Today marks 237 years since the historic battles of Concord and Lexington, and the beginnings of the American colonies' war for independence from Britain.
When I first began this blog several years ago, I suppose I was one of those whom many people today sniff at as 'patriotards.' Being someone who often quoted the Founding Fathers, and who believed in the principles on which this country was founded, I admit I fell into that category, which is much despised by ethnonationalists and WNs today.
Things change, and people change with them. Now, when I read the 'mainstream' Republican or 'conservative' sites and blogs, I see only a lot of people who believe in the proposition nation, who naively think that we can simply follow The Constitution and mouth the patriotic mantras, and reverse the malevolent changes that have been wrought on us without our consent.
So, even to me, in 2012, the old American 'patriotism', which fetishizes a document and a set of ideas, is now in disrepute. The phrase 'patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel' should today be amended to say 'patriotism is the last refuge of a denialist.'
It's sad that it is so, but it is. When the Founding Fathers, who were the actual physical ancestors of many old-stock Americans, lived, the country was a real blood-and-kin nation, not merely a random collection of peoples from the four corners of the globe. Perhaps the Founders lacked foresight in that they didn't even conceive, I think, of a polyglot, multiracial country of strangers 'standing where it ought not', in the place of the country they lived in and fought for. They did not foresee that this country would ever welcome all and sundry, regardless of origin, religion, character, skills, and potential, to live here in this country. They thus didn't see the need to explicitly outline the need to keep this country what it was at its inception. So, slowly this country was shaped into something it was never intended to be, and the great error of today's 'patriots' who think they stand for 'conserving' this country, is that they fail to note the obvious fact that this country as it stands today is a changeling, not the country of our Fathers, not the land 'where my fathers died.'
The patriotism of the proposition nation crowd is not mine. My patriotism and loyalty is for my own people, those who constitute the 'posterity' of the Founders, for whom they said they created and defended this country. No one else.
Still, on days like this, I have to at least acknowledge the deeds of my ancestors (my maternal ancestors were there, at Lexington and Concord: the Parkers, Putnams, Poor(e)s, the Fryes, and many others. It's for them that I remember this day, and perhaps for the chance to remind us of what we once were, and what we should have been had our country not been pulled out from under us.
"My opinion with respect to immigration...is that, except for mechanics and particular description of men and professions, there is no use in its encouragement."- George Washington
''How prone all human institutions have been to decay; how subject the best-formed and most wisely organized governments have been to lose their check and totally dissolve; how difficult it has been for mankind, in all ages and countries, to preserve their dearest rights and best privileges, impelled as it were by an irresistible fate of despotism." - James Monroe, speech in the Virginia Ratifying Convention, June 10, 1788
