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This year’s Fourth of July arrives at a time of doubt and even disdain for our nation’s birth and foundational principles. For most of our history this day has celebrated the bold, epochal Declaration of Independence that staked a claim to self-government and freedom from the world’s most powerful empire. The nation that followed after eight years of war went on to become, and still is, the freest, most prosperous, and, for all its all-too-human betrayals of those principles, the most generous great power in all of history.
The heart of our affection does not come from blood and soil, but from truly revolutionary ideals expressed in the Declaration’s preamble: “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.” The new nation was created to “secure these rights,” not to bestow or create them, and it “derives [its] just powers from the consent of the governed.”
Such obvious truths, however, have been for decades contested by some of our country’s most privileged beneficiaries, and the patriotism that expresses our country’s goodness disparaged and mocked. In its place a fashionable oikophobia––the hatred of one’s country, principles, virtues, history, and the fellow citizens who still believe in our civic ideals and their goodness––preens morally and embraces the impossible utopias that such oikophobes promote.
Patriotism, the beating heart of our “unum” that binds the “pluribus,” is besieged at a time when we face dangerous developments like enormous debt, open borders, and assaults on our Constitutional order and Bill of Rights at home, and abroad totalitarian rivals “filled with passionate intensity” to supplant our global power, and diminish our freedom.
The story of patriotism’s decline begins over a century ago in Great Britain with the growing influence of Marxism, disaffection with the Empire, and citizen-of-the-world internationalism, particularly among the intelligentsia and cultural elites. The Great War that broke out in 1914 and ground on for four years of industrialized carnage, a slaughter of “lions led by donkeys,” confirmed for many of the disaffected that their country was irredeemably flawed and unworthy of affection.
It’s telling that the most famous work of literature to come out of the war is Wilfred Owen’s poem “Dulce et Decorum Est,” which calls patriotism “the old lie.” But other writers also rejected patriotism. H.G. Wells, one of the most popular writers not just in England, but also in the world, wrote against “the teaching of patriotic histories that sustain and carry on the poisonous war-making traditions of the past”––an early example of the “cancel culture” of today’s “woke” activists.
One of many cultural markers of this disdain for patriotism is the despicable statement made by novelist E.M. Forster, a member of the Bloomsbury group of countercultural writers, critics, and intellectuals that arose before World War I. Forster’s and the “Bloomsberries’” anti-patriotic sensibility is obvious in his famous statement, “If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope that I should have the guts to betray my country.” And he said this in 1939, when Great Britain was beginning the struggle against a monstrous totalitarian enemy that was stopped only because millions of men gave their lives to protect the freedom of juvenile narcissists like Forster.
This sensibility was widespread among intellectuals, causing George Orwell to observe in 1940 that “England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality. In left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman and that it is a duty to snigger at every English institution.” Worse, they were “trying to spread an outlook that sometimes squashily pacifist, sometimes violently pro-Russian, but always anti-British.”
Obviously, these attitudes affected morale during the interwar years and contributed to the popularity of appeasement, as Winston Churchill said in 1933: “Our difficulties come from the mood of unwarrantable self-abasement into which we have cast by a powerful section of our own intellectuals . . . . But what have they to offer but a vague internationalism, a squalid materialism, and the promise of impossible Utopias?”
Orwell’s and Churchill’s evaluations have turned out to be some of the best descriptions of our own country’s decades of anti-patriotic intellectuals, writers, and professors. And just as in England, Marxism has been the virus that has spread this dangerous fashion, especially among the so-called “woke.” Starting in the Twenties, variations of Marxist collectivism and anti-nationalism began to permeate American culture both high and low. The reason is obvious: The United States’ freedom, individualism, and entrepreneurial genius are all diametrically opposed to Marx’s “scientific history,” and collectivism’s bloody failures.
But this influence has been worsened by globalism and its specious cosmopolitanism and slandering of patriotism as parochial and small-minded, if not fascist. In contrast, the cognitive and cultural elites in many respects identify more with their fellow global elites than they do with their own fellow citizens, most of whom comprise Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” whom she smeared as “racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic.” Barack Obama scorned them as “bitter clingers to guns and religion,” FBI agent Peter Strzok as “smelly Walmart shoppers,” and Joe Biden as “semi-facists.”
To these self-styled sophisticates, the “deplorables” are the low-brow fans of monster-truck rallies, gun-fetishizing members of the NRA, knuckle-dragging church-going Bible-thumpers, and the xenophobic Pledge of Allegiance reciters, National Anthem singers, and flag-waving saps who believe in America’s exceptionalism, America’s freedom, America’s opportunity, and America’s essential goodness, even if, like all humans, we at times in our history have failed and fallen short of our ideals and principles.
But this oikophobia is dangerous. It has infected schools and universities, popular culture and corporate boards, high culture and government agencies. It has contributed to our military services falling short in attracting the recruits willing to fight, kill, and die that we need in a dangerous world of feral rivals who have no doubts or fashionable guilt or smug sophistication when it comes to achieving their aims at our expense.
Finally, this brief history of anti-patriotism, and the long record of its infiltration of the West mean that restoring patriotism and oikophilia will take a monumental effort, or perhaps a mind-concentrating catastrophe. But the worst slaughter on our soil in our history, the terrorist attacks on 9/11, inspired only a brief outpouring of patriotism and affection for our country. In less than a year, most of the flags had come down, and the narrative that our global offenses had brought upon us a justified retribution, once more dominated our public discourse.
But we still have much to celebrate this Fourth of July. Despite the assaults of the leftist “woke” on our freedoms and beliefs, the Constitutional order, battered as it is, still stands. The Bill of Rights still stands. And the divided government of checks and balances still guards our freedom, as this term’s Supreme Court has demonstrated in epochal decisions on abortion, affirmative action, and executive presidential and federal agency overreach. And regularly scheduled elections will still take place, and put in our hands the power to change course.
That alone is worth celebrating this Fourth of July.
oikophobia – I like it, kinda sums up the entire elitist movement from the UN down through government departments.
Have a great 4th July America.
It took several visits to your nation for this Brit to appreciate your values.
Spread the word. “Oikophobia.” It’s the basis of leftism.
Americans who consider themselves patriots should remember that we only salute one flag🇺🇸
Yes, ban Cinco de Mayo and all foreign flags in public. Levy fines on anybody caught with a foreign flag.
When I see this bullshit flag 🏳️🌈, I honor it in the same measure leftists honor my flag 🇺🇲
(The latest Shame flag I found came in handy when I ran outta toilet paper.)
Marxists are pretty good at destroying all that exists but at creating anything worthwhile, not so much. Only fools who are dedicated to destruction in the belief that it will bring about a fairytale utopia embrace it. Unfortunately, there seems to be a lot of such people.
Well said. I think my favorite quote attributed to Marx is “Everything that exists needs to be destroyed.”
Not only that but the lefties are selective about which features of Marxism they promote and practice. They love all the oppressive features but NONE of them are willing to share their wealth and property.
The fact that the grifting bitch Patrisse Cullers has about 3 or 4 mansions proves that your observation has merit.
The self declared Marxist even has one in Bel-Air.
Bernie Sanders has a few nice homes also, yet the fool has never worked a day in his life. (Guess he hasn’t run out of other people’s money yet.)
Mets return to Shea Stadium after 9/11, a memorable display of patriotism as it once was:
Time to remember that the U.S. Constitution is still the law of the land and that means we should withdraw from the United Nations and moved the whole lot to Moscow
Or send it to Brussels. Either city would be a good fit for the Useless Nations.
It was the Great Narcissist, Barack Hussein Obama, who explicitly rejected the idea of American Exceptionalism. Tellingly, his spouse Big Mike described his nomination as the first time (and no doubt the LAST) in her life she felt any pride in being an American. As president, the smug elitist banned the terms “Islamic terrorism” or “Islamic extremism” and described the Fort Hood Massacre as “workplace violence”, implied that Omar Mateen, who perpetrated the Pulse Nightclub Massacre was a twisted closet case, rather than a jihadist whose mosque (the largest in central Florida) featured an iman who said unequivocally during a television interview that gays should be killed. When Jews were murdered at a kosher supermarket in Paris, he described it as “a random attack” targeting “some folks who wanted to eat at a deli”. He went on his “World Apology Tour” culminating in his visit to Havana, where he got to hobnob with real Communists and have a giant image of Che Guevara as a backdrop.
Although Obama’s election was supposed to herald a “post racial America”, Obama engages in race baiting that would do Al Sharpton or BLM proud any time anyone has the temerity to question his wisdom and brilliance.
That’s a perfect description of the Imam in Chief’s jihad to empower islam around the world.
Very well said – and he’s apparently serving his 3rd term.
As I see the supposed smart set among the left, always seeking to destroy the freedom of the West, and especially the freedoms gained in the American Revolution, I remain proud to know that I have at least two ancestors who soldiered in the interest of America. One of them spent that one winter at Valley Forge. This, in addition of the cousins, near and distant who are in the history books. And naturally, the leftist hates them.
But – who gives an damn about the feelings of these people, and their endless struggle? I do not, and let us hope there will always be enough who do not as well. The leftist is wrong, hateful and never to be given power.
Happy July 4th in this 247 year since 1776.
TO AMERICA ON JULY 4
May you awake as your last hour
Ticks away a world that history
Will not recall except tp yearn.
May you find in the memory
That HERE the rights of man were born
The will to lift, at last, the light
Of reason– ever sentinel
Against the blind, despotic night.
And may you cry, as shadows come
Onrushing, how mankind saw
The kneeling rise– their sacrament
Nature alone and nature’s law–
And size, upon these shores, the prize
That man shall live by right, not leave
Of priest or king or mob of men
In guises power lust may weave.
May you call Enlightenment’s sons
From banishment and they again
Proclaim rebirth of mankind’s last,
Best hope. May freedom ring out, then,
Against sly tyranny that lusts
To forge our chains, those chains be hurled
To damnation everlasting
From the bitter shores of the world.
May no year come but skies this night
Explode with freedom’s grand old light.
-Walter Donway
You’re the only other person I know of who’s described leftists as the oikophobes they are, Thornton. It’s an obscure word but everybody who encounters the word “oikophobia” and learns what it means should do their best to teach it to others. It describes leftists to a T. Not only do they hate their heritage, culture and country but all the “woke” social policies they promote and impose are deeply anti-American, and in many cases, anti-Humanity. Oikophobia is the basis of leftism, no doubt about it.
Spread the word, people.
It’s a good word for the leftist. Yes, hatred of one’s own culture and country, but (from experience) I would suggest this love of the other tends to be a rather thin thing. At least, it is liking the other as grease for their true love – destruction.
I refuse to fly the Stars & Stripes at my house any longer… this is not the America my family fought and died for!
My flag of choice for patriotic holidays is the Gadsden Flag…
There is much good in Thornton’s sentiments, but I cannot, at present, say that we have elections to empower the people. We do not. The first plank of the coup d’stat of 2020 was wholesale election fraud and enforcement of Ruling Party dictatorship in the actions of Vice President Pence, Mitch McConnell, and a whole host of collaborationist Republicans who joined the Ruling Elite Democrats. We have not disempowered the frauds in the Democrat cities, and the formula can be worked until the resistance is broken. Something MORE must be done. Will it be done? That is the question of the hour.
Thoughtful article, but the summary at the end of the article of good things that are still intact in the USA is a very fragile list, not one we can build hopes upon. The patient is terminal in the hospital and only a miracle can save him. The patient is the socio-political existential reality of the USA.
Freedom comes from God not the government. John Adams said “Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” The disgusting things we see now show us how far the nation has fallen from grace, and embraces depravity, lawlessness, and corruption.