Fresh Out Of Patriotism
4th July 2018
ZMan is properly dyspeptic this Independence Day.
Patriotism, properly understood, is a loyalty to the citizens who came before you. The emotional draw is gratitude for what they bequeathed. That implies a duty to preserve it for the next generation. If citizenship is just a meaningless transaction, then those citizens who came before us are no more important than the next guy who wanders over the border. Put another way, according to our rulers, our ancestors are strangers and so are our decedents. What possible reason would anyone have to be loyal to strangers?
It’s actually worse than that. The reason America is descending into a transactional land of strangers is that our ancestors decided to piss it all away. Why should anyone feel loyalty to the people who pushed through the 1986 immigration act? Why should we want to preserve what they passed onto us? If anything, we should take this day to dig up their bones and smash them to bits on the capital mall. That sounds harsh, but is there anything more monstrous than denying your decedents a chance to live the life you lived?