“In what is surely an “only in America” phenomenon, the most patriotic holiday of the year celebrates the overthrow of the government.”

Um, Bastille Day?

Unlike the French, we didn’t overthrow the British government, we won independence from it, and it went right on existing.

There was a Steve Allen show where gathered actors portraying characters from different historical eras and interviewed them like a talk show. His wife played Queen Marie Antoinette and the theme music the band played as she came out was the Marseillaises. She immediately began screaming at the band to stop playing the anthem of the murdering thugs that began the Reign of Terror.

“the question of when we reached that fork in the road and made a fateful turn.”

Sherman’s Burning of Atlanta works for me.

- and it went right on existing.-

Too damned easy on them then.
That’s we had to whup em again.

I think it was a slow death from 1850s to 1929 through state compulsory school attendance laws. According to John Taylor Gatto industrialist and socialist worked together to implement a caste system through schooling so an organized and orderly society could come into being ruled by the managerial class.

As Gore Vidal has said, we are no longer a republic. We traded this away for the illusion of security.

Judging from the scale of electronic and judicial vote stealing in the last two elections, we are not in any sense a democracy.

We are not even a ‘We’ because ‘we’ have long separated into irreconcilable camps.

We are fragmented beyond repair. Cheney laughs at our predicament.

We are no longer a nation.

I surely admire Bastille Day some more than 4. july. Today no constitutions mean anything any more, we have the global “free” dictatorship of the around 100 biggest transnational corporations, whose internal trade make up fifty percent of total global trade. That situation is surely very different from the times of George Washington, Voltaire and Rousseau. Even Poland or Prussia around 1830 were more openminded than the extremely narrowminded global dictatorship of our times, which is only obsessed with the next little dollar and emptying all earthly limited ressources as fast as possible, while producing enormous amounts of silly rubbish. They had censorship 1830, yes, because then words really meant something. Today “freedom of speech” means freedom for the chattering classes in societies where the powerholders know that they have nothing to fear. (They don’t know they should fear their own idiocy).

Face it, Justin. Nobody cares anymore. Freedom. Liberty. Republic. They have now
become quaint, almost archaic terms to describe values and ideals that we once
cherished but no longer value or feel any kind of affinity or longing anymore. Greed.
Lust. Money. Power. Those are the cherished beliefs and values of this generation
of Americans. This noble experiment of ours is finished and we will all be the losers
one day. Such is the way of all things.

July 4th should have been a big day in several other countries besides the U.S. The Neocon policies have put Iran in a dominating position if the Middle East and Tehran has yet to thank them for this service rendered to them. China made all the fireworks used here and also all the small flags patriotically waving by the exuberant Americans.

There is a vile threat to the ‘rugged American individualism’ which actually created the U.S.A., by the bureaucratic crowd who want society to be a convict prison. ‘Safety first’; there is no ‘social insecurity’, no ‘fear for the future’, no anxiety about what to do next - in Sing Sing. All the totalitarian schemes add up to the same in the end, and the approach is so insidious, the arguments so subtle and irrefutable, the advantages so obvious, that the danger is very real, very imminent, very difficult to bring home to the average citizen, who sees only the immediate gain, and is hoodwinked as to the price that must be paid for it.”

- Crowley

I know you aren’t a Crowley fan, Justin, but he had nothing but praise for Garet Garrett.

A pleasant surprise to see Garet Garrett evoked at Takimag--I was beginning to feel the site had irreparably degenerated into Limbaugh-praising nitwittery.

Walter has been expunges from Taki’s because he failed to kiss Zionist butt.  Just wondering if it is true for all writers.

“only in America”? What about the revolutionary war of Latin America to fight off the Spanish Empire?

And, by the way, the US has ALWAYS been an empire, in expansion since the revolution, taking over as much land as they could, and interfering and invading in as many countries as we could, from the Phillipines to Cuba and Puerto Rico, Panama, Grenada, Nicaragua, Dominican Republic, etc, etc etc.

Justin, I have always been, in spite of my best efforts, a flagrant heterosexual. I tried saving myself for the man I married, but she turned out to be a woman. What can you do in this crazy, mixed-up wor
ld?. Anyway I’d like to add that “gay marriage” is a threat to hetero marriage, and I am seeing init in my own little bee-loud glade, yes my very own wedded bliss is threatened by gay marriage!
Two guys moved into the house down the street and began renovations. That my wife would compare, and unfavorably, my efforts to prepare our little cottage for sale with theirs was only to be expected, but the axe fell last evening! As we drove past their house, and my darling helmeet noted the progress they had made on their retaining walls and garden, I heard her mutter “They’re right, those gay marriage people! I should have married a man! What can you do?

“the question of when we reached that fork in the road and made a fateful turn.”

Sherman’s Burning of Atlanta works for me.
Posted by nbf on Jul 06, 2008.

========

Yep, me too.

When the financiers and their Union minions turned the republic away from the Constitution, all was lost.

God Bless Dixie. Heads up, Yankees: The financial cabal that now runs the US from New Yawk has turned you into slaved.  Suck it up.