What a truly beautiful essay, Peachy, so appropriate for today, our 250th Birthday!…..you’ve got me in tears….
Off topic…the Huntington Beach 4th of July Parade is on TV right now (KABC channel 7). What a fantastic display of patriotism, in SoCal, no less. Might you contemplate one day moving your fabulous family out of “LA County” to Orange County?? So much safer and more peaceful, especially Coastal South Orange County, great schools, etc., + you can hang with Chef Gruel if you move to HB…just planting a seed…. (From a child of GRATEFUL immigrants who arrived in the Land of Liberty in 1956–God Bless America !!)
You've got to wonder why the people who hate America, hate America. I think the real truth is that they hate themselves, and they're transferring that hate to all of us.
I live in a neighborhood filled with legal Chinese tech immigrants and I wish I could pass their love for this country to the rich, spoiled, and useless Boomer trash lounging on an overpass (near Palo Alto, naturally) and crying about "No Kings".
This is in direct opposition to their shrieks of "OBEY" When doofus failson Gavin Newsom locked the place down and shuttered hundreds of thousands of family businesses (keeping the biz owned by his family open, of course) and demanding babies get a largely experimental vax while hiding evidence that kids didn't need it.
The question I'm most frequently asked by people who fled communism or their low caste is: "Why are white Democrats so stupid?" The literally have no way to process that level of entitlement and ingratitude.
I looked at my grandfathers medals today from ww2, he was wounded in the battle of the bulge, his entire platoon was wiped out and he only survived because he buried by the bodies of the men he commanded. The Germans though he was dead. He was found after the Germans were forced to retreat by allied soldiers collecting the bodies of the dead. He made it back but was never the same apparently he had severe shell shock. He passed in 1949, a decade or so before I was born. Can’t help but wonder what that generation of Americans would say today. They might celebrate our anniversary a bit differently I would imagine. I was 14 in 1976 and could not have believed how it turned out now. Sure looks different. I’m not even sure it’s the same place. The older you get the more the past seems like a parallel universe not just the past.
Liberty breeds positive values such as generosity, and a populace with a positive outlook naturally becomes more productive. The procreative tendencies of conservatives reflects that outlook over the negative ones of our counterparts.
Many people commented on Mamdani’s desk photo by saying, look, he doesn’t even know how a desk works because he’s never had a job. What a dumbass. Others retorted that ACKSHUALLY it’s a partners desk, and the fact you MAGAts don’t know that shows what dumbasses you are.
They both miss the point. Mamdani delivered his middle finger address to the nation from behind Washington’s desk to show possession. It’s dominance theater. Here’s one of your precious artifacts. We’re using it as a symbol to show you that we’re taking everything you cherish and shoving it in your faces. Yes, we’ve all been here for 5 minutes of your 250-year history, and yes we all left shithole countries to come here (why else would we have left?) But now we’re taking over.
My ancestors have been here for 12 generations. I have multiple ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and both World Wars. Is this smarmy little twerp lecturing me on our history offensive to me? I’m not wasting that emotion on him. The proper response is perhaps cold fury, but more importantly grim determination, inspired by deep gratitude for the gift our ancestors bequeathed us and the resolve not to let their sacrifices be wasted.
Washington quoted Micah frequently, but the men at the Constitutional Congress were all more classically (more than theologically) educated, and that meant Greek philosophy, specifically Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle believed that collective self government (democracy) required a people who had mastered personal self-government (virtue). It is this idea that Adams is referencing in his "Constitution made for a moral and religious people..." line.
When I teach the declaration to my high-schoolers, I start by reworking that line to "...among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue." Inevitable, several try to correct me (usually the girls) and that sets us off on precisely this discussion.
Well, the Founders specifically avoided pursuit of ‘property’ in the 1776 Declaration which I’m glad they did. However ‘property’ does show up later in the Constitution (Amendments 5 in 1791 & Amendment 14 in 1868).
Pursuit of ‘virtue’ however doesn’t work for me. I would disagree with you but perhaps from a different POV than your female students?
I obtain virtues from Scriptures (and more specifically the Gospels) which are Natural Rights which sit atop our government and all other governments. Some governments recognize that the power given it, come from it citizens, others don’t.
Virtues are internal moral character traits, like courage, temperance & honesty. I view the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as a Right. Not a pursuit of courage, temperance or honesty. Rights are external freedoms guaranteed to you by law, society, or nature.
Happiness demands safety / security, which would have been in keeping with the biblical phrase one colonist after another used to describe the ‘good life’. Happiness IMO is your God-given Right, which our DOI recognized.
There is perhaps no definitive answer to this and thank God for the Bill of Rights that allows us to freely quibble about them.
The basic argument is that we're still economically ascendant. Our currency is still the global standard. We have a debt problem, but based on Japan, that reckoning isn't due for a while still. In a de-globalizing world, a large, powerful, energy-independent, food-independent nation protected by 2 oceans is in a great position to prosper. We have a serious political unity problem, but you know what solves that? Becoming an empire. True imperial powers don't have political disunity because their leaders are strong enough to not allow it.
This may not be particularly encouraging. Max thinks we're likely morphing into an anti-Christian, imperial, authoritarian power (picture a left-wing Franco.) But it's better than being at late-stage-6. And anyone who doubts that needs to seriously consider what true social collapse looks like, especially for women and girls.
George Will (among others) has said that America is a country of a proposition, and all you have to do to be an American is to assent to that proposition.
He forgot, or maybe never knew, that assenting to that proposition is an act of culture, because the proposition he alluded to grew out of a distinct culture. An American one. To which many cultures are fundamentally unable to assent. It's the culture, stupid.
The reason George Will's 3-legged stool of conservatism never conserved anything.
He liked to say a conservative was "someone standing on the train track of history yelling STOP!" But he wasn't doing that. He and his ilk stood to the side, out of danger, muttering, "please slow down, pretty please" as the left-wing train hurdled past.
Which is how we got someone as messed up as Trump to lead the conservatives; he was willing to defend the culture when no one else would.
Thank you! Yes, this weekend is time to celebrate. Monday begins the time to fight and defeat our enemies, particularly Communists and invaders (who are often the same people as you note).
We fight peacefully now to avoid fighting not so peacefully later.
"Declare America your country. Do not praise her and then launch into a rant about all her mistakes. Refuse to give the America-haters an inch. Double down on fullblown, glorious, gorgeous patriotism. They could never, in their pitiful, bitter hearts, understand."
A great read for this 250th Anniversary of our great nation.
My homily at Mass this morning was about a simple but profound truth: you can only truly help what you love. If you don’t love someone or something, you will either ignore it, hate it, or want to fundamentally transform it—which really means you have rejected it. The Left does not love our nation. It hates our past, resents our present, and wants to see us collapse as a culture. It has done everything possible to undermine the family, ridicule fatherhood and motherhood, and brainwash our young people into believing children are not worth the sacrifice.
I reminded my flock that we are blessed, not privileged. The world—especially its Left-leaning side—views everything through the prism of envy, and everything it espouses is tainted by that envy. Once we begin labeling individuals as “privileged,” we are already on the road to resentment, anger, and rage. Pride inevitably saddles up alongside envy and anger to complete the unholy trifecta, whispering to the purveyors of misery that they are insightful for noticing it all.
Much more to say, but we can save that for another day. Blessed 4th of July to all of you.
What a truly beautiful essay, Peachy, so appropriate for today, our 250th Birthday!…..you’ve got me in tears….
Off topic…the Huntington Beach 4th of July Parade is on TV right now (KABC channel 7). What a fantastic display of patriotism, in SoCal, no less. Might you contemplate one day moving your fabulous family out of “LA County” to Orange County?? So much safer and more peaceful, especially Coastal South Orange County, great schools, etc., + you can hang with Chef Gruel if you move to HB…just planting a seed…. (From a child of GRATEFUL immigrants who arrived in the Land of Liberty in 1956–God Bless America !!)
Great essay.
You've got to wonder why the people who hate America, hate America. I think the real truth is that they hate themselves, and they're transferring that hate to all of us.
YES! What she ☝🏾 said.
Do NOT go gently into that good night.
We will fight this ungrateful invading scourge.
Tread Beyond the 13
Loudly stomp on the Natives
Repeatedly Brag about it
Now act like
British Lords of the Land
Read a True Patriot
Thomas Paine
‘Agrarian Justice’
I live in a neighborhood filled with legal Chinese tech immigrants and I wish I could pass their love for this country to the rich, spoiled, and useless Boomer trash lounging on an overpass (near Palo Alto, naturally) and crying about "No Kings".
This is in direct opposition to their shrieks of "OBEY" When doofus failson Gavin Newsom locked the place down and shuttered hundreds of thousands of family businesses (keeping the biz owned by his family open, of course) and demanding babies get a largely experimental vax while hiding evidence that kids didn't need it.
The question I'm most frequently asked by people who fled communism or their low caste is: "Why are white Democrats so stupid?" The literally have no way to process that level of entitlement and ingratitude.
Happy 4th!
We've got a huge ex-Soviet population here in Sacramento that's the same way. They love America in a depth that we natives likely can't understand.
I looked at my grandfathers medals today from ww2, he was wounded in the battle of the bulge, his entire platoon was wiped out and he only survived because he buried by the bodies of the men he commanded. The Germans though he was dead. He was found after the Germans were forced to retreat by allied soldiers collecting the bodies of the dead. He made it back but was never the same apparently he had severe shell shock. He passed in 1949, a decade or so before I was born. Can’t help but wonder what that generation of Americans would say today. They might celebrate our anniversary a bit differently I would imagine. I was 14 in 1976 and could not have believed how it turned out now. Sure looks different. I’m not even sure it’s the same place. The older you get the more the past seems like a parallel universe not just the past.
Thank you for sharing that story. God bless your Grandfather’s soul—what a hero !
Great article! One of your best. In addition you making more babies, we have to pass the SAVE act and get our lazy friends and relatives to VOTE.
Liberty breeds positive values such as generosity, and a populace with a positive outlook naturally becomes more productive. The procreative tendencies of conservatives reflects that outlook over the negative ones of our counterparts.
Many people commented on Mamdani’s desk photo by saying, look, he doesn’t even know how a desk works because he’s never had a job. What a dumbass. Others retorted that ACKSHUALLY it’s a partners desk, and the fact you MAGAts don’t know that shows what dumbasses you are.
They both miss the point. Mamdani delivered his middle finger address to the nation from behind Washington’s desk to show possession. It’s dominance theater. Here’s one of your precious artifacts. We’re using it as a symbol to show you that we’re taking everything you cherish and shoving it in your faces. Yes, we’ve all been here for 5 minutes of your 250-year history, and yes we all left shithole countries to come here (why else would we have left?) But now we’re taking over.
My ancestors have been here for 12 generations. I have multiple ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War, the Civil War and both World Wars. Is this smarmy little twerp lecturing me on our history offensive to me? I’m not wasting that emotion on him. The proper response is perhaps cold fury, but more importantly grim determination, inspired by deep gratitude for the gift our ancestors bequeathed us and the resolve not to let their sacrifices be wasted.
https://www.finewoodworking.com/forum/partners-desk?srsltid=AfmBOopEfJr0rv6GA0uVAZPbcvrOhuob_KsWZjp3q_fkpjAmUVer6oXq
The ‘pursuit of Happiness’ in our Declaration of Independence is rooted in Scripture, specifically OT Book of Micah 4:4:
“but they shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree, and no one shall make them afraid, for the mouth of the Lord of hosts has spoken”
Washington quoted Micah frequently, but the men at the Constitutional Congress were all more classically (more than theologically) educated, and that meant Greek philosophy, specifically Plato and Aristotle. Aristotle believed that collective self government (democracy) required a people who had mastered personal self-government (virtue). It is this idea that Adams is referencing in his "Constitution made for a moral and religious people..." line.
When I teach the declaration to my high-schoolers, I start by reworking that line to "...among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of virtue." Inevitable, several try to correct me (usually the girls) and that sets us off on precisely this discussion.
Well, the Founders specifically avoided pursuit of ‘property’ in the 1776 Declaration which I’m glad they did. However ‘property’ does show up later in the Constitution (Amendments 5 in 1791 & Amendment 14 in 1868).
Pursuit of ‘virtue’ however doesn’t work for me. I would disagree with you but perhaps from a different POV than your female students?
I obtain virtues from Scriptures (and more specifically the Gospels) which are Natural Rights which sit atop our government and all other governments. Some governments recognize that the power given it, come from it citizens, others don’t.
Virtues are internal moral character traits, like courage, temperance & honesty. I view the ‘pursuit of happiness’ as a Right. Not a pursuit of courage, temperance or honesty. Rights are external freedoms guaranteed to you by law, society, or nature.
Happiness demands safety / security, which would have been in keeping with the biblical phrase one colonist after another used to describe the ‘good life’. Happiness IMO is your God-given Right, which our DOI recognized.
There is perhaps no definitive answer to this and thank God for the Bill of Rights that allows us to freely quibble about them.
Happy 4th, Brian!
Excellent essay and moving.
Happy Independence Day to you!!
There's a good case that we're not on step 6 or 7 but on step 4.
https://agentmax.substack.com/i/202798101/rise-of-the-empire (Not my stack. Max is a serious student of civil war and collapse theory.)
The basic argument is that we're still economically ascendant. Our currency is still the global standard. We have a debt problem, but based on Japan, that reckoning isn't due for a while still. In a de-globalizing world, a large, powerful, energy-independent, food-independent nation protected by 2 oceans is in a great position to prosper. We have a serious political unity problem, but you know what solves that? Becoming an empire. True imperial powers don't have political disunity because their leaders are strong enough to not allow it.
This may not be particularly encouraging. Max thinks we're likely morphing into an anti-Christian, imperial, authoritarian power (picture a left-wing Franco.) But it's better than being at late-stage-6. And anyone who doubts that needs to seriously consider what true social collapse looks like, especially for women and girls.
https://brianvillanueva.substack.com/i/158082984/objection-natural-law-is-oppressive (That one is my stack, since being a civics/econ/phil teacher, this is a subject I know something about).
Regardless of where you think we are though, we made it to 250, and that deserves celebration!
George Will (among others) has said that America is a country of a proposition, and all you have to do to be an American is to assent to that proposition.
He forgot, or maybe never knew, that assenting to that proposition is an act of culture, because the proposition he alluded to grew out of a distinct culture. An American one. To which many cultures are fundamentally unable to assent. It's the culture, stupid.
The reason George Will's 3-legged stool of conservatism never conserved anything.
He liked to say a conservative was "someone standing on the train track of history yelling STOP!" But he wasn't doing that. He and his ilk stood to the side, out of danger, muttering, "please slow down, pretty please" as the left-wing train hurdled past.
Which is how we got someone as messed up as Trump to lead the conservatives; he was willing to defend the culture when no one else would.
Thank you, Peachy - and let freedom ring!
Thank you! Yes, this weekend is time to celebrate. Monday begins the time to fight and defeat our enemies, particularly Communists and invaders (who are often the same people as you note).
We fight peacefully now to avoid fighting not so peacefully later.
"Declare America your country. Do not praise her and then launch into a rant about all her mistakes. Refuse to give the America-haters an inch. Double down on fullblown, glorious, gorgeous patriotism. They could never, in their pitiful, bitter hearts, understand."
A great read for this 250th Anniversary of our great nation.
My homily at Mass this morning was about a simple but profound truth: you can only truly help what you love. If you don’t love someone or something, you will either ignore it, hate it, or want to fundamentally transform it—which really means you have rejected it. The Left does not love our nation. It hates our past, resents our present, and wants to see us collapse as a culture. It has done everything possible to undermine the family, ridicule fatherhood and motherhood, and brainwash our young people into believing children are not worth the sacrifice.
I reminded my flock that we are blessed, not privileged. The world—especially its Left-leaning side—views everything through the prism of envy, and everything it espouses is tainted by that envy. Once we begin labeling individuals as “privileged,” we are already on the road to resentment, anger, and rage. Pride inevitably saddles up alongside envy and anger to complete the unholy trifecta, whispering to the purveyors of misery that they are insightful for noticing it all.
Much more to say, but we can save that for another day. Blessed 4th of July to all of you.
Amen!
And look on the bright side - Mamdani is the best enemy the Left can give us, and he can’t even sit at a desk the right way.