It was a good Fourth of July.
As usual, folks came over to our house and we threw some stuff on the barbeque and blew some other stuff up in the street in front of our house. On other nights, our neighbors that sort of thing (not the grilling, the explosions); tonight, they hung out on their front porches with their children and grandchildren and enjoyed the show.
So was this patriotic? Someone quoted someone’s line about “celebrating America by blowing up a small piece of it.”
If I were patriotic, I hope I’d be the kind of patriot Julia is.
You may be one of those ancestors yourself.
Anyway, if you’re here, somewhere in your blood is the blood of someone with a lot of guts.
Julia’s essay is smart and compassionate, the best kind of tough-minded liberalism. (That, by the way, is the phrase that Dean or Kerry or whomever should begin endlessly parroting to the press: “tough-minded liberalism” is the soundbite rejoinder to “compassionate conservatism”). It shows that being patriotic isn’t dumb, and it isn’t right-wing; it’s American, in the best sense of the word.
Or so I assume, although to tell the truth I have no feeling for what the “best sense” of the word American is. Julia’s essay is patriotic, and a well-written essay about patriotism means no more to me personally than a well-written essay about breathing water.
I’m not going to argue that patriots are stupid. I think patriotism is a lot like religion, y’know? Some awfully smart people are religious, and so I don’t go around claiming that religion is for the stupid. But I fundamentally don’t get it. Whatever thing some people have which makes them worship and love a benevolent sky-god they haven’t even seen, I lack it.
Similarly, whatever it is that makes people love their country, or proud to be American – I don’t have it.
It’s a mystery to me. How can anyone love a country? It’s a thing, an organization of people. You might as well profess love for the National Association of Vending Machine Distributors.
Of course, I can see loving the things a country represents. You know, liberty, freedom, that sort of thing. But the US doesn’t have a monopoly on these things. As far as I can tell, the citizens of other industrialized democracies are pretty much as free as we are. Sure, we could nit-pik over the details, but on the whole the residents of Canada and Demark aren’t exactly bent under the yoke of tyranny.
On September 11th, when I first heard about the attacks, I didn’t believe it. (Collapsed? How could the World Trade Center have collapsed? I used to spend my lunch breaks on top of the WTC. My parents have an office in the WTC. How could it have collapsed?) After that, I just wanted to make sure my parents and other folks I knew were safe (they were, knock wood).
Once the reality sank in, I was sad for the people that died. But I wasn’t sad for America. And I was no sadder for the folks who died in the WTC than I have felt for other innocent people murdered around the world. A dead American is sad, but no sadder than a dead African, a dead Arab, a dead Israeli.
Then the flags popped up, like daisies suddenly everywhere. (At my workplace, a pretty building that is rented out for weddings and concerts, a large flag was placed to the side of the stage. It is discreetly tucked out of sight for weddings in which the brides’ color scheme contrasts with the red, white, blue). Patriotism became representative of a certain ideology, and that ideology is right-wing. Some left-wingers argued, eloquently, that patriotism is found on both sides of the political center.
Whatever. It may be found on the left and the right, but it’s not found in me. America is a country. It’s where I was born. I love American food, but if I had been born in Greece I’d love Greek food instead. I think some Americans have done some things awfully well: I love certain American musicals and American comic strips. American feminism is great, and so is the American anti-racist movement.
On the other hand, I often hate American foreign policy, our voting system is awful, and our Democracy is dominated by money above all. And all these problems are to a great extent locked in place by our Constitution. There’s a lot that’s wonderful in our history (read Howard Zinn), but also a lot that’s shameful, and you know what? I can’t take pride or shame in any of it, because I wasn’t around then, and I’m not the author of the good or the bad things those folks did.
What’s good about the USA is that it gives a lot of people (although not all) who live here a chance to work and live and eat and laugh and hang with friends and get political and fuck and cook and write and draw and dance and watch TV and play music and marry and argue and raise children and vote and go to movies and swim and pray and joke and get together for a holiday once in a while, in which we throw some food on the grill and step outside to watch the pretty fireworks.
That’s what life is about. That’s what matters. What some people who died long before I was born named the patch of dirt I live on while I do those things doesn’t matter much.
I admit, I’m lucky/privileged/spoiled to have been born in a country (and into a class) in which I’m able to do all that (and better yet, take all that for granted). But the US is hardly unique. I’m pretty sure that even in an evil, enemy country like France, folks dance and laugh and hang out with their friends, too.
I don’t love my country. If Evil France somehow took us over in a bloodless coup tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind, so long as our same basic individual rights continued. (In fact, I’d be better off after the coup, since I’d presumably have access to medical care I need).
Don’t get me wrong – I’d naturally be concerned about and object to France’s imperialism, since imperialism is in my view a bad thing. But that there was no longer a country called “United States” wouldn’t bother me at all. Freedom has value. Laughing and hanging out with friends has value. What we call the patch of dirt we laugh on is irrelevant.
UPDATE: Blueheron, who was one of the folks who came to our house on the 4th of July, writes in his 4th of July post:
Amp, I am wondering: Have you ever traveled out of the country? Have you ever traveled in developing countries? When I was younger, and before I had traveled extensively, I felt much like you did. But the more I traveled and the more I really got a sense of other cultures, the more I realized that US culture does have a unique contribution to make [for good and ill]. There are some things I *am* extremely proud and grateful to be a US citizen for. Of course there are other things that I am sickened and ashamed of as well. But there is no doubt in my mind that the US is one of the most free places on the planet and there are a set of liberal democratic values that are uniquely expressed here.
Hi ibyx, I for my part not only travelled out of the country, I lived for twenty years in Europe (yeah I’m that old), with over a year in four different European countries (the UK, France, Germany, Italy), and you’ll have to tell me more about how our set of liberal democratic values are unique. Perhaps you missed them on your tour.
I lie somewhere between Amp and Julia. The US is great and I love it. I also love, for instance, the four other countries I lived in. My heart swells when I hear the Marseillaise, as it does to the Star Spangled Banner (two great anthems).
I think, ibyx, you’re confusing abstract “America” with America’s policies. Like Amp said, we certainly have some great policies, and we certainly have some terrible policies. But that doesn’t make America in and of itself good, or bad, or anything.
America is pretty hard to define, which is why I have trouble being “patriotic.” It’s a conglomeration of a bunch of things, people and policies and philosophies and lifestyles and laws… I can’t lump them all together and say, “Hooray for America!” any more than I can put nutrition and exercise and disease and genetics together and say, “Hooray for health!” It just doesn’t make sense to me.
But I, too, love fireworks, especially the loud ones and, this year, the glittery-waterfall ones. I wish we could have them in the spring or fall, though, when there aren’t so many damn mosquitoes.
Me too, Amp. Although, having lived in an extremely right-wing “community” from age 9 to the end of high school, I always find overt patriotic displays a bit scary. And I saw the flags sprouting up after 9-11 as ominous as hell.
Anyways, after way too long in Taiwan, I have had more than my share of things blowing up, thank you, and I spent my fourth the way I used to spend Chinese New Year: with the doors shut tight, and the radio cranked up (Afro-Cuban jazz on KPFK).
FYI, this is the second entry of yours that I’ve referenced on my blog, and for some reason my pings time out. So you have a Trackback, even if it doesn’t show up. Thanks.
Thanks for the heads-up, Hope. It is showing up in trackbacks now. And yeah, I’m kinda expecting rotton tomatoes too :-)
Me, I wouldn’t mind a one-world system…….
I like our flag (when flown as a flag on a building), but post-9/11 flagwaving creeps me out too. The Chinese New Year’s parade in NYC used to be a sea of PRC and Taiwan flags – since 9/11, it’s been strictly red, white and blue.
It’s actually illegal to have the flag on clothing. Let’s arrest some people.
I don’t normally do this, but it seems appropriate. Emma Goldman has a great essay on the nature of patriotism that y’all might enjoy. Here’s a teaser:
Emma is unrelenting in her criticism of the passion, so be prepared. It’s a classic.
That said, I doubt we are capable as a species of surmounting our territorialism. Even a one-world system would wind up balkanizing somehow.
Dang it. I’ve been mentally composing a comment for this post all day, and here Emma’s essay, as posted by Kevin, sums up everything I had to say. Ah well, I’m sure my fingers will appreciate the break.
I think patriotism can be an innocent, humble sort of virtue, where you love your country simply because you live in it, just as you love members of your family (including the pets) more than other people and animals simply because they’re part of your family. It’s good to love something outside of yourself and it’s natural to start with the people around you.
Where patriotism becomes evil (and it very often does)is when it becomes self-aggrandizing and narcissistic–I think most of the post 9/11 American patriotism has been of this sort. We’re good, we’ve never done anything as bad as 9/11 to anyone else (not in our lifetime, at least), and so on. And anyone who disagrees is somehow justifying 9/11.
The uniqueness of America is our founding principle that our human rights come from God, not the generosity of the state(Declaration of Independence). This is why I fly the colonial flag instead of the 50-star flag.
You say you don’t “mind” a world government – the U.N. declaration of human rights does not acknowledge the sovereignty of God, therefore it begs the question if we had world government, where would our rights come from? Would we even have any rights?
Burk,
Your question is relevant only if you accept the existence of God (or gods) as fact. Many of us don’t believe that our rights come from God. If they did, why would God give us rights that, say, the Chinese don’t enjoy? This can quickly degrade into a thread on religion/faith. I’d prefer not to do that here. But my first sentence stands.
It is irrelevant whether you believe in God or not. Your unbelief in gravity does not suspend the laws of physics when you jump off a cliff.
You failed to answer the fundamental question – WHERE DO OUR RIGHTS COME FROM? Communist regimes have rejected God and God’s laws, and therefore have rejected His rights for us well. When this happens, the state grants citizens privilages that can be revoked at will.
I think patriotism and nationalism are being slightly conflated. We are all still neanderthal enough to love our tribe/clan a bit more than other tribes/clans…and that’s good evolutionary policy since it encourages group cooperation, so I won’t knock a little healthy patriotism. Nationalism, on the other hand, is narcissistic, xenophobic and dangerous.
Besides there are many good things to love about America — our ideals (no matter how much they are breached in practice) have inspired other countries to seek and surpass our commitment to individual liberty. We are a grand experiment in government — it’s just that we’re starting to look like the grand experiment that’s been left in the fridge for far too many months lately — crusty around the edges and starting to rot.
As to Burk’s naive belief that our rights come from God. Excuse me, but that ignores the centuries of Christianity that preceded the US experiment…centuries of serfdom, tyranny and despotism. Those governments claimed their “divine right” as well. Moreover, the Bible has slavery and was used to condone slavery — even in the 19th century.
Your statement completely ignores history. The Greeks and Romans had democracy and republican government and they were not Christian. There are more centuries of Christian depotism than Christian democracy. Our rights come from the triumph of reason over superstition, from the Age of Reason and the Enlightenment. From people who thought for themselves, not listening to the church leaders whose loyalty was to the kings, not the common people. The phrase “endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights”… might sound like the philosophy originated from biblical scholarship, but it didn’t. It was a nice rhetorical flourish. If those were inalienable rights endowed by our Creator, they wouldn’t take a revolution to enact, now would they?
Ok Burk:
Our rights come from us. People. Sometimes a very few people. Well most of the time.
The existence of the laws of physics can be proven. The existence of deities cannot be proven.
As for “His rights”…. Read the bible, dude. Nowhere does God grant us the rights to….. freedom of speech (in fact the bible specifically forbids certain forms of speech), the freedom from unreasonable search & seizure, freedom period (the Bible does nothing to hinder the institution of slavery), the pursuit of life, liberty, etc.
If you’re going to insist that the rights that we now enjoy (but are slowly losing) are from God, please provide some documentation.
Also, re: “Communist regimes have rejected God and God’s laws, and therefore have rejected His rights for us well. When this happens, the state grants citizens privilages that can be revoked at will.”
unless you’ve missed it – you no longer have the right to due process. You can be arrested & held w/o being charged w/ a crime & w/o notification of your family, etc. Or does God specify that that is not one of his rights?
My documentation that our rights come from people (AAAAAAAH! Rights are made from people! PEOPLE!*)
is the US Constitution. Authors: Jefferson, etc. Along w/ a lack of said rights listed in an older religious text.
None of which has the least to do with patriotism or nationalism.
Here I turn to our faux patriotism. ‘Member after 9/11 when everybody had those little USA flags fluttering from their cars? ‘Member what happened the first time it rained? Itty bitty flags got soaked & heavy & ripped off. Making me drive over thousands of them on the highway. Damn, that made me feel proud. Not one of those who, until then, had a bitty flag on their car took any time to pick ’em off the road. Is that love of your country & flag or what?
And, hey, how ’bout taking down them flags at night (unless you’ve got a light on it) and in inclement weather? Then don’t tell me you love the flag. You haven’t even bothered to learn the rules associated w/ the tradition. You’d be better off with a giant red/white/blue foam “we’re # 1” hand. Nobody will care if that gets maltreated. Oafs!
* Soylent Green reference. Humor.
Where to start? I stumbled onto this site by accident, obviously it is left-leaning. I’m going to ramble since I’m tired.
So you’ll know where I’m coming from, I am a constitutionalist not a neo-con. I am not a Bush/Ashcroft supporter, yes I am fully aware of the rights we are losing under the so-called patriot act and homeland insecurity. No, I do not support this faux post-9/11 plastic banana patriotism. I fly the colonial flag, not a 50-star flag made in China. I hope third parties (green,libertarian,constitution) leave the republicrats in the dust!
You all are confusing European Christendom (led by a corrupt catholic church) with true Christianity.
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all the inhabitants thereof”
Leviticus 25:10 – inscription on The Liberty Bell
“Where the spirit of the Lord, there is liberty”
2 Cor 3:17
By the way, the Bible prescribes the death penalty for kidnapping (slavery)
You say our rights come from “the people”. What if the majority of “the people” decide that Jake Squid has no rights? What if the majority decide that this website should be shut down? What if the majority decide that blacks have no rights and should be enslaved again? Surely you realize the destructive nature of democracy and majority-rule. The founding fathers railed against democracy. Yes Roman democracy was wonderful – burning Christians and mad emperors. Where is the Roman empire now? America is heading the way of the Roman empire now. We have college football instead of gladiatorial combat.
The French revolutionists adopted a humanistic, Age of Reason “power to the people” of government. They wound up with guillotines and a meglomaniacal emperor. Read de Tocqueville sometime if you want to study some REAL history.
I don’t have to prove that God exists – orderly creation and life are scientic and mathematical proof enough.
Bottom line, there is no liberty without God’s laws. Mankind has tried over and over and over again to create Utopia on earth while throwing God out of the equation. Ain’t gonna happen.
I enjoy the debate.
Burk:
Feel free to email me to continue this. I prefer not to fill a thread about patriotism w/ a debate about the nature of God and the murky definition of “liberty” in the line you quoted.
I’m curious though. What do you mean by “constitutionalist”. Do you consider yourself affiliated w/ the Constitution Party? Do they match your definition? Or is it something else?
I prefer not to fill a thread about patriotism w/ a debate about the nature of God and the murky definition of “liberty” in the line you quoted.
For the record, I have no objection – I’ve been enjoying the debate, thread drift and all.
Don’t know if you care, Ampersand, but Andrew Northrup was mightily offended by this post: http://WWW.THEPOORMAN.NET/archives/001963.html#001963
I appreciate your civility. FYI, if you’ve never heard of Alex Jones he has some great info about the loss of liberties under Bush/Ashcroft
http://www.infowars.com
bye for now
The idea that any rights come from God is ridiculous. Consider Leviticus 25, which defines the rules of slavery — saying basically you can have all the slaves you want — so long as they aren’t from your own tribe.
Then there’s the other lovely bit in Leviticus prohibiting anyone with a blemish, an impairment or who’s just plain ugly from giving an offering to God.
Or the bit about stoning folks who swear – and all the other people the Law lays out need to be killed.
There are some good stories in the Bible and Jesus was a force for good — particularly because he argued against most of what was in the Bible in the first place!!! But that book is not the source of any of our rights — and is just the opposite, the source of oppression.
Actually, I think it’s fine to be fond of one’s country. It’s in a way an extension of your family. i do think however, that we need to be more objective about it. Being mexican, every time I say something encouraging about the way certain things are done in the states, I get called a “gringo” I have two children whom I love to death. I do not let my love for them blind me to their faults. Instead I choose to be objective about their upbringing. I think if people, especially americans worked at looking ate their country a bit more objectively, it would be all it claims to be but obviously isn`t.
This is my first post, thanks for reading.
Kija,
You say:
“The idea that any rights come from God is ridiculous.”
Perhaps this is true, to you. For many do believe our human rights do come from God. To say that anything based on faith is ridiculous…is ridiculous. Are your beliefs ridiculous?
What confuses me is you then muddy the waters by equating God and the Bible. Personally, I don’t care for the Bible. By saying we get our rights from God does not mean it comes from some book. Would you agree that, within every human, there is a yearning for freedom? For peace? For happiness? Now, while all of these things are certainly subjective, they are inherent nonetheless.
We are all born with a free will. It causes all sorts of trouble, but it’s undeniable. I do not understand the argument that rights come from government, or people. Our founding fathers may have provided all those who were born within our borders with basic freedoms, but they were, I think, merely articulating the basic needs and desires of all people. Freedom is not some radical idea created some 200 years ago, it has always been, and always will be. Those who have it, love it. Those who do not, yearn for it.
yeah, but there are diferent types of freedom. while the USA is thought to be the most democratic and just country in the world, abortion is still illegal, if you are terminally ill you are gonna suffer a slow, painful death, gay marriages are still not an accepted thing and don`t even get me started on it’s imigration policy. we are not as “free” as we like to think.
I know there are some exceptions to the above situations, but not nearly enough.
Ampersand sees patriotism as one aspect of the larger problem of nationalism. Others have expressed nationalism as merely one aspect of the larger problem of tribalism. Permit me to suggest that tribalism is merely one aspect of the larger problem of loyalty.
I understand loyalty to mean acting in accordance with past affiliation, to the exclusion of other alternatives. Loyalty may also suggests a quid pro quo: favoring those who have favored you.
I don’t understand what makes loyalty virtuous. If a mobster loyally refuses to “rat” on other members of his gang, is this virtuous? If a Nazi prison guard loyally carries out an order to kill people in the camps even as Allied tanks roll in, is this virtuous? Conversely, if Egypt’s Sadat turned his back on years of teaching in order to make peace with Israel, is this treachery?
If you conclude that each of us owes “loyalty” to the world at large, then these questions may appear clearer: The mobster must choose between his duty to fellow mobsters or to society; the Nazi must choose between his duty to his superior officer or to humanity; Sadat must choose between his duty to tradition or to the world at large. The virtue of “loyalty” seems to derive its emotional force by focusing on the consequences of your actions to familiar parties, and ignoring the consequences to less familiar parties.
To put it another way, the “virtue” of loyalty competes with the virtue of agape, or unconditional love. At a certain point, each of us must choose between loyally favoring people of our own group, or of extending equal concern to people of a different, competing groups. As Jesus remarked, “If you love those who love you, what is the virtue in that? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your brethren, what is the virtue in that? Do not even the Gentiles do the same?” Instead of being loyal to our own group, Jesus admonishes us to love our neighbors and even our enemies.
Why should we choose agape over loyalty (or patriotism, or what have you)? Some regard agape as the best path to promoting the general welfare. Others embrace loyalty, but regard agape as a good tactic for achieving loyal, patriotic ends; after all, wouldn’t the world treat the US better if it honestly believed that the US promoted everyone’s interests equally? Finally, and ironically, some embrace agape out of loyalty to their religion!
Of course, you don’t really have to choose between loyalty and agape. If you can truly love your neighbor as yourself, and can accept the whole world as your “tribe,” then you can be as loyal as you like without compromise.
So I hope you can join me in celebrating Independence Day without a qualm – virtually every day of the year!
You say, “I don’t understand what makes loyalty virtuous”, then use gangsters, nazis (Damn you Godwin’s Law!), and anti-Semite prejudice as examples of it. These are examples of blind loyalty, and I agree with you should not be considered virtuous.
Loyalty can mean many things, most of them highly virtuous. Are you not loyal to your family? Do we not all seek loyalty? Without loyalty, would there not be anarchy worldwide? Of course.
Simply put, does anyone want to associate with someone who is disloyal? No
This is why loyalty is virtuous. We surround ourselves with those who are, and repay it in kind. Like free will and human rights, loyalty comes from something grand, and I don’t mean government or people…. but I digress.
You also said “The virtue of “loyalty” seems to derive its emotional force by focusing on the consequences of your actions to familiar parties, and ignoring the consequences to less familiar parties.”
This is, again, true of blind loyalty. Had you said “The virtue of “blind loyalty” seems…” we would be in complete agreement. Loyalty does not necessarily mean ignoring the consequences without. People of good will, who embody the spirit of true loyalty will weigh all sides objectively (and privately). Sometimes loyalty means telling those to whom you owe your allegiance, “I think you are wrong, and this is why.”
It seems that you could make the same argument about your parents. Does this mean you don’t love them?
Hmmn, let me try that…
“It’s a mystery to me. How can anyone love a parent? It’s a thing, an organization of people. You might as well profess love for the National Association of Vending Machine Distributors.”
The problem is, parents aren’t things – parents are people. I don’t have any trouble loving people.
>Sometimes loyalty means telling those to whom you owe your allegiance, “I think you are wrong, and this is why.”
Great. And after the Nazi guard says that to his superiors, should he proceed to execute the prisoners or not?
I refer to gangsters, nazis and anti-Semite prejudice because I was looking for examples where the policy being promoted by loyalty would be uniformly understood as undesirable, and therefore would not cloud the discussion. Examples of people loyally doing desirable things are nice but irrelevant; they do not illustrate any tension between obeying the commands of loyalty and obeying a duty to some larger good (the world, your conscience, “the right as God gives us to see the right,” etc.)
>Do we not all seek loyalty? ….Simply put, does anyone want to associate with someone who is disloyal? No
Don’t get me wrong; I LOVE loyalty – for me. My best-case scenario arises if my group is biased in my favor, and the rest of the world acts with agape. For example, imagine that I’m friends with all the police officers, who loyally let me and my friends do whatever we want while requiring the rest of the world to obey the law. Wouldn’t that be great?
It is hardly surprising that loyalty becomes institutionalized as a virtue. If I am an authority figure, I will want to promote loyalty; it is the institutional way of promoting my own power. I don’t want a bunch of whistle-blowers running around. So powerful people benefit from loyalty. Powerless people benefit from agape. Given a conflict between a view that benefits the powerful or a view that benefits the powerless, which view would you expect society to promote?
>Without loyalty, would there not be anarchy worldwide? Of course.
This begs the question whether or not there is anarchy worldwide anyway. Do you hear the strains of Lennon’s “Imagine” wafting through your head? Clearly not everyone is persuaded that a world without loyalty would result in anarchy.
And lets look at the state of the world. Arguably, the US is currently suffering the results of too much loyalty – pursuing a foreign policy of “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” instead of a policy that says, “I reward virtue even if the virtuous party does not declare allegiance to me.” We have aligned ourselves with powers that supported our policies abroad while oppressing their people at home. A ruler may be a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s OUR son-of-a-bitch. The citizens of those countries have now found ways to make their displeasure known to us. Maybe a little less loyalty and a little more agape would have worked to our advantage.
To be sure, in a world of scarcity, we need some basis for allocating resources. Loyalty says we allocate them to ourselves, or to those who are in a position to help us. Agape would say we allocate them based on some neutral principle, such as merit. That is, embrace of meritocracy requires rejection of loyalty.
>This is why loyalty is virtuous. We surround ourselves with those who are, and repay it in kind.
Oh, I understand. Loyalty reflects a kind of quid pro quo, serving yourself by serving others, greeting your brethren, and loving those who give you love in return. It’s as virtuous as any marketplace – and I regard markets as virtuous! – but it is fundamentally self-serving. In contrast, agape is not. Agape is the command to help not merely those who help you, but to help those who are in no position to help you, or even in a position to hurt you.
Loyalty’s power is rooted in our insecurities. If I must face the world based merely on my merits, what then? What if the world finds me unworthy? Can’t I rely on people to favor me simply because they love me? Agape, in contrast, divorces love from special privilege. If we love everyone, we privilege none over the other.
Admittedly, I am advocating a minority opinion. Love for a specific other has a much more sentimental appeal than love for an unknown other. Fraternity brothers frankly help each other prepare for exams or find jobs, while withholding similar assistance from others, and call it virtuous. States frankly promote economic development within their borders by luring firms away from neighboring states, and call it virtuous. People frankly give money to their own colleges, to the exclusion of other colleges, and call it virtuous. Small businessmen frankly engage in nepotism – calling their business “Wilson & Sons” or a “family farm” – and call it virtuous. And, of course, we frankly sing anthems of patriotism and nationalism, but only for our own nation. Etc., etc.
So I don’t expect to win many converts. Agape forever in the scaffold, loyalty forever on the throne, and the choice goes on forever ‘twixt the darkness and the light.
abortion is still illegal
Sorry, did Roe just get overturned?
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