Soldiers heading towards Omaha Beach.
When I was in grade school the teachers spoke of the Constitution with reverence. As second graders, we listened as the teacher told the story of how it was written and the freedoms it guaranteed us and the responsibilities that it demanded of us. My grade school teachers were all married women, and they loved America. It was a small town, and the teachers had grown up in the area. Some of them had taught their own children and their own grandchildren in the same school where the chalkboard dust, lead paint dust, water from lead-soldered pipes, and asbestos floor tiles soaked into my skin daily. Even the early reader books were taped together with yellowing cellophane tape at the bindings, and most of the books had been printed decades before. I got to See Spot Run like legions of boys before me, running my fingers over the same dog-eared pages that had been read for years, young mouths quietly sounding out the words.
And these boys before me, who had sat in the same desks, drew beginning math on the same blackboards, pulling chalk from the same worn, wooden tray that I did, got paddled in the same principal’s office that I did. They had traveled the world to strange places that their teachers never named when they opened the geography books during the time they spent in second grade. These were places with foreign names like Guadalcanal. Bastogne. Chosin Reservoir. Da Nang.
One of these boys in particular, a blonde haired young Ranger, was barely eighteen when he was shot climbing the cliffs at Pointe Du Hoc on the sixth of June, 1944. His sister was a friend of my father. As a young boy that Ranger sat in that same room, learning the same math decades before I was born. He sat in that same classroom just a few short years before he was buried in Normandy in late spring at the age of 18. No member of his family could afford to visit his grave until over fifty years had passed and his sister walked to his grave and touched its cold marble stone and ran her fingers over his name. Despite that, the young Ranger isn’t lonely – he is surrounded by 9,387 of his comrades who died during the invasion of France.
Rangers climbing Pointe du Hoc.
The teachers, those mothers, in the distant past had taught the children the value of patriotism. The value of the Constitution. The belief that freedom was a great gift from both God and our forefathers and was an idea and an ideal worth fighting for was taught to them in school and in church. Those boys who travelled far wearing Army green, Navy blue, the camouflage of the Marines, and eventually Air Force blue were mainly the sons of farmers, used to hard work that started early in the morning and sometimes went too far into the night when the cows were calving. The things that they were told that were true were God, freedom, family, and country and that you always had to work hard for these things, and sometimes you had to fight for them. And sometimes die for them.
Even the cartoons as I was growing up were infused with patriotism:
Corny? Yes.
The school was torn down some time ago – I don’t know when. A bond issue was finally passed, and a new school was built. There aren’t many more students than when I went there, but there are new classrooms. These new schools are gleaming with whiteboards and new furniture and new books, and from the pictures you can see that the kids look a lot like the kids from when I went there; but the connection with 100 years of history went when the building was torn down.
Change is inevitable, but the one thing that my teachers taught us was that the Constitution was a rock, something special, something that every American had shared for hundreds of years. It was important, and it protected us, and protected our freedom.
I believed that, the way the boys that live forever on Pointe du Hoc did.
Ladders used to scale Pointe du Hoc.
Today, however, the population of the United States is at least 14% foreign born, but I’d bet that number undercounts illegal aliens. Second generation Americans, people born here of immigrants, account for at least 10% of the population. A quarter of the population of this country simply has no connection to anything American. 10% were born here, but were raised in a household that had little to no connection to anything American.
I was working in Houston on one particular job, often late into the night. The cleaning crew came in after 8 PM, and I was often still there. I’d taken Spanish in school, and would share a sentence or two with the very nice cleaning woman who came by. She spoke no English. One day I asked her, in Spanish, “Why don’t you learn English?” I realized that this nice person would have no chance to move up, no way to take part in the economic miracle that is the United States without English.
“Es muy dificil.” It’s too difficult.
The cleaning woman is very nice, but has no connection in any meaningful way to the United States. I’m sure she’s had children by now as 21% of children in the United States have foreign-born mothers. Her children likewise have had no part in building this country and have no reverence for the principles of its founding, or the sacrifices made along the way to create freedom. This is similar to me if I moved to say, England, or Denmark. I love England. I love Denmark. I’m ethnically related to those areas and admire both cultures.
If I moved to England I’d always be the Yankee. Or Amerikansk in Denmark. My kids, even if I had kids there, wouldn’t be English. They wouldn’t be Danish. They’d be the “kids of that American that lives here.” Maybe if my kids were born there, and then worked hard to assimilate away from the American attitudes and culture of their parents, then they one day the kids they had would be considered English or Danish. I’m an American, a product of American culture and no citizenship documents will ever change that.
25% of the people in the United States, however, simply aren’t American by any sort of rational criteria. One out of four – an amazing number and a number that is going to grow based on current trends and census data, perhaps to one in three by 2060. The United States has never had such high numbers of foreign born in history.
As these numbers grow, the electorate changes to an electorate that has no history of a representative democracy – most people coming to the United States are from places where elections are not free and fair, and in many cases the politicians from those countries are so corrupt to make Illinois look like a Boy Scout® camp. These are also places where constitutions are meant not for the people, but for the state, and are changed out with stunning regularity, often accompanied by firing squads and atrocity. They expect better here, but they also are ready-made for the politicians that promise them the world.
The political class, however, is excellent at creating and playing on resentment in new immigrants with no history of good government. Division is the strength of these politicians. “Why do these people have a say as to who is an American?” “Abolish ICE.” “You deserve free education, free healthcare, free housing, free food.” “Living wage for all.” “Common sense gun laws.” Thankfully, native language broadcasting is available to all of these new residents and new citizens so that they can avoid assimilation into the culture.
These residents also don’t have teachers that teach that the United States is good, that the Constitution is a meaningful document – times have changed and that just isn’t the “woke” take. They don’t get any of this from their family, either. Their family simply doesn’t know anything about freedom and the Constitution in most cases, and probably wouldn’t care if they did. It’s a document that foreigners put together – it is not part of their history at all.
Pointe du Hoc, after it had been taken.
As I said, I had faith in the Constitution. It was a great wall that both defined and constricted government, but in recent decades “rights” have been made up from layer after layer of interpretation that have nothing to do with the original text. On the other hand, rights that are written about clearly in plain language are somehow interpreted to be so limited that they hardly exist at all. But there are still some protections that exist, as long as there’s a majority of five to four. Change that number? Watch those liberties evaporate as Justices that admire the constitution of South Africa, the one that’s being interpreted to allow the theft of land, become a majority.
If we have politicians that actively create divisions between Americans with a heritage of limited government and an increasing number of people for whom the history of the United States means nothing, the Constitution won’t mean anything. It will be a speed bump for those who have no connection to it and who have no love of it. The Constitution in the hands of those who hate the limitations it puts on them will, in the long run, provide no safety at all as it is interpreted away, as the press revolts against it, and as the newly imported electorate ignores it.
And what meaning will the blonde Ranger of Pointe du Hoc have then?
You know things are bad when there are only 3 websites on the entire Internet that allow free speech.
Couldn’t someone start a free speech forum?
Constitution was dead with the Act of 1871 when the Republic became a corporation by slight-of-hand.
The change to allow perpetual corporations was a big negative for freedom – all the rights but none of the responsibilities of an individual. When was the last time a corporation was sent to prison? Or broken up?
Freezoxie ( https://friends.freezoxee.com/ ) is one such forum.
The US Congress is/are the haters of the Constitution. Look at all the dual citizens of the US and Israel, in Congress. They require a signed OATH of allegiance to Israel OVER the USA! Look at all the members of the US Socialist Party in Congress! Look at all the calls from Congress Critters to destroy the 2nd Amendment. Forget folks from other nations, we have TRAITORS right here, right now in CONGRESS!
Dual citizenship should be illegal – your US citizenship should be forfeit the second you have more than one. If it means so much to you that you have to keep it? It’s a divided loyalty. ESPECIALLY in Congress and as any elected, appointed, or employee of any governmental entity requiring an oath to the Constitution.
Not that I have strong feelings about that.
You ask, “And what meaning will the blonde Ranger of Pointe du Hoc have then?”
No need for the then. It’s over. We’re never going to be what we once were. The demographic change our ratbastards in DC wanted is only going to accelerate. The mind numbing propaganda celebrating diversity is pumped across every effing form of communication. It’s the same sort of propaganda that is being used on our children that portrays gun owners as not just unusual but evil.
They know the argument with people like us over gun control is hopeless but they intend to cut the legs out form under us in this fashion. Luckily(or sadly) for both of us, the trees they’re planting won’t bear fruit while we’re alive. They know they can’t defeat us in a shooting war so they just pour in our replacements and wait for us to die.
If it gets hot soon is actually the one slim hope we have because in 20 more years, a whole ‘nother set of faces will be running this shit show.
If we don’t have unity of purpose in some fashion as a nation . . . we’re not a nation. Diversity is looking for ways we are different, not ways that we can work together. But diversity worked pretty well for the Romans when they invited the Goths in, amiright?
I think not. The consistent error of the Left has been spiking the ball tooooooooo early. They won’t wait.
The USA is dying.
And it won’t be saved.
Not with frowny faces it won’t!
The Missus and I enjoy going to baseball games in the summer, and we have season tickets to the local minor league club. There are lots of rituals in baseball, and at the start, standing for the National Anthem is a big one. This used to be a happy moment for me, as I silently listened and thought of the great struggles and tragedies suffered by those who built this amazing nation, much like your thoughts about the boy at Pointe du Hoc and all the other kids who passed through that school. I was often overcome with gratitude and wonder at what has been given us.
But lately, the last few years, my thoughts as I stand there have become sad and melancholy as I sense we are on the precipice, and inching ever closer to losing this great country. I sometimes find myself forcing my thoughts to inane, stupid things, just so I don’t end the National Anthem blubbering like an old fool.
I want to think there’s hope for us still, but at this point I just don’t know.
And that is the crux of it? Will we go gentle onto that goodnight? There’s a great comment down below that addresses that. Oh, wait, it’s by YOU!!!!
The USA will end with a whimper,
Not a bang.
That sir, is a work of art. So many of us, and there are many, see things the same way you do. Is that great document worth fighting and dying for? I think so.
Generations of Americans have felt so. I do.
And thank you for the kind words.
Many people talk about revering and protecting the Constitution but they seem to have missed the reality we live in. The Constitution only means what any given judge with a lifetime appointment says it means at that moment. Already we are seeing Democrat presidential candidates leaving the door open to pack the Supreme Court by adding enough justices to swamp the justices Trump is nominating and when you add in the demographic changes it looks like we are on an irreversible course toward something pretty ugly.
And that’s the sticky wicket. Freedom has to win every time. Tyranny only has to win once. Then, as Aesop notes, we have to shoot our way to an uncertain victory.
Sadly, we seem to enjoy this downward slope . . .
I agree wholeheartedly! But I think we are nearing the time when we need to invoke that even older foundational document of our nation, The Declaration of Independence, particularly the line that reads: “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.”
I ask you, who love America (and I differentiate America as our nation and “The United States” as that incorporated monolithic government, federal or otherwise, that is destroying our freedom and culture) what will it take to issue the call to action for you? Murder of the innocent? The censorship of free speech? The stripping away of private firearms ownership? The mass importation of illegals? The falsifying of election results? If any of those things are what it takes we are either there or almost there! Only 3% of people living in colonial America took up arms to set this great nation free from tyranny. But it takes 100% of Americans to do nothing to watch it slide slowly back into a bondage that will never release it’s grasp.
It’s that slow slide – like Janis said, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose. But we like garage door openers and blenders and Netflix . . .
Great post.
Thank you, kind sir.
Words, writ or spoke, carry meaning to readers and listeners. The Constitution of these united states of America is short and clear… including the Bill Of Restrictions on the government agents.
Although I have little interest in organized religions, they occasionally offer morsels of intelligence for me to contemplate. One example is the Book Of Acts Of The Apostles in the myths of the jewish religion.
The heritage of the recent word ‘acts’ is from the ancient Greek ‘praxis’ == putting your lessons and words into practice or action.
Mister Wilder, thank you for today’s sobering examination of the American culture. I feel a strong need to
The US government is a religion.
It was established as a Hebrew theocracy.
“One example is the Book Of Acts Of The Apostles in the myths of the jewish religion.”
You proudly display your ignorance and disdain for Christianity, the bedrock of our nation.
Christians are pagans that worship the evil false god of Abraham and it’s obvious that the US is a Christian/Jewish/Muslims nation because it is the most murderous nation on Earth.
am i wrong to presume you recreationaly partake in THC consumption as often as possible?
(ha!)
As do I. I think we should
The Constitution was murdered by the Democrats in 1933. The final nails in the coffin of our Republic were hammered by the Democrats in 1965 (immigration act, civil rights act). Everything since then has been the writhing of a slowly rotting corpse.
The Constitution is fatally flawed. Obviously so. If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be having this discussion, and there wouldn’t be 30-40 million illegals living on our land. What is the flaw? The Constitution has no penalty clause.
Well, there is that treason clause. It’s just been re-interpreted to not mean anything. Multiple congresscritters, governors, and other officials of the United States and the several States are openly putting foreigners above American citizens. What’s the word for that . . . starts with a T . . . rhymes with season?
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious People. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” – John Adams
“Of what form is the new government?”
“A republic. If you can keep it.” – Benjamin Franklin
I was gonna throw in the Adams quote – but it got LAAAATE when I wrote it so my bleary eyes forgot to. Adams and Aesop, both right!
Lysander Spooner wrote:
Whatever you may think of Spooner, that logic is difficult to refute: we do, in fact, have a tyranny in Mordor, D.C., growing at the rate of a stage 4 melanoblastoma; and at the same time we have, theoretically, a constitution. I think that constitution is fundamentally flawed. But even if a perfect constitution existed, it would still be a document. A collection of words. How can a document be self-enforcing?
I’m afraid that the only effective guardian of the liberties of a free society is the willingness of the members of that society to fight to preserve those liberties. Obviously, that willingness is absent. Thought experiment: somehow time-transport Patrick Henry from the late 18th century to today and let him try to walk through an American airport. Pretty sure blood would be spilled, and quickly.
So, what is wrong with us? (And I write “us” appropriately; I’m not out leading a revolution.) Complete cowardice seems an unlikely explanation. Lulled by material comforts, chained by little luxuries? Might be. Unable to think, because nearly all of us spend huge amounts of time gaping at the telescreen? That might be on point.
I’m not claiming to have either an explanation or a remedy. I do say we have to be willing to think about these things in complete honesty, and not comfort ourselves with nostalgia for something that never really was, nor worship any idol such as a political arrangement.
“What is wrong with us?”
1. We have everything.
2. We think it was always this way.
3. We think it will be this way forever.
++
As a descendant of Patrick Henry (my aunt told me so), I feel compelled to write stuff like this. But when you look at the freedoms lost in just one lifespan due to political meanderings and the need to make rules to make illegal things no decent American would do even if there wasn’t a law, well, we’ve reached the “if it’s legal, it’s moral” and “everything that isn’t prohibited is mandatory.”
I’m not trying to make people comfortable with nostalgia – I’m trying to show what we’ve lost.
No change happens from comfortable people. (Steve is right.)
Spooner was an illogical moron preaching fluent codswallop.
His stupidity is rather easy to refute.
Anyone not bright enough to spot the logic explosion in his nonsense is rather too short for the Internet.
The Constitution neither authorized the present form of our governance, nor was ever intended to prevent what we have now.
It’s like claiming the gun was at fault when the man who owns one is nevertheless robbed and killed.
Or the dumbfounded idiot who sees the smoldering ash heap left of his burned down house, and says “But this cannot be! I had a fire extinguisher…”
Show your work, or give up that line of non-sequitir nonsense.
It sounds clever, but it’s really just bad stand-up comedian sophistry.
Repeating it merely illustrates the depths of descent of the average person’s powers of reasoning.
There is a rather massive flaw in our governance.
It isn’t particularly hard to spot.
You won’t find the root of it anywhere within the sparse language of the Constitution.
I haven’t spotted the flaw yet, but i have very little free time with which to search? Maybe that might make a good posting for your next blog? …and on that note, i’ve been unable to visit your blog… i was a little worried at first, but my employer website AND googe maps appear down, so that was a little bit reassuring…
Apparently, the refutation is so easy that it’s been left as an exercise for the student. Sorry, but it’s clear that I’m way too short for the internet. Please, O Sage With the Excellent Manners, will you not enlighten this poor ignorant one?