
street or whether another countries may bomb our homes. That's one of the main reasons so many people
are risking their lives to get here.
Liberty
I realize we take so many of the things in
the first amendment for granted but again its worth pointing out then in far
too many countries in the world, those freedoms are not only guaranteed but
trying to express what we take for granted could at best get you thrown into
prison. Actual prison.
These freedoms include the right to protest
and dissent, which the right is always angry about and the left seems to think
is the only good thing about America. They always forget that in many of the
countries around the world – including all of the one's that they claim are the
victims of 'Western imperialism' – people are jailed or killed for doing
much milder things then they do on a nearly daily basis with the government's
blessing. So don't tell me that being
censored on social media or being unable to tell a joke that offends certain
people is a sign that America is a dictatorship. There are far too many
examples of what actual dictatorships are for me to hold up.
The pursuit of happiness.
Again I think we need to pay attention to
the word 'pursuit' because that's really the critical one. In America there are
far less restrictions on your pursuing your own bliss then there the
overwhelming majority of countries on Earth today. In most of them there so concerned
with preserving the first two that the third rarely, if ever, is a consideration
for them.
And again the Founders used the right word.
You can 'pursue' happiness. That's not the same thing as a guarantee. A
certainty. The left is very big on changing the meaning of words to things they
didn't mean. It's their superpower.
But in the original text the Founders were
clear. People can pursue happiness in whichever form, whether it be
financial, political or any other definition. Yes they were talking about
primarily white men but that part was more revolutionary then you think
because, again, in 1776 you did every at the pleasure of a man across
the ocean.
A
small part of this revolution was because they felt this right was being
impugned. The people in Philadelphia wanted to pursue their happiness without
having to ask the permission of the King to do so. In America today you can do
that without having to ask anyone's permission and we'll basically let you.
I focused on those last three in particular
because in countries in the Middle East, Africa, South America and a lot of
places in Asia, you're lucky if you can manage your existed with one out
of three. Trust me when I tell you women
in Saudi Arabia and members of the LGBTQ+ in Yemen are not focused on breaking
glass ceilings or being able to get jobs in the film industry.
I don't think America's a perfect country
and we can debate the things that its done wrong. That's a large part of the
freedom this country has, by the way. We can engage in debate about these
things. And I will admit that based on
race, gender and sexual preference it can feel less free to many of its citizens.
But the fact that so many people on the
left – and this is something that is basically only something they do – spend so
much time and energy essentially arguing that all of the rights that take for
granted don't exist, that they owe nothing to the country that
gives them to that and think the ones who think has values are suckers and
losers, who actually seem disappointed
that America has lasted as long as it has, well, I have another modest
proposal.
When in the course of humans events you produce
document that expresses what you believe all the people are entitled too in clear,
concise language, when you are willing to assemble an army, rather than just
protestors, to fight for them, when you are ready to declare your independence
from this country rather than just angrily demand it do what you tell you and
actually pledge your life, liberty and your sacred honor to fight for it, then
I'll take you seriously.
In the meantime happy 250th
birthday America. Ignore the haters. The founders would be proud you made it
this far. And so am I.
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