"By today’s standards King George III was a very mild tyrant indeed. He taxed his American colonists at a rate of only pennies per annum. His actual impact on their personal lives was trivial. He had arbitrary power over them in law and in principle but in fact it was seldom exercised. If you compare his rule with that of today’s U.S. Government you have to wonder why we celebrate our independence."
― Joseph Sobran
Via Seeds of Liberty
I have survived another small-town independence day parade. We marched through the streets tossing candy into the crowds like always despite the COVID-19 panic. Many surrounding towns cancelled their festivities, so we expected more visitors, but it still seemed less crowded here than in years past. It seems like people are trying to balance their celebrations against the threat of a viral pandemic, despite the hysterical claims that we're all out to spread infection far and wide if we don't knuckle under and obey our betters.
I wonder what independence we celebrate. People wave flags and cheer, but they also look to the government to order them about in response to everything. Instead of striving for independence, Americans are subjected to confiscatory taxation, an overbearing regulatory bureaucracy, licenses and permits mandated for almost everything, and a law enforcement system that not only enforces unjust laws, but routinely violates innocent people and murders suspects who have not even been charged with a crime. Abroad, the US is nearly as imperialist as the British were in the 18th and 19th centuries.
Some of us comply under threat and duress while expressing our dissent, but the pubic education system has convinced so many that America means freedom, and obedience is independence. They say,
- "Love it or leave it!"
- "If you don't vote, you can't complain."
- "Respect the office even if you don't like its occupant."
- "Even if you oppose the war, you gotta support the troops!"
- "If you just obey the cops, they won't have to hurt you."
These mindless platitudes disgust me. They represent unthinking servility, not the spirit of liberty.
King George III would laugh if he saw us today. The sad part, though, is that I am not so sure George Washington would disapprove of our current state of affairs. Many of the revolutionaries in colonial America were opposed to the British aristocracy only because they wanted to be the local aristocrats here on this side of the pond. While I sympathize with the revolutionary spirit in opposition to monarchy, we can look back now and see how much of a counterfeit the promise of representative government really was as an alternative. Further, the war inflicted harm on many who dissented with secession from the Crown.
I hope we can one day divorce society from the State. My fellow librarians come from many different religious sects. Back in 1776, church and state were intertwined. Now, despite some hysterical claims, they are not. And that is nothing but good good for the Church. It is unimaginable to most now, but perhaps what we see as monolithic politics can be split into decentralized, overlapping jurisdictions the way Christian denominations, Judaism, Islam, etc. are in America now.
Independence was not won in the Revolutionary War. It is a battle we must fight every day. And the enemy is not so much a stranger in a uniform or a state icon, but the ideas in our own minds.
I can't see red, white, and blue waving in the air
I don't hear the bombs bursting and I don't even care
I'm sorry for my lack of faith, I'm not the greatest patriot
If this is all there is to freedom I don't want it