America

Earlier today I read a blog entry from an earnest conservative fellow who lamented that he just couldn't love his own country's flag anymore. I sympathize. I understand the feeling, and especially this:

there is no way to determine which concepts are being espoused by a simple rag on a stick. I see that flag in the background behind our Marxist president every time he gives a speech! Has it been irredeemably soiled by the likes of O and his cabal of heathens. I do not pretend to have the answer. But I do expect that someday, when my resistance switches from the mere utterances of my mouth to the acts of my hands, I will see that same flag flown by those who intend to kill me.

I know I don't go on about Obama as much as would please a lot of conservatives, because I don't think Obama is the problem. Obama is only a symptom of the problem. Bush the Younger wasn't any friend of freedom, and too many conservatives defended him and turned a blind eye to his damned abuses. But I think this guy is finding his way out of the left/right false dichotomy. He's starting to get it.

But there's a terrible sadness involved in that. When you lose somebody you love, or lose something in your life that you depended on, you never completely get over it. In my case, the one I lost was America. People go on about "loving America," and I can't do that anymore. My America is dead; it's been dead since before I was born though it took me an awful long time to give up trying to find its pulse. The shambling monster I find in its place isn't anything I can love.

People keep asking me if I love America. I don't even know what America is anymore. The government? Tyrants. The citizens? Contemptible sheep, most of them. The land? Well, I was born here and don't plan to leave, but while I'll fight for my own property I don't know how to love millions of square miles of dirt - especially when most of it's owned by the aforementioned tyrants. I love the idea of America. But that idea was betrayed so long ago it's just a legend now. Maybe it's a myth. In the original America I was taught about when I was a little kid, how could creatures like Alexander Hamilton and John Marshall ever find positions of power? Why did Thomas Jefferson, who always had such beautiful things to say about liberty and freedom, have such a hard time living up to them when he was in charge - as with Claypool's Rebellion and the Embargo Act? Maybe all that "freedom and liberty" stuff was really just a lie we were taught in second grade, like Washington and the cherry tree. Maybe we've been royally screwed from the beginning.

I don't know. Certainly I do know that I've lost all faith in this nation. By which I mean the government, of course. It acknowledges no responsibility toward me, but I'm supposed to believe that I'm responsible to it down to the last penny it cares to take. I don't understand that attitude. If I'm a free man, why am I not free to opt out of any relationship I don't approve of and never consented to in the first place? If I'm not free to opt out, how am I not a slave? I'll never bear any love toward anyone who considers himself my owner. If you want to give me orders, Bubba, show me the money. Don't even try to tell me you get to order me around and I have to pay you for it. Because that's not going to happen.

Me, I'm loyal to myself, my friends, and what close family I still have. "The Country," whatever it is, can go hang.