The 4th of July is here, and that means parades, gatherings, hotdogs, fireworks, but also, the saying of some special phrases, taken from famous speeches or songs.
So which one is best for the 4th of 2023?
“Give me liberty, or give me death”?
“Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country”?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness” ?
“Government of the People, by the People, for the People”?
“land of the free, home of the brave”?
Good phrases all. And yet, I am finding it difficult over the last few years to hear them on the 4th. Not merely when delivered by officials or masters of ceremonies, but even, by my neighbors, colleagues, and family.
And this difficulty is not unique to myself--many Americans are feeling the same way.
For them, as I noted last year, the Spirit of ’76 seems to sputter and flag in the 2020’s.
Does it do so for you?
Or perhaps you are an American who finds yourself wanting to grasp onto the truths expressed in those old-time sayings, wanting a unifying reprieve after all the ideological heat and confusion of the last few years?
Some gentle reminders of what we’ve lived through together:
Summer of 2020, and the statues of Washington, Jefferson, and even King, are dragged to the ground, and most of our institutional and political leaders say nothing.
Summer of 2021, and the greatest apostasies from American principles since segregation are prepared and announced: there will be mandates, passports, hundreds-of-thousands of firings, and, yes, tens-of-millions of submissions.
Summer of 2022, and there are the whisperings, the doctors who say “I cannot say,” and the various versions of a strange new occupational title: the “disinformation control associate.”
I think quite a few of us anticipate this today: forced enthusiasm, eyes which cannot meet, and glances aside at the old sayings.
So the best words, if you have the courage to say them, would be these:
“I apologize. Will you please forgive me?”
A fuller version could be, “I apologize. I helped commit, or called for, injustices against you, violating basic principles and promises of our common American citizenship. This went beyond our political differences and was not justified by them. Will you please forgive me?”
I don’t think you would say them at the toasting-time, but more likely, over at the side of the gathering, to select persons, one at a time.
Search your heart. Do you need to say these words to someone this 4th?
For above and beyond the political disputes which always roil, things were done and said over the last few years which cannot stand unaddressed.
And no, I am not saying that persons on “both sides” need to say these words. The Bible teaches me to believe that all persons are sinful, which would mean that every kind of sin against one’s fellow citizens, from any partisan direction, is ever to be expected. So I am not denying that I too, and all my fellow populist-conservatives, and all my fellow Covid-19 dissidents, need to continually search our hearts regarding our possible misconduct in civic life, along with misconduct all the other areas.
But despite the offense my saying it will cause, I cannot but insist:
“both sides” is among the most unpatriotic phrases possible to utter today.
It is a phrase that enables denial.
Again, there have been sins committed over the last few years against the most elementary parts of the American creed. Committed by tens of millions.
And there is no denying that the supporters of one party joined in them at significantly greater rates than those of the other. And that the members of the upper ranks of organizational power—across parties—did so also.
Now, yes, many feel that the approval of Donald Trump, or even the weighed calculation to vote for him if he is again the Republican nominee, the kind of calculation I made in 2020, and recently expressed on this stack regarding 2024, is the sin that most clearly fits the category. That, in my judgment, is a basic error. We could argue about it as we have for seven long years now, and in my case that tired arguing would also involve some odd stuff about my once having been “Never Trump,” but what’d I rather do is plead: please, don’t use the Trump issue as an excuse not to look at the sins you need to.
The worst of the sins, as I’ve laid out before, were those connected to the mandates. If you endorsed and participated in the enactment of those, you stripped your fellow citizens’ most basic rights, and imposed, however briefly, a new regime of segregation.
Read the piece I link, really read it, and then look into the eyes of someone you caused to be fired, or coerced into taking the dangerous injections.
Do you see why it might be difficult for them to hear you utter the famous phrase about “unalienable rights”?
After the mandates, the greatest sins against the American creed are those connected to the Censorship Scandal. The sins whose breathtaking extent and government-orchestration was revealed by Missouri v. Biden, and by the “Twitterfiles.”
The scandal is not even so much the unprecedented Biden-admin censorings and their sheer number, but more so the general Democrat Party and Managerial Class abandonment of the very principle of freedom of speech. The exceptions, like Bari Weiss and such, prove the rule.
That abandonment is undergirded by “Woke,” and especially when it comes to LGBT issues. To take one example, every American now knows that he or she can be fired or punished for saying common-sense truths like “trans women aren’t women.”
There are of course a score of legitimate, and inevitably to-be-continued, debates about policy regarding sexual-identification and sexual-orientation issues. And on those issues, as on many others, there will always be a “left.” But no, if you think attacks on my freedoms to speech and to equal employment opportunity in the supposed name of “not erasing the trans” are remotely justifiable, there is no bond of citizenship between us left.
The abandonment is also undergirded by attitudes towards the topics which have been most subjected to the organized censorship and news-blackout campaigns: the Biden family scandals, aspects of the 2020 riot-protests, the 2020 and 2022 claims of election fraud, various disputes about Covid-19 policy, and most of all, the claims of widespread and continuing harms/deaths from the Covid-19 injections.
Yes, if you have endorsed government-organized, or even corporate-organized, censorship of Americans’ free-speech on those topics, likely in the name of “fighting disinformation,” you owe a lot of your fellow citizens an apology. You have harmed them. Kept them from speaking, or from hearing! And as far as you support the Pravda-like blackout of all debate and discussion of the Covid-19 vax-harm claims, you may have even helped kill your fellow citizens in some cases.
Well, if you are one of those I am targeting with this recommendation to apologize, and you have read this long, I thank you, but I don’t think arguments, mine or anybody else’s, can do more than weakly echo the groans coming out of your own soul. If I am convincing you here that you need to convey some statements of repentance and requests for forgiveness on this Independence Day, it’s not because of any particular point I’ve made, but because deep down, you already know.
And again, I am not saying we will agree on all that much as fellow Americans.
But there are some minimums, aren’t there?
Indeed, there is much for which to apologize. Purposeful voter disenfranchisement. Segregationist practices. Reproductive issues and health care. All “sides” have been very guilty of violating the “Spirit of 76” ethos.
I read this Substack because it represents a different viewpoint from many of the others I follow, which I appreciate. That said, this piece feels like it should be titled, “Why the left should apologize to the right on July 4th” because it doesn’t do much soul searching about what the right should also apologize for.
If we’re going down memory lane, this piece is worth adding to the list:
https://www.deseret.com/utah/2021/3/28/22352409/this-utah-lawmaker-almost-died-from-covid-19-now-hes-sharing-his-story-jon-hawkins-legislature
I know Jon, and I have to say that Covid fears weren’t entirely unfounded.