An Idea of America

   Some thinking I’ve been doing on the 250th anniversary of the
   Declaration of Independence

   created on Saturday, 4 July 2026

   This text was dumped from starbreaker.org/opinions/an-idea-of-america.html with lynx.

   I’m not the sort of person who voluntarily stands for the flag, or for
   the official national anthem with lyrics by Francis Scott Key. I
   certainly don’t kneel before the cross; I have never accepted that one
   must be any sort of Christian to be an American. Nor have I ever truly
   pledged allegiance to the flag of the United States of America. I
   merely milli-vannili’d the words to the pledge at school.

   Some will say this makes me unpatriotic at best. Let them. I was never
   their idea of an American, let alone their idea of a patriot. But
   before we continue, Occasional Reader, indulge me as I share a national
   anthem that does move me in a way that “The Star-Spangled Banner”
   cannot.

This land is your land, this land is my land
From California to the New York island,
From the redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters;
This land was made for you and me.

As I was walking that ribbon of highway
I saw above me that endless skyway;
I saw below me that golden valley;
This land was made for you and me.

I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding;
This land was made for you and me.

When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.

As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?

Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.

   “This Land is Your Land” (1940) by Woody Guthrie

   The following might mark me as old or out of touch: I refuse to accept
   that America is about blood and soil. I am saying that as somebody who
   could claim to be a “heritage American” by virtue of the fact that I
   have ancestors on my mother’s side (a branch of the Lovelaces in New
   York) who came to the country before the American Revolution. Some
   fought for independence, too. Some fought for the Union, and one lost
   an eye to a Confederate round.

   Some of my ancestors, however, came to the United States after the
   Revolution, if not after the Civil War. They did not all come
   voluntarily, either. I have Black ancestors, the descendants of African
   men and women taken as prisoners of war in their homelands and sold
   into slavery by their captors. I have Jewish ancestors who fled
   pogroms. I have Irish and Polish ancestors who fled poverty and
   starvation. I have no idea whether my French ancestors freely chose to
   emigrate or not.

   What does all of that mean? It’s complicated. I’m a descendent of
   oppressors and the oppressed. Some of my ancestors were enslaved.
   Others were slaveowners.

   If nothing else, it leads me to scoff when anybody proposes a national
   identity for white people. The very notion of whiteness is one that
   demands that one sacrifice all ties to one’s national origins, culture,
   and language so that one might assimilate and become the ruling
   classes’ idea of an American.

   Thus I find the notion of one’s claim to American identity depending on
   one’s ancestry—a claim pushed by the likes of Vice President J. D.
   Vance —utterly repugnant. You are not more of an American than anybody
   else because you can trace your ancestry in this country back to before
   the Revolution. If we’re to play that game, then the descendants of the
   First Nations have us all handily beaten. And if you yourself claim
   descent from the First Nations, and insist on having a greater claim to
   being an American, I will still disagree with you.

   The very notion of one’s claim to Americanness being dependent on one’s
   ancestry seems to fly in the face of the ideals on which this country
   had been founded two hundred and fifty years ago. The men who attended
   the Second Continental Congress in 1776 made their intent plain:

In Congress, July 4, 1776

     The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
     When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one
     people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them
     with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the
     separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of
     Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of
     mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel
     them to the separation.

     We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created
     equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain
     unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the
     pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these rights, Governments are
     instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of
     the governed,—That whenever any Form of Government becomes
     destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or
     to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its
     foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such
     form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
     Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long
     established should not be changed for light and transient causes;
     and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more
     disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right
     themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But
     when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the
     same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute
     Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
     Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
     security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies;
     and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their
     former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of
     Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all
     having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny
     over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid
     world.

   The Declaration of Independence by Thomas Jefferson, et al

   "...all men are created equal..." We don’t give that much thought,
   except perhaps to ask, "what about women?" or to note that many of the
   signatories were slaveholders—most notoriously Thomas Jefferson. We are
   not wrong to do so. The Founders were only men, after all. They might
   have held ideals, but they did not consistently live up to them.
   Regardless, what they accomplished set the stage for others to take up
   the cause of Liberty and demand further expansions of individual
   rights, if not individual sovereignty.

   It might bear mentioning that until recently “Man” and “humanity” were
   all but synonymous. This being the case, this preamble on its own is a
   rhetorical ICBM launched across the Atlantic Ocean at London. Though
   aimed at King George III and his government, the fallout spread across
   Europe, and then the world.

   Consider also the mention of the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.
   This is not God as understood by most Christians, let alone most
   traditional Catholics, right-wing cafeteria Catholics like Vance, or
   evangelical Christians. This is a direct reference to Deism, and to a
   God who set the universe in motion but does not interfere with
   Creation.

   If the Deism of many of the Founders does not put paid to the notion of
   the United States as a country founded on Christianity, and you are the
   sort of Christian supremacist who insists on taking literally the parts
   of the Bible that you find agreeable, then I defy you to take another
   look at Romans 13, verses 1-7, and perhaps pray in private for
   understanding:

    1. Let every soul be subject to higher powers: for there is no power
       but from God: and those that are, are ordained of God.
    2. Therefore he that resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of
       God. And they that resist, purchase to themselves damnation.
    3. For princes are not a terror to the good work, but to the evil.
       Wilt thou then not be afraid of the power? Do that which is good:
       and thou shalt have praise from the same.
    4. For he is God's minister to thee, for good. But if thou do that
       which is evil, fear: for he beareth not the sword in vain. For he
       is God's minister: an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doth
       evil.
    5. Wherefore be subject of necessity, not only for wrath, but also for
       conscience' sake.
    6. For therefore also you pay tribute. For they are the ministers of
       God, serving unto this purpose.
    7. Render therefore to all men their dues. Tribute, to whom tribute is
       due: custom, to whom custom: fear, to whom fear: honour, to whom
       honour.

   Romans 13, Douay-Rheims 1899 American Edition by Paul of Tarsus

   If Christianity demands obedience of its adherents, not merely to
   religious authorities within the church, but toward secular
   authorities, then how can a nation founded in revolutionary defiance be
   a Christian national in the sense that it was founded on the Christian
   religion? The US might still be mostly Christian in terms of
   demography. But the historical fact lends itself more toward the United
   States as a Satanic nation than a Christian one.

   It bears mentioning that Romans 13 was no doubt convenient to the aims
   of Constantine, who made the church a whore of the state to consolidate
   his power over the Roman Empire; one could almost suspect that the text
   attibuted to St. Paul might instead of been written by committee. After
   all, the Bible had been compiled by a succession of committees and
   synods beginning with the Council of Nicea, which began codifying early
   Christianity into a coherent belief system that served the state
   instead of threatening it with the the Nicene Creed and the Apostles’
   Creed.

   How can a religion that demands obedience to authority be compatible
   with a Declaration of Independence that explicitly says, "That whenever
   any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the
   Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new
   Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its
   powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their
   Safety and Happiness." That doesn’t make sense to me. Nor does it make
   sense that anybody claiming to be an American or a patriot would accept
   that some people are or should be less American because they don‘t have
   five generations of ancestors buried in a churchyard in Kentucky, as J.
   D. Vance defines heritage:

     As a United States senator, I get to represent millions of people in
     the great state of Ohio with similar stories, and it is the great
     honor of my life.

     Now in that cemetery, there are people who were born around the time
     of the Civil War. And if, as I hope, my wife and I are eventually
     laid to rest there, and our kids follow us, there will be seven
     generations just in that small mountain cemetery plot in eastern
     Kentucky. Seven generations of people who have fought for this
     country. Who have built this country. Who have made things in this
     country. And who would fight and die to protect this country if they
     were asked to.

     Now. Now that's not just an idea, my friends. That's not just a set
     of principle. Even though the ideas and the principles are great,
     that is a homeland. That is our homeland. People will not fight for
     abstractions, but they will fight for their home.

   speech given upon accepting the Republican Party’s vice presidential
   nomination in 2024 by Vice President J. D. Vance

   Fuck this utter clown and the false dichotomy he rode in on. Vance has
   ancestors who fought in the Civil War? Fine. But as I noted earlier, so
   did I, and I reserve the right to disagree with Vance. For somebody who
   graduated from Yale Law and should presumably have been given cursory
   exposure to the philosophy of the Enlightenment, particularly that of
   David Hume, he seems to have a habit of trying to derive ought from an
   is he cannot even prove.

   I refuse to accept that they were fighting merely for blood and soil,
   even if that had been a common slogan. Both sides were fighting for
   ideals, and what is an ideal but an abstraction of which people are
   determined to make a concrete reality? What about the millions of
   American men who fought in Europe and the Pacific Ocean during World
   War II? Were they fighting merely for their homeland, or were they
   fighting for ideals as well?

   For my part, I am fighting right now. I chose to take up a pen instead
   of a sword. I do not want to kill, but to persuade those who are
   willing to listen, and to demonstrate to those who will not that they
   face opposition. I don’t do this for my homeland. The closest I have to
   a homeland is New York City, but I never lived there. Because of my
   parents’ poverty, I grew up in a succession of rentals around the city,
   moving at least a dozen times before I was thirteen years old.

   As for the town in which I spent the latter half of my childhood and
   then my adolescence? I left it behind thirty years ago, and that
   ungrateful country shall not even have my bones. It is not for the town
   in which I grew up that I insist on putting forth my idea of America.
   It is not even for New York City. It is for the very abstractions J. D.
   Vance denigrated in his 2024 acceptance speech before the Republican
   National Committee.
     * I believe in the natural and inalienable rights of all human beings
       to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
     * I believe in the inherent sovereignty of individuals, and that even
       unconsciously we choose to associate and to yield part of our
       sovereignty by delegating it to a government that serves us so that
       we might prosper in peace, to engage in mutual aid for mutual
       benefit.
     * I believe in equal justice under law.
     * I believe in the separation of church and state.
     * I believe that none of us are or should be the means to anybody
       else’s ends.
     * I believe in freedom of speech.
     * I believe in freedom of religion.
     * I believe in freedom from want.
     * I believe in freedom from fear.

   Vance might call these abstractions, but without them, what even is
   America if not the force for tyranny that its most vicious critics
   claim it is? Why did USMC Major General Smedley Butler expose the
   Business Plot of 1933 (a Republican plot) and then write War is a
   Racket in 1935? Did he not believe in America, that America was founded
   in greatness and could be made greater still through the concerted
   efforts of her citizenry?

   I wrote at the beginning that I do not stand for the flag nor pledge
   allegiance to it. Likewise, I do not kneel to the cross. I am not a
   Christian, but I am an American, and my allegiance is not to the flag,
   or even the Republic for which it stands, but the Constitution of the
   United States -- from which the government of the United States draws
   its just powers when it homors the Constitution.

   Some of a more conservative persuasion might claim that I am
   ungrateful. They are welcome to do so. I recognize no obligation to
   perform a gratitude that stifles dissent. As an American, it is my
   right as both a citizen and a human being to speak up when I see my
   country falling short of the ideals on which it was founded, or
   outright betraying them. It is for that reason that I am writing this
   tonight, Occasional Reader, on the night of the Fourth of July, two
   hundred and fifty years after the ratification of the Declaration of
   Independence in Philadelphia.

   I never had any sympathy for “Make America Great Again” because I grew
   up believing that my country was great from the start, is still great,
   but could be greater still. However, it can only become greater, or be
   made a more perfect Union, if we hew ever closer to the ideals of
   universal liberty and equality that inspired the American Revolution in
   the first place. America must be a nation of ideas, first and foremost,
   because otherwise it can never become one out of many. When we divide
   ourselves each against the other by tribe, or nation, or faith, we
   betray every one of our ancestors who chose America by coming here.

   Nor can we keep looking back at our past. To paraphrase Michael
   Moorcock’s The Revenge of the Rose, a nation that focuses too much on
   its past soon has nothing but its past to offer! That is not an America
   for which I would take up either pen or sword. I mentioned Moorcock
   because I have come to think that America is—like Tanelorn or Leo
   Tolstoy’s Kingdom of God—both a place and an idea one carries within
   the mind and heart. One need not come to America; by working in concert
   with others one could build America where one stands. It won’t be easy.
   It is inherently fragile because it stands in defiance of entropy and
   humanity’s tendency toward blind obedience to authority. It is,
   nonetheless, worth struggling to create and to maintain. As Camus
   wrote, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy."

   At least, that is how I feel. Nor is this wholly abstract philosophy
   for me. It is not merely a matter of principle. This is personal, and
   thus political. My wife, Madam Catastrophy, is herself an immigrant.
   She came to the US from Australia in 2004 to marry me, when I had been
   willing to emigrate for her sake. Am I truly to accept that she is less
   of an American because she chose to become a citizen and had to work to
   earn her citizenship instead of possessing it by birthright?

   Too many of my fellow Americans seem to think so. Well, they are no
   friends of mine. Regardless, they have no less a right to their opinion
   than I have to mine. They have an equal right to speak their mind, as
   well; the fact that I disagree with them does not prove that their
   opinions are objectively wrong.

a tangent on the personal being political

   "The personal is political," comes from an essay by Carol Hanisch given
   that title after its publication, as she notes in her introduction. In
   her discussion of feminist “consciousness-raising” sessions in which
   women are offered a figurative ‘red pill’ of understanding regarding
   life under patriarchy, Ms. Hanisch writes:

     We have not done much trying to solve immediate personal problems of
     women in the group. We’ve mostly picked topics by two methods: In a
     small group it is possible for us to take turns bringing questions
     to the meeting (like, Which do/did you prefer, a girl or a boy baby
     or no children, and why? What happens to your relationship if your
     man makes more money than you? Less than you?). Then we go around
     the room answering the questions from our personal experiences.
     Everybody talks that way. At the end of the meeting we try to sum up
     and generalize from what’s been said and make connections.

     I believe at this point, and maybe for a long time to come, that
     these analytical sessions are a form of political action. I do not
     go to these sessions because I need or want to talk about my
     ”personal problems.” In fact, I would rather not. As a movement
     woman, I’ve been pressured to be strong, selfless, other-oriented,
     sacrificing, and in general pretty much in control of my own life.
     To admit to the problems in my life is to be deemed weak. So I want
     to be a strong woman, in movement terms, and not admit I have any
     real problems that I can’t find a personal solution to (except those
     directly related to the capitalist system). It is at this point a
     political action to tell it like it is, to say what I really believe
     about my life instead of what I’ve always been told to say.

     So the reason I participate in these meetings is not to solve any
     personal problem. One of the first things we discover in these
     groups is that personal problems are political problems. There are
     no personal solutions at this time. There is only collective action
     for a collective solution. I went, and I continue to go to these
     meetings because I have gotten a political understanding which all
     my reading, all my “political discussions,” all my “political
     action,” all my four-odd years in the movement never gave me. I’ve
     been forced to take off the rose colored glasses and face the awful
     truth about how grim my life really is as a woman. I am getting a
     gut understanding of everything as opposed to the esoteric,
     intellectual understandings and noblesse oblige feelings I had in
     “other people’s” struggles.

   The Personal Is Political (1969) by Carol Hanisch

   My own experience suggests that the personal being political is not
   merely a women’s issue. It is a human issue. I have come to think that
   the extent to which the personal is political is the extent to which an
   individual is subject to tyranny.

   If your church demands that you marry a person of the opposite sex
   regardless of your preferences, and engage in sex for the sole purpose
   of reproduction: that is the personal being politicized. When you are
   stopped by police and asked not merely to identify yourself but to
   explain where you had been and where you are going: that is the
   personal being politicized. When your employers tell you not to discuss
   your salary or whether you got a raise with coworkers: that is the
   personal being politicized. When people with no official authority give
   you shit because they don’t think you’re performing your assigned
   gender ‘correctly’: that is the personal being politicized. When your
   family demands that you pursue a particular career or follow the same
   life script they had followed, even if it no longer makes sense to do
   so: that is the personal being politicized.

   Even in the United States of America, a nation founded on the principle
   that all human beings are created equal and endowed with inalienable
   rights—among them the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of
   happiness—none of us are truly free. Each of us is subject to at least
   one of the five tyrannies of church, state, capital, society, or the
   family.

   This, as Ms. Hanisch noted in 1969, is not a personal problem amenable
   to personal solutions. For example, because Madam Catastrophy was born
   a citizen of Australia, it was more difficult than it might otherwise
   have been for us to marry. It was not enough merely to request a
   marriage license—itself an intrusion by the state in a personal
   matter—we were also obliged to secure permission from the US government
   for her to enter the United States for the purpose of marrying me.

   While we were able to navigate the system at considerable expense,
   enduring intrusive questioning and proving that our marriage was not
   merely one of convenience, our ability to successfully carry out the
   process was not a solution. The solution is for borders to be made as
   irrelevant to labor as they are to capital; if freedom of movement is a
   privilege reserved for the wealthy, then citizenship is mere serfdom.

   The liberalization of migration is not something any individual can
   accomplish on their own. Only by banding together and demanding change
   of our leaders, who derive their just powers from our consent to be
   governed, can we solve this problem.

   More generally, I have become convinced that the only way to
   depoliticize the personal is the outright abolition of every from of
   tyranny over the individual. This means the refusal of unchosen duties
   and ties. It means the shattering of unchosen bonds. Conservatives and
   communitarians would argue that you owe the world because you were
   brought into it. But if each of is is thrown into existence, and were
   offered no choice in the matter beforehand, then how can any claim on
   us imposed by others be justified?

   The world owes you nothing because it was here first? Fine. But you
   never asked to be here, so you owe the world nothing in return. I say
   this not to be edgy, but because I believe that freedom should not
   merely be a matter of existential philosophy. Only if one is truly
   sovereign, and subject to no arbitrary power, can one have a truly
   personal life.

   [FIN]

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