The Fourth of July, 2005, in America

I am unashamedly American. Some would criticize me for being "jingoistic." Ok, here is the Encarta dictionary definition of "jingoism": "belligerent nationalism: zealous patriotism expressing itself especially in hostility toward other countries." Well, yes, if other countries do not embrace the Rights of Man in the proper meaning of the term, I feel hostile to them--and there are so many.

Then, giving the origin of the term, Encarta says: "The context of the coining of jingoism was British foreign policy of the late 1870s: the Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli, favored sending in gunboats to halt the advance of the Russian fleet out of their own waters into the Mediterranean; this gave rise to a music-hall song, written in 1878 by G.W. Hunt, the refrain of which went: “We don’t want to fight, yet by Jingo! if we do, We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men, and got the money too”; opponents of the policy picked up on the word jingo and used it as an icon of blind patriotism."

So, not wanting to fight, but if we must, we have the means, that is "blind patriotism"? This definition and illustration must have been written by some Leftist at Encarta. America is well worth fighting for. And, if the rest of world doesn't like us, well, they can just __________. On principle and in fact, there is no better country on earth, and there never has been.

July 4th is one of those times that brings very American thoughts out of me. However, for a while, I want to free my mind from concern about those cur hounds always nipping at our ankles, and think positive thoughts about America, past and present.

On this 4th, we intend to marinate ourselves in many, personally meaningful sensory joys of being American at my country's birthday party. That includes enjoying those typical American 4th of July foods, being jacked up by John Phillp Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever," brought to tears by Ray Charles' rendition of "America the Beautiful," and finally capping off the day with the concert on the Washington, D.C. Mall, as well as many fireworks displays we can find, courtesy of television.

On this blog, Sixth Column, and on our website, 6th Column Against Jihad, we spend most of our time exposing negatives. Days like the 4th of July give us an opportunity to ignore all of those negatives temporarily so that we can remind ourselves what we are FOR. Part of the celebration this year involves penning some American thoughts about America from one of her sons (me), about what I love about my country and why, and just postponing the job of cleaning up the cultural-philosophical cesspool to start again on July 5th.

Recently, Thomas Sowell, truly one of the finest of living Americans, wrote a piece about his becoming 75 years of age, this past 30 June 2005. He seems timelessly young. He is so very American, in the finest sense of the term. Dr. Sowell wrote a statement that just grabbed my attention and would not let go. He said that on this year 2005 birthday of his, he will have lived through one third of the entire history of the United States of America. One third! We are so young, yet we have done so much and have so much more to do.

Using Dr. Sowell's method, I find that, later this year, I will have lived almost 30% of the history of America as a nation. That boggles my mind.

We, America, we are the child of the Enlightenment. We were formed by design, based on the Rights of Man, and created de novo a government, formed SOLELY to protect those rights of all of its citizens. That means that we are the only nation on earth ever to be built on and for and by REASON. What an achievement from those giants of the Enlightenment, our Founders. I am so proud of that.

As great as they were, our Founders failed to eliminate some serious contradictions when they cranked up America, but they built the means to resolve these contradictions, and more--namely, they designed the Constitution of the United States of America, a document which the world has since either emulated or envied.

These men of reason could not live their contradictions in peace forever. They and their descendents began shucking them, one by one. That's what we Americans do. That is really why we had to have that awful Civil War, to rid ourselves of the most destructive of the contradictions, manifested in secession. My beloved South had to go down in ignomious defeat to rid itself of utter foulness, foremost of which was human slavery.

Dr. Sowell has a magnificent new book out called Black Rednecks and White Liberals. It is the most fun reading of any book I have touched for a very long time. What I read about my beloved South shocked me. I had accepted a lot of hand-me-down notions instead of facts. My South, in the ante-bellum days, was not worthy of being in the union. Too many were not far above the level of wild animals, and we were as unfit for modern survival as a people can be. By losing, we got educational and industrial revolutionary values from the North, and we began growing out of our atavistic state. Sadly, we did not choose to bring other Southerner Americans, the Negroes, along with us, not then, at least. Nevertheless, by losing the Civil War, we won big time, because we annealed as a single people, under a single flag and Constitution. What an achievement.

America industrialized and adopted capitalism, the only social-political-and-economic system fit enough for a people founded by the Declaration and Constitution. And, boy, did we industrialize! In the 20th century, we became the lead horse pulling the wagon of civilization. What an achievement.

Oppressed people around the world saw what human liberty and the Rights of Man meant, and they flocked to our shores. Who benefitted the most from that influx? We did, of course.

Restlessly, we have always sought to turn our better natures against any evils eroding us, alas sometimes rather later than sooner. We ensured that women enjoyed the same protection of their basic rights under the Constitution. Later in the 20th century, we ensured that Negroes and other Americans who had been shut out of the protections of our Constitution would be shut out no more.

One of my observations has been that the awful events of 11 September 2001 ended any lingering, latent racism, except for those boring, pestilential racial demogogues always running out from under their porches to bark at and chase car tires, and showed how so many from such diverse ethnic backgrounds and geographies rose as one. Whatever gender, racial background, country of origin, we became more Americans than ever before. Only the Muslims cannot or will not make this great leap forward; they seem enchanted with the unhygienic days of their Dark Ages.

I served over two and half decades in the United States Navy, and I am terribly proud of that. Now retired, I look out to the men and women who elect to go in harm's way to keep you and me hale and hearty, and I feel soaring admiration and gratitude for them. Their deaths truly hurt me, even though I personally know not a single one who has died. They fight for, and in some cases, die for all the same things brave men did in the last half of the 18th century. They fight for--and when they die, they die for--the idea of America. That is one hell of an achievement.

I am not naive. I see constant attacks on the Enlightenment principles of America's soul--the erosions and corrosions threatening to weaken her so much from the inside that Dark Age primitives can take us over. I see advanced corruption, in all branches of government, state and national. I see the major and minor enemies of America, and I see how much work we have to do to right our ship of state. Yet, through it all, I know certain things to be true because I can see the meanings of the ideas of America. Man may not live by bread alone, but he cannot survive without ideas.

I can see that Islam will neither conquer nor destroy America. I can see that socialism, in all its forms, will continue as a flirtation for a while, but it will never replace capitalism, and it will go away forever. Why? Because reason, rights, and capitalism have become the bedrock of America. These forces have enormous staying power, despite enormous odds and enormous efforts to destroy them. In this highly industrial age, those ideas and their power can never be fully suppressed or destroyed. To borrow a phrase, they cannot be put back into the bottle ever again, because their secrets are out--Victor Hugo once wrote that nothing is as powerful as an idea whose time has come. The ideas of America cannot be killed, not permanently, although undoing excessive governmentalism will take a very long time.

Rough times, some very rough times, seem to lie ahead for America, but America and Americans will prevail and give birth anew to a culture of reason, but long after I am gone. I feel certain that we will have to have a second Civil War. It will be all of the various forces of unreason, so prevalent today, against the advocates of reason--that powerful force reincarnated into the invincible force of tomorrow. It may be a much worse war than our first Civil War, but it will have a far better outcome. We will get our thinking caps on finally and realize who and what we are, and we will finally have the full moral courage to stand up for who and what we are.

By the way, recently there was a hubub about choosing the most important American. I didn't pay much attention after I heard the choices. Most lists sounded like inane choices of children naming their favorite candies. I nevertheless have a nominee and a choice, and on this occasion of our national birthday, I should like to celebrate this person.

From soon after our founding, we began floundering because some of the most important philosophical work of the Enligtenment was never finished. America's Constitution and Declaration were necessary, but not sufficient, to withstand the steady attack on reason and the values of the Enlightenment, spearheaded by German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. Kant's intellectual heirs have worshipped Kantianism and have taken these ideas to their logical conclusions. It is to Kant that corrupt modern philosophy owes its existence and whose ideas and logical conclusions and those of his intellectual lineage are rotting America from within.

No philosopher or other thinks since Kant has been bright enough to counter Kant and his successors, who brought us the Nazis, Communists, Fascists, and Socialists in the 20th century and want to turn America into a home for more of the same.

No one knew, and too few still know it, but help was on the way.

In 1905, a girl was born in Russia. In the mid-1920s, she emigrated to America and became an American by naturalization. She developed the most brilliant philosophical mind the world has seen since Kant. She had the unique ability to put complex philosophical thought into the form of fiction as plays and novels, as well as crystal-clear works of non-fiction. These novels reached out and touched Americans as little else has. After her final novel, Atlas Shrugged, she devoted herself to writing a huge series of brilliant articles and essays clarifying and elaborating her philosophical thoughts. She called her philosophy "Objectivism." As with most persons who totally change the course of civilization, she met with extreme resistance and hostility during her life; she died in 1982 without seeing her philosophical ideas realized in America.

Yet, from the beginning, her works have sold well over 100,000 copies a year, both the fiction and the non-fiction, year in and year out. A number of years ago, a national survey found that her novel, Atlas Shrugged, placed second only to the Bible as the book Americans called the most influential in their lives.

What did she give us? She gave us back reality, reason, rational individualism, and capitalism, but in a fully developed state, philosophically speaking. She gave us back America, freeing it of its contradictions. She gave us the prospects for a future far brighter and more enduring than our past.

No one alive today will live to see her ideas complete America's repair, thereby setting in motion the most exciting future Americans have known. Those who can project a likely future because they are at home with concepts, logic, and rationality, know this is coming. It cannot be resisted. It is why America will ultimately prevail over all odds.

Yes, our Founders were great people. This Russian immigrant, however, will join them in the hall celebrating the greatest of all Americans. Her name? Ayn Rand.