Rah, Rah ‘Merika Balderdash – Heritage Foundation Style

On this date – July 4th, 2019 – the Washington Post published an article by then Heritage Foundation President, Mrs. Kay Coles James, extolling the virtues of the Yankee nation affectionately known to us all as ‘Merika. The article begins:

This week, as Americans commemorate Independence Day and the creation of the most free, most prosperous nation on earth, we will inevitably hear from those who say there’s no reason to celebrate a country where not everyone gained their freedom or their equality in 1776.

They will say that a nation stained with the evil of slavery, a nation that once refused women and blacks the right to vote or hold property, isn’t a nation worth lauding.

The thing to take note of in the above quotation is that Mrs. James (unwittingly?) agrees with the Left’s complaints about America’s “sordid” history, she just disagrees with the lunatic Left’s position that America isn’t worth celebrating or “lauding” since, according to Mrs. James and as you shall read below, Americans have corrected our most egregious wrongs, and have finally begun to realize the fullness of our ideals that the Founders set in motion two and a half centuries ago. With “conservatives” like Mrs. James and the rest of the folks at the Heritage Foundation, the question arises, who needs leftists?

Put on the hip waders, boys and girls, ‘cause the bullsh*t is fixing to get deep in Mrs. James’s ‘Merikan History classroom.

Mrs. James continues:

As a woman and as a black person who lived through segregation, I have experienced both the inequality and the opportunity of this nation.

See what I mean? First of all, one look at Mrs. James’s photo reveals to the average person who isn’t “blind as a bat” that she is a mixture of black and White, not merely, as she claims, “a black person.” But of course, mulattos like Mrs. James almost invariably identify with their blackness over their Whiteness because it is in their interest to do so; there’s much to be gained by doing so, in other words. Secondly, as anyone with a healthy amount of common sense and a modicum of historical knowledge knows, desegregation has created more disunity and racial strife in America than it is worth. We’ll return to the inequality she’s experienced as a woman in a bit; in the meantime, let’s see what next Mrs. James has to say:

As a student of history and as someone who works with governments around the world, I know how women and minorities are treated in other societies compared to the United States.

Okay, so here we have an exaggerated account of what this woman says she “knows” about racial and gender inequality around the world based on her historical knowledge, coupled with her status as “someone who works with governments around the world.” This combination of “qualifications” is presumably supposed to give Mrs. James some sort of authority to speak on the matter, and accordingly our ears had best better perk up when she so-speaks. Well, I don’t know about you, but I for one ain’t buying what she’s peddling. What she actually “knows” about these things amounts to very little, is my educated guess. Unless she has spent a significant amount of time (by which I mean decades) living in other countries and interacting with their folk, she has no relative sense of things that gives her any real understanding of how women and minorities are treated elsewhere, nor of whether they are happier for it or not, nor of whether the society itself is more or less stable for it. Indeed, her Western-centric, modern-centric view of the world has blinded her to reality. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid readership:

Because of these experiences, I want to tell you exactly why America is worth celebrating.

Despite their flawed nature as human beings, our Founders laid out principles for forming a nation based on humanity’s highest ideals. Nowhere else on earth had that ever been done before.

Those founding principles have guided this nation and created a framework that allows society to recognize the error of its ways.

The fact is, we abolished slavery. We even fought a war over it. We ultimately recognized women’s and minorities’ right to vote, to own property, and to have the full and equal rights of any other citizen.

Let’s cut in here and point out a few glaring realities. First, this “humanity’s highest ideals” language amounts to the same thing as the “Higher Law” doctrine first espoused by William Seward and the lunatic abolitionists in the years leading up to the WBTS. I am very sure Mrs. James doesn’t understand the connection but, as I iterated above, her own sense of her own historical knowledge and understanding is extremely exaggerated. Second, the WBTS wasn’t fought over slavery, as I’ve been at pains to make clear for years. It was a good pretext for overthrowing the Constitution, but that is not what the war was fought over; what it was fought over was the meddling Yankee’s inability to mind his own damn business and to constantly attempt to impose his sick and twisted puritanical values on his Southern brethren countrymen, in direct violation of the Constitution he was sworn to protect and uphold. And the fact is that “we” did not abolish slavery; we simply traded one form of slavery for another form, and now we’re all slaves to the meddling Yankee and his convoluted thinking. Mrs. James continues:

We have endeavored through our laws and our actions to eradicate the unequal treatment and marginalization of fellow Americans because of their ethnicity, religion, politics, or other characteristics.

These are not things to celebrate, Mrs. James; they are things to mourn. There is no such thing as equality between the sexes, the races, religion or politics, or “other characteristics.” Because there is no such thing as “equality” in these things, this means that “our” “endeavoring through our laws and actions to eradicate” inequality is sociopathic in the extreme. If you think that sociopathic government is a good thing, then I guess it stands to reason you would also think you have cause to celebrate it. As for me and mine, never! (By the way, reckon why Mrs. James didn’t go ahead and spell out what she meant in the above quotation by “other characteristics?”)

Don’t shed your waders too early, boys and girls, this woman’s bullsh*t gets even deeper:

July 4, 1776—and the principles that day epitomized—began the foundation for a nation that would right its own wrongs.

Welp, you can’t say I didn’t forewarn you.

The country’s “wrongs” of which Mrs. James speaks in the above excerpt were not wrongs at all. Hence the scare quotes. The actual fact of the matter is that the principles July 4, 1776 epitomized, in her words, began the foundation of a confederation that would, within a matter of only 87 years time, wrong its best rights and destroy the means enabling its best men to perpetuate free and honest government on this continent. I take her at her word when she says that she is a “student of history,” but she’s not a very observant one if she cannot see that the WBTS destroyed the federal principle, and thereby, and for all intents and purposes, destroyed the Constitution itself. True Patriotism involves, as I’ve said many times before and will again repeat, the maintenance of one’s country’s laws and institutions in vigor and purity, not undermining and systematically destroying them. The Constitution and laws and institutions we currently live and labor under is worlds apart from the founding ideals of our forbears. Between the two sides, the side which shed its blood and sacrificed its best men to maintain the country’s laws and institutions in vigor and purity in 1861-65 was the South. This is why R.L. Dabney rightly observed that our old system of government and her institutions were too good for future generations of Americans.

The unfortunate reality is that we had to grow into our principles. The Founders knew what we aspired to be, but the country wasn’t there yet and even today, we still have a ways to go.

Again, no, ma’am. We didn’t have to grow into our principles, we grew out of them, and in very short order, as was stated above. That’s the unfortunate reality. And I’ll advise once more that no man or woman has a right to project his or her values and/or opinions on a dead generation whose best men are not here to confirm the truth of, or otherwise defend themselves against, the accusation. What you are accusing our founding fathers of above, madam, amounts to a practical libel against those wise men. If you were a true and observant “student of history,” you would know that.

In fact, every Founder admitted in his writings that slavery contradicted the equality principle of the Declaration of Independence.

“Every Founder,” eh? Citations needed! Abe Lincoln’s alter ego and William Henry Seward were not founding fathers, madam. But speaking of the founding fathers on this slavery matter in particular, I think you read too much into what some of them said about the institution of slavery as it related to the “equality principle” of The Declaration. In fact, I know you do. Moreover, you are again foisting your own opinions onto those not here to defend themselves and their integrity against your accusations.

They knew that it would be a journey for us to fully realize our ideals, but they set a course for achieving them, and every generation since has been working to advance them.

Merciful God in Heaven! Please forgive this poor, ignorant woman for she knows not what she does or says. The more she talks the more the mask comes off and her liberal fanaticism comes out in full bloom.

That’s what has made America the unique and wonderful nation that it is.

No; those are some of the things that make her closely resemble lots of nations that came before and after her founding. There is nothing “unique” about a nation ruled by demagogues who, as I believe Alexander Hamilton iterated, “pay an obsequious court to the People, commencing demagogues and ending tyrants.” As for the “wonderful” descriptive, well, I can think of a few things about America I might describe as “wonderful,” namely her historic people, some of her national parks and monuments, the abundance of her natural resources and that sort of thing. But there is, again, nothing wonderful about a nation ruled by mere politicians who play the part of demagogues as they act the part of tyrants.

I love America not only because we’ve grown to rectify many of our wrongs, but also because we’ve been an incredibly positive force for good.

We’ve built a free and prosperous nation where anyone has the opportunity to thrive and live out their[sic] dreams. We’ve also shared that gift with the world, helping others to achieve the same.

Despite that success, we continue to hear from the “America is irreparably flawed” crowd that our freedom and free market system only bring opportunity to the wealthy and well connected. They claim that the system just makes the rich richer and the poor poorer.

The reality is exactly the opposite: Capitalism has done more to lift people out of poverty than any other economic system in history.

Here again, reality check. Does this well-connected woman have any earthly clue how much debt the average American owes?

Plain and simple, over the last 25 years, it has been free markets that have cut the global poverty rate by two-thirds.

Reliable citations needed.

In the United States, every segment of the population—including women, minorities, and even the lowest income earners—have seen their incomes rise and their opportunities grow.

Again, citations needed. Incomes have certainly risen, but not when adjusted to account for inflation, dingbat. Fly in the fog all you like but stop insisting that everyone else fly in the fog with you, Edith!

Realizing that people around the world deserve the same blessings of freedom and prosperity that we have, Americans work through our government, nonprofits, and private charities to spread these blessings to other countries.

‘Merika meddles with other countries and their private business, yes. Meanwhile, “people around the world” don’t necessarily “deserve the same blessings” and blah, blah we enjoy. This is all complete poppycock and balderdash. It’s all nonsense, in other words. What people around the world probably deserve above all else is to be left alone by the meddling Yankee, his military and his government; what they probably deserve, in other words, is to not be cursed with Yankee ideals of “freedom” and “equality” and the “brotherhood of man” shoved down their throats by an aggressor nation working under the pretext of extending those “lofty ideals” to the world’s tired, its poor, its “huddled masses yearning to be free.”

We’ve even helped others fight for their very freedom—from both world wars to peacekeeping missions around the world.

Making the world “safe for Democracy.” Yeah, we know. It’s a long-standing ‘Merikan tradition, as you rightly note. We also know that democracy is mob rule, and therefore the very worst form of government known to man since mobs do not and cannot act rationally. But even if it weren’t those things, it isn’t our business, nor in our country’s interest, to meddle in the affairs of other nations and their peoples. They’re not us and we’re not them. Period.

Despite the leftists who call our nation imperialist, when we help other countries defeat tyrants or repel invaders, we don’t use the opportunity to conquer them and build an empire. Rather, we help them to rebuild and become self-sufficient.

Uh, hu. Typical cuckservative talk there; you believe that anyone who disagrees with your view of America and your brand of “patriotism” is a “leftist.” Leftists aren’t always wrong, by the way, they’re just mostly wrong.

These are all proofs of a nation reaching for its highest ideals.

It is all proof that the meddling Yankee can’t mind his own goddamn business and live and let live and use his military for defensive purposes and just warfare only.

While it took too long to correct many of America’s early injustices, and while we will always be a work in progress, our founding principles themselves created the framework that has allowed us to solve some of our biggest issues.

My God, lady, please shut up! The more you talk, the stupider you sound. What have I and others said before about retarded liberals who call themselves Republicans and believe themselves to be “conservatives?”

While not perfect, we are a great force for good that works to bring freedom, prosperity, and that problem-solving ability to our own land and to others that want to replicate them. This is all part of what we are celebrating on Independence Day.

Yeah, a “Global Force for Good.”

Alexis de Tocqueville said admiringly of America, “The greatness of America lies not in being more enlightened than any other nation, but rather in her ability to repair her faults.” His words still ring true almost 200 years later.

De Tocqueville said a lot of not so admirable things about America, too. Why don’t you cite those references while you’re at it, give the class a fuller or more complete picture of what the man really thought about ‘Merica. Nevermind, we already know. Besides that, he was referencing the same provision that George Washington spoke of when he said in his Farewell Address that the Constitution which exists at any time is sacredly obligatory on all, till changed by an explicit and authentic act of the whole people. If you think the Thirteenth Amendment and onward were all passed by “explicit and authentic act of the whole people,” you’re nuttier’n I thought.

So, on this Independence Day, I encourage you to join me in watching fireworks, eating hot dogs and apple pie, proudly celebrating America, and continuing to work toward the vision of the nation our Founders thought we could be.

I don’t personally presume to know what our Founders collectively “thought we could be” 250 years and several generations into the future, but I do know that at least a few of them believed their worthy experiment in self-government would ultimately fail, and that the age-old question – “can societies of men be governed by reflection and choice, or are we forever destined to be ruled by accident and force” – would finally be answered by posterity in perfect accordance with the latter. The experiment has indeed failed. Spectacularly. As the wiser heads among them predicted it would.

Don’t get me wrong, y’all. I’m not against celebrating Independence Day per se – watching fireworks, eating hotdogs and apple pie, in Mrs. James’s words – but not for a single one of the reasons Mrs. James cites in her article, and certainly not with the view in mind of “continuing to work toward the vision of the nation our Founders thought we could be,” by which she means Kay Coles James’s (false) interpretation of the nation our Founders thought we could be. As I said before, those are all causes for mourning, not of celebration. We are authorized, however, to look back on what those wise and good men did; upon the Federal Representative Republic they created to “secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;” to the valiant yet failed attempt the Confederate States made to save the leading principles of that instrument, and to preserve and perpetuate legitimate government on this continent. We are authorized, and I should imagine duty-bound, to look back upon and to celebrate that on this date, and to look forward to the day when our beloved Southland and her people shall be set free from Yankee rule.