Friday, July 05, 2019
Happy Independence...
And independence day.
Independence is a good thing. A child is dependent. A child forfeits freedom and gains subsistence. This circumstance should not be the same for a sane adult. Forfeiting freedom is stupid, doing so for the sake of mere subsistence is even stupider. Any animal can sit in its cage for the luxury of having the spoils of a hunt delivered to it in a little dish each day by the zookeeper.
As I had noted in previous writings, the left and its many propaganda arms has successfully made debatable issues out of what used to be taken for granted as obvious fact. I’m not sure if this is a reflection of stealth cunning on their part or plummeting intelligence on the part of soon to be captives. None the less, July 4th has now become a period for debating whether or not America is great and whether or not the great personalities of history should be honored for what they did best.
On this current American birthday, the concept of American greatness is widly being called into question. The naysayers are primarily the usual cabal of pseudo-intellectual talking heads, spoiled and clueless college drones, and the perpetually pissed street rabble.
By any sane and objective measure, America is a great country. Adding the usual caveats that it has blemishes in its past is pathetic. Have you ever wished someone a “Happy Birthday,” told them they were great, and then reminded them that there are numerous bad things in their past that they should perennially be reminded of?
Among the usual list of stupid gripes leveled at American history is the pervasive, overused, and utterly boring chastisement over “racism” and, of course, slavery. We’re supposed to cringe at the horror of an 18th/19th century landlord owning slaves (Thomas Jefferson) regardless of his eloquent and brilliant participation in creating a new and unique dynamo of human endeavor. Mohammad owned slaves (try wrapping your PC polemic around that), Gandhi beat his wife, and Martin Luther King was a serial philanderer. Try reminding people on Martin Luther King’s birthday that “maybe he wasn’t so great.”
Objectively, slavery is definitely a very bad thing but, horror of horrors, I’m not going to get all that worked up about it. I can probably trace my own lineage to some mistreatments and injustices but I’d be wasting my time and energy doing so. Maybe it’s the time frame. Jim crow is fairly recent history (though most Americas today were never part of it). Do we judge an injustice by how recent it was? In that case we can write the holocaust off as it recedes into time or, we can acknowledge it as a good lesson on what not to ever do again...while still liking BMWs and German beer? Anyone who has traveled in Bavaria knows that Germany is a great country.
Is America great? If diverse, dynamic, creative, accomplished, successful, adaptable, inspiring, and FREE is great than, yes, America is great(!)— unquestionably. If your standard is that America should be more like Lichtenstein and Monaco, maybe less so but, that’s no way to appraise the greatness of a nation.
On this American birthday public discourse is poisoned by the usual creeps that drag civilization downward. They typically speak in moral terms but morality is the last thing that motivates them. It’s beyond ironic that those who forever rally the mob with cries of racism and slavery be so clearly dedicated to enslaving a nations citizens to the political masters of statism.
True greatness is historically rare. This Independence day, stay independent and know greatness when you have the good fortune to be a part of it.
