Mark America

...If You Can Find Her

On this Fourth day of July, the nation marks its Independence Day, but I fear that for all the remembrances of glory now passed out of mind by most Americans, and for all the lovely, somber assemblies that will today gather in order to consider the truly beautiful words of the brilliant minds who once established this country, who risked literally all in order to put aside a tyrant, there are pitifully few among us who have the courage to repeat their bold actions, or even realize the true marvel that had been the American founding.  I have always believed that America was more than a place defined by some lines drawn on a map, and its meaning was more than even the stunning assembly of the stars and stripes of Old Glory could represent.  No, America had been synonymous with “Liberty,” and “Freedom,” and other rare concepts of human refinement that have not been duplicated anywhere.  To all of my patriotic friends, who look glumly about at the depressing caricature we’ve been watching our nation become, I urge you to take heart:  America lives!

It is true that the statists have developed and implemented a plan for our national diminution.  It is true even that some among our number seem to happily go along with the slide.  The worst of it for many will have been how the July 4th observances this year will seem more like a eulogy than a celebration.  We now give our beloved America the big send-off, with fireworks to punctuate the wake.  A funeral need not be a glum affair, and with all the flag-waving set to commence, it seems appropriate that rather than play an encore of Stars and Stripes Forever, we instead yield the music of the day to a funeral march.  Yet this is only appropriate if we view America as nothing more than a political partition.  True, it is clear that the Republic lies at Death’s door, but the idea that stands behind the Republic remains alive in each of us who will merely bear its memory forth.

The gun-grabbers will attempt to take our rights to keep and bear, but still we must resist them, whatever the laws they may make.  That’s what an American would do.  The taxers and dispensers-of-penalties (just in case Mitt Romney still doesn’t know which he had been as Governor of that once-free commonwealth) can work their worst, but at the end of the day, if you are willing to live without comforts, you can resist this too.  This I am certain, every real American would do.  Were I closer to New York, for example, I would be inclined to raid a grocery warehouse, buying up all the little Morton’s salt shakers, and dispense one on every table in every restaurant in sight, and a pox on Michael Bloomberg for his wretched regulating, and I would probably start in any cafeteria owned by the city.  This is what the bold, but not the timid, would do.  Americans think to do such things.  Docile slaves never do.

I’d give a cop a hug, since they don’t pass the laws, and there may come a day when I’d like very much for them to ignore some mindless rule that I had decided I would no longer observe.  Americans, the real ones, know that laws are only as powerful as they permit them to be.  Americans aren’t frightened about the possibility of another Obama term, because even he is only so powerful as we decide he should be.  You might offer me one-thousand scenarios in which he might seize more power, but I insist that it’s still only as good as the will of the people he appoints to carry it out, in the face of all of those who dare to say “no.”

America isn’t defined by Washington DC.  It is only the United States of America that is shaped and molded there.  One-million Obamas with one-billion executive orders backed-up by nine-thousand robe-clad morons cannot make a nation of three hundred million people do anything, not even a fraction of them, if they choose not to do it.  In America, the people know this, and while they may lament the existence of such brigands in public office, they likewise remember that the founders of America had declared that a government exists at the pleasure of all its people.  Does a government headed by Barack Obama exist at your pleasure?  Do you think only Mitt Romney can save us, or do you understand that in America, the least among us is still completely capable of saying “no,” and meaning it?

People have asked me in times passed how such an America could function, and I tell you that there are more ways than one to eat that dog.  Let your own conscience be your guide, but I have resolved that I will become an avid practitioner of “Not Guilty,” when the only victim alleged is some public policy.  “John Q Public stands charged with failing to pay his Obama-care mandate noncompliance penalty/tax. What say you, the jury?”

“Not guilty.”

Jury nullification is not a new idea, but most of the time, we get tricked into a.)admitting that’s what we’re doing, thus putting ourselves in legal jeopardy, or b.)fooled into believing it’s not permissible, somehow dishonest, or lawless.  Ladies and gentlemen, we live in a country where Supreme Court Chief justices are lawless as a matter of the routine.  In America, we know that law has only the force we give it, and if the law is wrong, it mustn’t be enforced.  Let us not give such laws any force, any longer. Am I calling you to anarchy? Never. I am asking you to consider correcting an anarchy already in progress, wherein the law is no restraint upon an aggressive government, irrespective of the party in power.

I vote “no” on every bond issue, every tax, and any expansion of government power, no matter how trivial it may seem at the time, because experience has taught me that it will not remain that way.  Only in America do citizens routinely tell public officials to kiss off.  We should all do so more frequently when justified, and these days, it’s justified plenty.    In America, the people know that government isn’t their boss, but that the master-servant relationship puts the people a the top, and the people there have no compunction whatever about reminding the public servants of just exactly who is whom on that particular totem pole.

We can look for America in all sorts of places.  The first place I always think to look for it is in the minds, the words, and particularly, in the deeds of the people around me.  I know how to spot America every time.  If you’re the sort of person inclined to read this blog, chances are, so do you, but the first place each should seek it is right there, inside you.  I know it’s in there.  You might keep it hidden in an office or a school full of leftists.  It’s yearning to get out, you know.  I realize that the polite society of Republican politics urges you to suppress it, and keep it hidden at all times, and that among Democrats, it’s tucked firmly away lest it escape embarrassingly from the closet. I’ve heard that in Congress, they do their best to isolate it like a leper colony.

America is not a Utopia, and does not seek that status, since in America, they yield to the natural fact that there can be no perfection among men.  America’s constitution was established to create a “more perfect union,” but it did not promise Heaven on Earth, the authors having known such was impossible.  Those men did not say they were seeking a “more perfect lifestyle,” a “more perfect country,” a “less costly health-care system,” or a “more perfect distribution of wealth,”  but instead a “more perfect union” not among individual men, but among the several states.  In short, they knew they could not make more perfect all the affairs of men, but only that among the institutions of man, they could improve the function, and for a time, they succeeded until some forgot what it was all intended to do.

I seek America because I know it’s “out there,” but it’s “in here,” too. I know there are others seeking her too, and I believe I’ve met some decent number of them through this blog.  I would urge my friends to spend the Fourth of July seeking America wherever they can find it, but not to waste an inordinate amount of time looking for it in a country called the United States.  America has to sneak in an out of there for visits these days, and there’s no sense looking for something where it plainly is not. My friends, I wish you all a happy Independence Day in search of it, and may you find it quickly.  I hear she’s worth the trouble.