Years ago, I stopped celebrating July 4th. Much of that decision was predicated on my feelings toward the American Empire. As I watched the United States descend into an unrecognizable morass of homosexual marriage, endless wars abroad, transgender insanity, wild racial rioting, and “woke” targeting of anything deemed “White,” I asked myself, what is there to celebrate?
Perhaps I was wrong.
The United States is certainly not the country with which I was raised to venerate. As young boys join a military apparatus that sends them to die in wars overseas for the protection of poppy fields, I watch the very elite classes of American society sneer at the Christian virtues of those same young boys. It is heartbreaking. Furthermore, I am well aware of the historic antagonisms of July 4th as it relates to the South. This is especially true for the ancestral residents of Vicksburg and the brave Southern men who permanently reside within Gettysburg’s soil as Lee’s Army began its retreat.
However, that is not what July 4th is about. July 4th is a celebration of a different America. It is the America that died upon Lincoln’s decision to invade sovereign states. July 4th was an act of defiance by a group of British men – men who would not recognize Lincoln’s interpretation of power. Rather, we know from their very words that the inviolability of a perpetual union is contrary to the intentions of the signers of the Declaration of Independence themselves.
July 4th celebrates the establishment of a declaration of liberty and freedom. That document would be signed by men who represented a voluntary union of independent states – countries – for the sake of a singular cooperative endeavor: secession. They chose to secede from a British Empire that no longer served their national interests. This heritage of self-determination of national values is just as much a part of the Southern cultural fabric as military service, the Southern belle, and Confederate monuments. In many ways, not celebrating July 4th is yet another capitulation of Southern heritage and culture to an ever encroaching lascivious leviathan.
When we choose not to celebrate a holiday that recognizes the eloquent articulation of republican values by one of the South’s native sons, Thomas Jefferson, we fail to appreciate the South’s role in crafting the very ideology that is now being fought in the streets of the United States as I write this piece. Make no mistake – today’s battles between radical Marxists and the masses of Constitutionalists, who are begging for some kind of savior, is really a fight between a foreign ideology of collective collapse versus a Southern philosophy predicated on the God given rights of the individual. Yankees now lament the removal of statues to iconic Southerners, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. But what is really under assault is not simply statues to Southern men. Rather, it is the Southern principles of self-realization and personal sovereignty that are under full assault.
July 4th celebrates the day those Southern principles were codified in a seditious declaration.
The South, with her beautifully fierce independent spirit flowed from Jefferson’s heart to his pen and onto a document that declaratively stated: “…That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”
What could be more Southern than defiantly stating to a governing body that the Southern people will no longer tolerate abuses by a foreign power? Do those words not capture the Southern spirit which now fills the hearts of Southern Nationalists who see the destruction of our beloved Dixie? Does Jefferson’s declaration not summarize the very feelings of the Southern men and women who witness a government led by New York City and Hollywood oligarchs destroy their cultural heritage?
July 4th is not a generically American holiday. The North long since abandoned any claim to the memory of a document such as the Declaration of Independence. They forfeited that right. July 4th is a Southern holiday and it should not be seen in any other light.
My former Constitutionalist-self loved the Americana of the holiday. It was that uniquely American holiday that recognized what I believed at the time to be the greatest gift the world had ever received after Jesus Christ himself: a codification of Individual liberty in a single document. Although I knew the Declaration of Independence was not officially completed and signed on July 4th, 1776 (that would occur on August 2nd), it was the spirit of the holiday itself that appealed to me most. Fifty-six men of good community character signed their own death warrant, should their bid for independence fail on the battlefield. Regardless of your feelings on the American Empire, that was a heroic step. Lucky for them, those good men never occupied cells in the Tower of London.
Those same men would not recognize the United States as it is today. They would not embrace its degeneracy and decadence. They would cringe at the very thought of that which the United States became. But they would embrace the very spirit of the Southern Nationalist.
Virginia’s Thomas Jefferson, as well as all of the other signers of his Declaration of Independence, would understand the hearts of the men and women of Dixie, whom – with every pressure placed upon us by the violence of depraved individuals and a complicit government – sacrifice so much to keep individual liberty alive through our dissident movement.
Celebrate that July 4th. Celebrate a holiday that memorializes the crime of independent thought and personal conscience. Celebrate a holiday that is rooted in the very character of the South herself. Celebrate the Fourth with your friends and family.
God bless Dixie and the men and women who serve her cause.
Now, bring out the fireworks.
The son of a recent Irish immigrant and another with roots to Virginia since 1670. I love both my Irish and Southern Nations with a passion. Florida will always be my country. Dissident support here: Padraig Martin is Dixie on the Rocks (buymeacoffee.com)
Great article Padraig!
Well, were I to concede you were wrong, then I’d have to remain consistent and admit I have been wrong in refusing to celebrate what I consider a day of reflection and mourning. And that very likely will never happen, with all due respect.
Celebration and Mourning are two different – even opposing – forces of course, but I honestly believe we can celebrate “The 4th” in the very act of mourning the loss of its original meaning. Indeed, that form of “celebration” may well be the purest form for a Son of the South, but I digress.
I certainly won’t be flying “Old Glory” today, albeit me and mine will be in attendance at a “celebration” with extended family who still proudly fly the flag of our subjugation and entertain notions that “freeeeedommm!” is the most wonderful thing, especially when it’s imposed upon us at the point of a gun. Not to worry, though; those persons of which I speak are, slowly but surely, coming around to the correct way of thinking.
But anyway, your post put me in mind of a letter penned by Matthew Fontaine Maury to his lifelong friend, William C. Hasbrouck of New York, a short time following his (Maury’s) resignation as an officer in the U.S. Navy. Maury wrote:
MY DEAR FRIEND, Richmond, May12th, 1861
I only saw last night the remarks of the Boston Traveller about Lieutenant Maury’s treachery, his desertion, removing of buoys. It’s all a lie! I resigned and left the Observatory on Saturday the 20th ult. I worked as hard and as faithfully for “UncleSam” up to three o’clock of that day as I ever did, and at three o’clock I turned everything—all the public property and records of the office— regularly over to Lieutenant Whiting, the proper officer in charge. I left in press,’ Nautical Monograph, No.3’—one of the most valuable contributions that I have ever made to navigation; and just as I left it, it is now in course of publication there, though I shall probably not have an opportunity of reading proof, and cannot tell what errors or alterations may appear.
I have lost none of my interest in these enchanting fields of physical research which I have revelled in there for near twenty years. I am here to war, not against science, but against the oppressor, and for my fatherland. As for “thebuoys,” I touched them not! But I am here to defend the right, and will do all and everything to discomfit the enemy that is consistent with civilised and honourable warfare.
A price has been set on my head in Boston. I thank them for the honour; for I do not forget that in other days a price was set upon the heads of the best men of that State, and the cause in which I fight is far more righteous than that which moved those great and good men to take up arms against their mother-country.
Yours most affectionately, M.F. MAURY. (emphasis mine)
The above letter is part and parcel of why this day has annually become a day of mourning for me and mine. There is more to it of course. Much more in point of fact. But that little bit will have to suffice for now.
@T. Morris…
My wife and I had some painful years of mourning to go through, like you, though, nowadays, we are well past that and anxious to get on with what comes next.
Whatever it is, it cannot be worse than this – and probably will be a whole lot more honest.
The North is simply a foreign country. It always has been. Instead of just going their own way, they struggle to convince themselves, and us, that they are the real America, and that we are nothing but their subordinate subjects.
Dear Mr. Owen,
I agree entirely with the spirit of your post (which of course you have stated and re-stated in various and sundry ways for as long as I have been reading and participating in the discussions at ID), but not quite with the letter. There is of course some overlap between the words (and their meanings) “foreign” and “alien,” as there is between many words in common English parlance, so the term “foreign” in your comment is not altogether wrong. I would, however, substitute for it the word “alien,” rendering your sentence, “The North is simply an alien country,…” Which is more correct.
For a best explanation of my (semantic) qualms, see Webster’s 1828 American Dictionary of the English Language. For a simpler one, well, words mean something; they begin to lose their meanings when we begin substituting less exact terminology for their more exact descriptives. Like, e.g., substituting the so called “Federal Government” for the Central or National one.
When President Johnson issued his “Amnesty Proclamation,” he was very explicit in demanding of the recipients of his especial favors loyalty to the national government. This wasn’t by accident; it was for a reason; even he had never been under any delusion that the Confederates had ever been disloyal to the federal government, as I’ve pointed out many times before. E.g., see here:
https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2020/07/01/whose-truths-do-we-hold-to-be-self-evident/#comment-144872
@James…
Yes, The Norths (New England, Mid-Atlantic, The Plains’ States, and the Midwest) are all different countries than Dixie.
And, as such, there is a competition over who defines this country.
it was not that way in the beginning, as you know, because of the 10th amendment, which guarantees the sovereignty, independence, and freedom of each state.
However, because of the gradual obliteration of the 10th amendment, through judicial decisions and submissiveness of the respective state populaces, The Confederate United States became a centralized Federation which forces every element into a bitter competition for it’s heart.
Once the centralization process is refuted, the competition will be significantly pruned back.
My ancestors that fought in the Revolution and their descendants that fought the Yankees fought for the same thing that I fight for today: freedom from a tyrannical government that doesn’t serve the interests of our people.
@Walrus…
Yes, the time is long past overdue to make another fight for the same reasons as the first two were made by my ancestors and yours.
Yes, Irish Floridian, who spent a lot of time up north – my wife and I, too, stopped celebrating the 4th of July, though, not with any malice.
It was just that, celebrating it had increasingly taken on the flavour of a wife celebrating her marriage anniversary to a man who was, at that very moment, our cheating on her with some girl, just as he had in all the previous years.
Cuckoldry has a stench about it that kind of dampens a marital ardour, or, at least, it does so in our house.