That about sums up the state of the culture

On this day in 1776, 56 free-born Englishmen signed a document in Philadelphia that became the rallying cry for a new nation. The text itself is a masterpiece of rhetoric. It follows a simple and well understood structure; it is easily readable to the average man, even today, when the average vocabulary has shrunk considerably from the time in which the document was written; and while it is never impolite or uncivil, it positively seethes with the righteous fury that the free-born men of the thirteen original colonies felt for the way that their sovereign had treated them.

What most Americans don’t realise is that the text that they admire so much, the text that forged the world’s greatest nation on the anvil of history in a way that no other has ever been before or since, is that the best-known version of that text, the one taught in schools (for now, until it is deemed “offensive” to Hispanics and blacks and God only knows who else) is only about three quarters as long as the original document written by Thomas Jefferson.

And in that original version was a line that modern-day Americans have all too easily forgotten, the line that Jefferson originally intended to remind his audience on both sides of the Atlantic just how unfortunate and painful the rupture of independence was.

It is important to remember that the text of the Declaration was written as much out of sorrow and regret as it was of anger and indignation. In writing it and signing his name to it, Thomas Jefferson was violating his own oaths of fealty to his acknowledged king and sovereign; as he wrote in the text of the Declaration, only the gravest offences could possibly justify such a terrible decision. He was trying, through his eloquence and his belief in a just God, to tell the British and American people that the rupture need not have happened- that, if only Britain had held true to faith in the Creator, to the laws of His nature, and to the restrictions upon sovereign power that the original God-blessed English Constitution had mandated, this rupture need never have happened.

He tried, in vain, to tell the English that, if only the ancient covenants between God, King, and people had been kept, Britain and America could have been free and strong together, as brothers in a common cause, to bring the myriad blessings of God-granted liberty to all men who were willing to pay its price.

But it was not to be. King George III would not be constrained by divinity, tradition, reason, or law. And so, the American colonies forced the issue, and forged their own path.

As far as I can tell, Americans are rarely taught the true facts of their own Founding in history class. If they were, they would know and understand in their very bones that the American Revolution was no revolution at all. It succeeded where almost every other revolution before it has failed, because it did not propose anything particularly radical or new. The American Revolution was not about ideology, but about ideas– tried, tested, proven. It proposed, quite simply, that the old ways were the best, and that divisions of power strictly enforced between different stakeholders was the best and most equitable form of government.

For inspiration, the Founders looked to ancient Rome and Greece as models. They saw in Rome and Sparta a constitutional form of republican government, with a weak king-like figure, a relatively strong aristocracy to ward against the whims and madness of such a king, a judiciary to keep the other two in check, and all of these holding demagoguery of the people at bay. The American Revolution was not founded on a rejection of powerful ideas of the past; it was a rediscovery of those very same things.

It was a glorious experiment in human freedom, the likes of which may never be seen again in our lifetimes.

And as I look at America’s amazing, God-guided birth, and contrast it with the America that I see today, I can only shake my head and wonder, not for the first time and certainly not for the last, whether you Americans really understand what a magnificent, wonderful, beautiful thing it is that you have lost.

The America of today regularly commits the very same offences against its own people that it once accused a tyrannical king in a far-distant capital of bringing down upon his subjects, but on a far greater scale of far greater abuse and iniquity. We see the very concepts that built this country mocked and derided; we see its founding values traduced and scorned; we see our faith in God hurled back in our face as an epithet; we see the bonds of family and friendship sacrificed daily upon the altar of progressive “justice”.

We see the trivial and stupid being praised as worthy role models; we see men of honour and decency being torn down by the howling mob. We see the ideals that once guided a nation to greatness being turned upside down; the virtues of non-intervention, self-discipline, limited government, and faith in God are now treated as vices. We see every day the tawdry and barbaric state of the culture turning the minds of our children to mush.

We witness these things every day, and we are powerless to stop it.

The men who signed that timeless document would be horrified to see what has happened to the country that they brought forth out of sheer necessity and utter desperation.

They did not risk death for treason in order to watch their culture degraded and debased to a point below even the dignity of the most pathetic crack-whore.

They did not rail against imperial overreach and tyrannical abuses of the rights of free men in order to see the blood of their descendants spilled into empty sands and foreign wastes for no good reason.

They did not believe then and would not believe now that a Union formed out of the goodwill and voluntary participation of its members would have to be preserved by force.

They would be appalled to see the very manly firmness with which they opposed the invasions on the rights of their people being treated as a mental illness in young boys to be treated with powerful drugs.

They swore to buy their freedoms with their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honour. They did not make that oath lightly, and they would be furious and heartbroken to see that their awesome sacrifices had been made in order that their descendants could prostrate themselves before the altar of mindless consumerism.

America has forgotten that which made it great. It has forgotten that freedom does not mean doing whatever you want; freedom, in fact, means substituting self-discipline for discipline imposed from without.

The country whose birth Americans celebrate on this day is in its death throes. The flashes of greatness that it shows from time to time are merely the last addled gasps of a soon-to-be-corpse.

I have lived in America for nearly 9 years now. I consider every day that I have been allowed to stay in this God-blessed country to be a gift. I love this country and its people as I love and admire no others on Earth. I firmly believe in the principles upon which it was founded- the principles that it has lost, irretrievably. I watch with growing sadness and dismay as each new abuse heaped upon the dying wreck of this once-great and beautiful land by its own people and government forces it ever closer to dissolution and civil war.

If I had the ability, I would see its glory restored, its government put back in its proper place, its people free and sovereign once again to live their own lives as they see fit, and its borders secure from enemies both foreign and domestic.

But that is not to be. America has forgotten what freedom means, and why this most wonderful of gifts comes with the most terrible of costs.

America might, indeed, have been a great and free people, once. Those days have gone to where all good old days go. And today we are left with nothing but the thought police of the Left and its multicultural insanity to replace that aching void.

By all means, celebrate America’s birth as you see fit. For my part, I mourn that which was lost, perhaps never to be seen again in my lifetime.