A July 4th Message to my American Friends

I receive the Future of Freedom Foundation’s daily message, and today it said:

Yesterday, the greatest question was decided which ever was debated in America, and a greater perhaps never was nor will be decided among men. A resolution passed without one dissenting colony, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States. – John Adams, Letter to Abigail Adams [July 3, 1776]

And then I looked at the preamble of your US Constitution (1788):

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, …

And I stopped right there. How did “free and independent States,” in just 12 years, turn into “a more perfect Union?” Is that not exactly the same ploy that the EU has used to try to force people in Europe into “an ever-closer Union?” When, back in 2004, I looked at the then proposed “European constitution” (which became the Lisbon Treaty), what I wrote about its very first sentence was:

"Reflecting the will of the citizens and states of Europe to build a common future." Is this not pre-judging the question? We have not been asked.

My American friends, this July 4th, amid the fireworks and the military parades, I think you need to ask yourselves some questions. Is what you have today what your Founding Fathers intended? If no, what went wrong? Who did it? (Alexander Hamilton, I’d guess). How do you get yourselves out of the resulting mess? And how can you prevent such a thing recurring in the future?

While we your friends across the pond are struggling for Brexit, I think you should turn your minds to your own situation. Some of the needed monikers are obvious – Massexit, Calexit (good riddance! some will say) and Nebrexit, for example. Others are more obscure.

I once wrote a (very poor) article, which nevertheless had a great title. “I love Americans, but I hate America.” What I hate about America is its warfare state, and its disesteem for anyone who steps out of line in any way. But many years ago, I lived in Boston for four months and in suburban Chicago for a year. In between the two, I bicycled coast-to-coast, entering the US in Maine and finishing in California. Almost everyone I met, of all races, was good and kind to me. And since then, I have met, and learned much from, many fine human beings, who also happened to be Americans.

I didn’t plan to say anything about Donald Trump in this missive. But I will. If I had to rate Trump as the good, the bad or the ugly, I’d pick ugly. He’s done good things, and bad things. At least, he’s an order of magnitude less evil than the alternative would have been.

So, I’ll say again: I love Americans, but I hate America.