I don’t celebrate the Fourth of July. Celebrating the Revolution is like celebrating the First World War — needless butchery. The Stamp Act was nothing compared to the way our current governments — federal, state, county, city — bleed us today. And quartering redcoats in private homes? It was rare, sporadic and — something you never hear — compensated.
We suffered 25,000 to 30,000 deaths during eight years of war, and our French allies lost 2,000 to 5,000. The Brits lost 10,000 to 12,000 regulars and 7,000 to 8,000 Hessians. And don’t forget: 3,000 American loyalists died fighting for Britain. Another 60,000 to 100,000 fled the colonies to avoid tar-and-feathering, property seizure, and other nastiness we’d prefer to forget. Canada got complete self-government in 1867, without a single casualty.
Most of our wars are incomprehensible. In 1812, did we really think we were going to invade Canada and be greeted as liberators? The Mexican-American War is the only war that makes sense. The country got bigger, but we are now giving it away to strangers.
The Civil War was utterly senseless; I blame my hot-headed Confederate ancestors. The Spanish-American War was nuts. We got lumbered with an empire but had the good sense to hive off the Philippines after 48 years. We’re still stuck with Puerto Rico.
The First World War? Idiotic. And the second? Why did we pick egg rolls over sukiyaki and goad the Japanese into Pearl Harbor? And are we proud of helping Uncle Joe occupy 10 European capitals? And what was in it for us in Korea that was worth 34,000 KIA, 3,000 other deaths, 100,000 wounded, and 8,000 MIA?
We inherited the Vietnam War from the French and spent eight years losing it. Since then, it’s been endless anti-Muslim wars against countries that are no threat to us — every one a failure. So, the Revolution was only the first of many dubious wars. All the hot dogs you eat won’t change a thing.
When the country was young and full of white people, maybe whooping up Revolution made some kind of sense. But today, how could Mexicans or Chinese or Somalis or the 30,000 Bhutanese who live here possibly care about what Washington or Greene or Gates did? How many have even heard of Greene or Gates?
What’s worse about celebrating the Fourth is that the Founders won but didn’t get what they wanted: “to . . . secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” They wanted a white nation and could never have imagined today’s mishmash.
Wars should be fought for the nation, and by that, I mean the white nation the Founders thought they were building. I can promise you that the Americans — almost all of them white — who died on San Juan Hill or at Chateau-Thierry or at Guadalcanal didn’t die so we could hand over their country to Haitians, Indians, and Guatemalans.
In a poll by the National Opinion Research Center in September 1943, “90 percent of the American people stated that they would rather lose the war than give full equality to the American Negroes.” [Cheryl Lynn Greenberg, Troubling the Waters: Black-Jewish Relations in the American Century, p. 81.] Losing to Japan and Germany would be better than a black man marrying your daughter.
And so, yes, we still have the same Constitution, branches of government, flag (with more stars), and anthem, but we aren’t the same nation. Not only will the founding stock soon be a minority, we’re the villains of American history, and it’s everyone else who made it great if, in fact, it ever was.
So that’s why the Fourth, especially small-town parades full of earnest white people, makes me so sad. Is it wrong to say that the United States is like a corpse being eaten by maggots; and that liberals are rooting for the maggots while conservatives are rooting for the corpse?
Do the people who sing the anthem, recite the pledge, and who love Donald Trump really think he’ll bring “a new golden age”? It’s touching if they do. But Mr. Trump doesn’t realize that he could make America great again only if he makes it white again.
It’s healthy for a people to celebrate sovereignty, to take pride in its symbols, to honor national heroes, to pledge love of country. What most whites don’t consider is that although we still live under the government that grew out of the Spirit of ’76, the United States is no longer a country for us, and that it is heresy even to think we should have a country. I may not live to see it, but I hope my children will someday celebrate a true and enduring Independence Day.
And so, as I do every year, I don’t wish you a happy Fourth of July; I wish you a thoughtful one.
The post Why I Don’t Celebrate Independence Day — Yet appeared first on American Renaissance.
American Renaissance
