America 250

Where this should be a celebration that the United States has persevered through a quarter millennium, it is more often an excuse to attack President Trump.  The most noteworthy incident is the reflecting pool.  It has long been a problem that multiple presidents have addressed - including Obama, but it has never risen to the level of criticism as now.  There has been vandalism in order to foil President Trump's efforts to repair a leaking national landmark before today's historic anniversary.  How did monument repair become so controversial?

The issue is that too many Americans are no longer proud to be Americans, especially when there is a president of whom they disapprove.  Too often, America's failings and faults are taught while its goodness and virtues are ignored.  Prior to 1988, when high school students were asked to identify famous Americans from history who were not presidents, answers such as Ben Franklin, Betsy Ross, or Paul Revere were common.  However, that has switched.  Today's students are likely to answer Martin Luther King, Harriet Tubman, or Rosa Parks.  Of course, all of these people are famous Americans, but why the change in emphasis?  This was not by accident.  That second list shows that the emphasis is now about slavery and civil rights.  Yes, America has faults, a laundry list of them, which are rolled out on a regular basis to denigrate the country.  It used to be balanced by the greatness of America, but that has faded over the last 30 to 40 years.

People living in Western countries are more likely to learn the negatives about their country than the negatives of others.  Americans know the warts and all of America, but virtually none of the negatives of China, Cuba, Venezuela, or Iran.  Inevitably, knowing what is bad about your country but not the failings of others will diminish one's opinion of it in comparison to others.  Frequently, when asked what other country is better, a ludicrous answer like 'China' will be offered.  Look at the highspeed trains!  But the thing is, people vote with their feet.  If they can get to a Western country, they do.  People with direct knowledge of these other countries flee to the United States and don't leave.  They know the truth.

The United States is the greatest country in the world.  It is unfortunate that too many of its citizens do not know that.

Happy Independence Day!

Happy 4th!

Each Independence Day, I read the Declaration of Independence.  Today, I listened to someone else read it.  Jim Meskimen does some terrific impressions and a few mediocre ones.  Still, worth watching:

Declaration of Independence in 61 Celebrity Voices

No Progress beyond Equality

 Found on Instapundit today:

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

 

Calvin Coolidge on the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence

 

Silent Cal could pack a heck of a wallop in a single paragraph.  Self-government reached its apogee with the Declaration and can only fall from that point.  It is great how he tosses out that line about totalitarian regimes that clothe themselves in the language of democracy [oops, I didn't copy that part]; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, People's Republic of China, Democratic People's Republic of [North] Korea, Republic of Cuba, Islamic Republic of Iran, and so on.  It is a telling point that this practice persists 90 years later.

 

Interestingly, Coolidge was a contemporary with the original Progressive Movement that morphed into Liberalism and has now reclaimed the Progressive label (cf . Hillary Clinton).  Progressives want more power for government and therefore less to the people.  They want to progress back to the good old days when these pesky voters didn't demand Brexit, upend immigration (i.e. voter importation) laws, oppose Amnesty, or grouse about spending.  Government could get so much important stuff done if the rubes in flyover country would just shut up and realize it was for their own good.  Ah, the arrogance of power.