The meaning of “American”
I remember a couple decades back hearing that Marvel Comics was going to “reinvent” one of their staple characters, Captain America; basically update him for a new generation. Of course this raised questions like: What does Captain America actually stand for? and, What does it mean to be “American”?
It should be obvious that Captain America stands for America’s ideals and core identity—whatever those happen to be. It doesn’t matter that Steve Rogers was “just a kid from Brooklyn.” When he puts on that red, white, and blue suit, and picks up that shield with red and white roundels and the big white star—he no longer represents a borough in New York.
He represents these United States.
I’ve been pondering this ever since. No, not a superhero: what he stands for. Indeed, I take it so seriously that, while technically Canadian, I’ve started calling myself a “spiritual American.”
Which puts me in good company: the Founders were Americans in their hearts before they were American citizens. They stood for such principles as:
“The Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God”1
“Unalienable Rights” “endowed by [our] Creator”2—not by the State
The equality of all human beings, “a wholly new basis for legitimate government in the history of man”3
Fundamental Western freedoms of conscience, expression, and association—which undergird all others
The right to self-determination—not State determination4
The right of self-determining individuals to conduct trade without government interference
Self-reliance: it’s not “In Government we trust.”
When we think of “American values,” the above positives are usually what come to mind. Yet the Founders were also keenly aware—based on their Judeo-Christian worldview5—of a negative truth that must be acknowledged if freedom is to flourish: human beings are flawed, prone to evil, and therefore need governance.
But that blade cuts both ways: governments themselves, made up of ordinary human beings, are also prone to evil, and therefore must be severely limited. In the minds of the Founders, government exists primarily, if not exclusively, to maintain law and order and to safeguard (not “grant”) citizens’ freedoms. The genius of the Founders could therefore be summed up as: a balance of citizen and State responsibilities, with ultimate accountability to a sovereign Creator, thus maximizing liberty.
But there’s a catch. To paraphrase the famous Spider-Man slogan: With great freedom comes great responsibility.
“What constitutes an American?” asked Harold L. Ickes, Secretary of the Interior from 1933 to 1946.
Not color nor race nor religion. Not the pedigree of his family nor the place of his birth. Not the coincidence of his citizenship. Not his social status nor his bank account. Not his trade nor his profession. An American is one who loves justice and believes in the dignity of man. An American is one who will fight for his freedom and that of his neighbor. An American is one who will sacrifice. An American is one in whose heart is engraved the immortal second sentence of the Declaration of Independence.6
A real American, then, is a “conservative”: that is, one who conserves the above values.
But there’s another sense in which everyone is a “conservative”: everyone wants to see the culture reflect what they believe is true and good. This means that if the current so-called “progressives” get their way, they will then use brute force—a physical extension of the “cancel culture” we’re already seeing—to conserve their version of the “United States.”
And it won’t be anything like the United States you’ve known.
Midterm crisis
As with its superhero namesake, America is in the process—much more rapidly than anyone expected—of being reinvented; becoming an oppressive entity the Founders would not have recognized. Naturally we see this reflected in pop culture. Even back in 2006, director Bryan Singer dropped the famous motto “truth, justice, and the American way” from his film Superman Returns. Instead it was merely “truth, justice—all that stuff.”
I remember that ruffling some patriotic feathers at the time—but now we have Marvel Studios and actor Chris Evans discussing his possible return to the Captain America film franchise specifically because they are “concerned that the character . . . has been ‘stolen’ by conservatives,” and they want to “distance” him “from what they consider to be his ‘uncomfortable patriotism facets.’ ”7 Indeed, it’s been reported that Evans himself actually “ ‘loathes the portrayal of Captain America as an America First superhero.’ ”8
These examples are merely from the world of pop culture. But they illustrate a mentality that has become the controller of today’s Democratic Party.
You’ve seen what the Democrats have already tried to do, and have managed to do, since the 2016 federal election. I’m not writing this to defend Donald Trump, per se, but it’s patently obvious that his election was the metaphorical equivalent of tearing open a wall and catching a horde of termites in the process of destroying your home.
Those termites may live in your home—but they’re not part of your family.
America’s domestic enemies live within your crumbling borders—but they’re not truly part of the American family.
Typically, if you watch the White House press briefings, or listen closely when Democrats are asked direct questions, they’ll always talk up their alleged compassion for “the American people,” and insist that they’ve working on taking care of whatever the issue at hand may be.
Let's take the southern border crisis, for example. Talking points include:
The incursion of illegal aliens at the U.S.-Mexico border “happens every year.”—Joe Biden, 2021
“People are[n’t simply] walking across the border. We have a plan in place. . . . We are fixing a broken system that was actually left by the last administration.” — White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, August 2022
“These people are fleeing communism.”— Karine Jean-Pierre, September 2022
And, Jean-Pierre yet again: “We have solutions. We have brought solutions on day one of this administration. The president has been very clear [that] he put forth . . . a comprehensive immigration bill.”
She’s something, isn’t she?
Anyway, that's the Dems talking about it. Here they are “working on it”:
National Border Patrol Council President Brandon Judd said [on October 31] that Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei offered President Biden a chance to deport migrants before they even got into Mexico, but Biden refused. . . .
. . . “This administration is clearly set on allowing this to continue. . . .
“The president of Guatemala said, ‘All you have to do is provide us with planes, and we will deport them back,’ taking the burden off the United States altogether if we would have done that, but, this is something that the Biden administration has continued to refuse. All solutions, every single one of them that have been presented to this administration, they continue to refuse to implement—no new policies, no new programs,” he said.
And the Dems aren't just standing pat. Judd also revealed “that Border Patrol agents aren’t even patrolling the southwest border anymore, because they’ve all been assigned to ‘administration duties.’ ”
Meanwhile, FOX News reports:
Biden just unveiled yet another federal spending program. This border-blasting boondoggle handed $41 million to the Acacia Center for Justice to help illegal aliens fight deportation. Acacia is a partnership of Capital Area Immigrants’ Rights and the Vera Institute for Justice. The latter calls border enforcement a “threat” to civil liberties. [Italics added]
Arizona governor Doug Ducey opined: “The Biden administration’s lack of urgency on border security is a dereliction of duty.”
Oh, it's more than that.
Realistically, there can be only two logical possibilities:
Either they’re stunningly stupid; or—
They’re doing it on purpose.
And nobody’s that stupid . . .
I fully concur with Monica Crowley, former Assistant Secretary for Public Affairs for the U.S. Department of the Treasury: “This is all by design. It’s all going according to plan,” which is “to slam through their socialist agenda.”
My “fellow Americans,” it pains me to say it, but you’re well on your way to becoming a totalitarian state. You won’t find the following items in the Democratic national platform, but simply observing their behavior over time will tell you their real agenda:
Kill unborn babies and sexualize those children that manage to survive the prenatal stage
Raise taxes and weaken the economy
Diminish the military—but strengthen select law-enforcement agencies (especially the FBI) to police/harass conservatives rather than criminals
Suppress free speech
Take away your guns
Degrade/dissolve the borders, and treat illegal aliens better than actual citizens
Usher in China-style socialism as part of a supranational order, perhaps run by China itself, or by another entity such as the World Economy Forum
As to the last two points, remember part of the reason for borders: to mark a nation’s territory and legal jurisdiction. So it makes sense that if you want to dissolve the nation-state’s territorial jurisdiction, you’re going to dissolve the borders that demarcate it.
Obviously, the Biden regime isn’t going to tell you that, and therefore it seems just as obvious that Americans have a fifth column among them: domestic enemies, at the very highest levels, intent on transforming the nation into something the Founders wouldn’t recognize.
Or doing away with it altogether.9
The Democrats are “two votes away in the Senate,” says Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt Neil, “from adding states to the union, packing the Supreme Court, federalizing our elections, open borders and amnesty. They want to fundamentally change this country forever.”
Americans, you’re at a point where you need to channel your inner Francis Scott Key and decide if you’re still “the home of the brave.” This midterm represents a crossroad for the U.S. of A.:
Take back your country now, peaceably—or,
Have peace taken from you: either by totalitarianism or by civil war.
The second possibility would deprive the world of what is currently the only superpower standing in the way of coordinated global tyranny. Take the United States off the board as a roadblock to globalism, and, from a human standpoint—it’s checkmate.
America, we need you.
If you go down, we’re all going down.
The spirit of 1776
I said a moment ago that if your domestic enemies get their way, the Founders wouldn’t recognize the nation-state that results. But maybe I was wrong—because the United Soviet States of Amerika would just be an updated version of the kind of entity they and their fellow colonials rebelled against. A form of statism.
The fire of revolt was ignited when the Founders metamorphosed, unconsciously at first, from British colonists into spiritual Americans. They began to believe that they could launch the “last great experiment”10; erect the “city on a hill”11—a beacon of freedom unlike any the world had ever seen.
And one that the world may never see again if America’s domestic enemies take the midterm elections.
If that happens, then—given that radical Democrats consider January 6, 2021 to be on par with the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor—November 8, 2022, will be the new “date which will live in infamy.” And considering the long-term Democratic agenda, you'll wish “J6” had been an insurrection.
You may wake up to a living nightmare and realize you need an insurrection. Another 1776.
Please don’t let that dark day dawn.
Ron Paul has said, “America was founded by men who understood that the threat of domestic tyranny is as great as any threat from abroad.” I assume Paul was alluding to the rationale behind the Second Amendment—but the American Revolution was itself an uprising against domestic tyranny, given that before winning their independence the Colonies were part of Great Britain.
Therefore it can be argued that resisting domestic enemies is fundamental to the core American identity.
I want to be clear: I’m not calling on you, my American cousins, to take up arms against the insidious fifth-columnists. But I am urging you to revive the revolutionary spirit that has been your collective heart since 1776. “This isn’t the Wild West,” someone once told the fictional Jack Reacher. He replied: “You got that right. This is the timid West. We need to roll the clock back.”12
Seven months before the entry of the U.S. into World War II, Harold Ickes tried to tap into that spirit, on I Am An American Day:
Americans have always known how to fight for their rights and their way of life. Americans are not afraid to fight. They fight joyously in a just cause.
. . . . . . . .
. . . . What is convulsing the world today is not merely another old-fashioned war. It is a counter-revolution against our ideas and ideals, against our sense of justice and our human values. . . . It is a desperate struggle for the possession of the souls of men.13
The current situation facing America (and the world) is really just another manifestation of the same evil that threatened to swamp the globe in the early 1940s. This evil comes back again and again, and will continue to do so in cycles, until God sees fit to extinguish it once and for all.
My “fellow Americans,” you’ve taken a beating. But like the very conservative Captain America in the Marvel movies, you’ve gotta get back up, square yourself, look your enemy in the eye, and let him know: “I can do this all day.”
And you’d better. Because you’re citizens of a free republic only “if you can keep it.”
Will you . . . ?
†
The Declaration of Independence, 4 July 1776.
Ibid.
“Founding Principles,” The Claremont Institute (© 2016-2021), https://founding.com/the-declaration/founding-principles/ (accessed 5 Oct. 2022).
As long as that “self-determination” doesn’t harm others.
Even if not all of them were Bible-toting Christians.
Harold L. Ickes, ”What Is An American?“ (speech given on 18 May 1941), The History Place (accessed 5 Oct. 2022).
Spencer Baculi, “Rumor: Marvel To Bring Back Chris Evans As Captain America In Order To Distance Character From His ‘Uncomfortable Patriotism Facets,’ “ Bounding Into Comics (30 Aug. 2022; accessed Oct. 6).
Matt McGloin, “Marvel and Chris Evans Destroying Captain America,” Cosmic Book News (29 Aug. 2022; accessed Oct. 6).
The same applies to the Trudeau regime up here. Our “Dear Leader” has furnished ample evidence over the past near-decade that he’s a globalist at heart. But the problem for Western civilization as a whole is that Trudeau, Biden, and other Western officials share that mentality.
George Washington, letter to Catharine Sawbridge Macaulay Graham (New York: 9 Jan. 1790), Founders Online (accessed 5 Oct. 2022).
John Winthrop, “A Modell [sic] of Christian Charity“ (1630), Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston, 1838); Monica Banas, Hanover Historical Texts Collection (1996) (accessed 5 Oct. 2022).
Lee Child, Gone Tomorrow (New York: Dell/Random House, 2009, 2010), 430.
Harold L. Ickes, ”What Is An American?“ (speech given on 18 May 1941), The History Place (accessed 5 Oct. 2022) (emph. mine).