I spent July 4 with friends on a boat anchored in the Potomac River near the Memorial Bridge, which crosses from Arlington Cemetery, where our military dead lie beneath dignified white gravestones, to the Lincoln Memorial and National Mall stretching east to Congress. This is never less than an inspiring sight, but it was made more memorable on Independence Day, as it is each year, by fireworks exploding over the Washington Monument.
And it was made rather moving and somewhat reassuring, too, by hundreds of small craft in the river, on which thousands of citizens of all races and ages celebrated the nation’s birthday in exuberant ways involving food, booze, dancing, and lolling on floaties on the stream. Tens of thousands more revelers camped on the Virginia riverbank, on the Mall, and on rooftops across the city.
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I say it was moving and reassuring because it demonstrated flamboyantly that citizens remain proud of their country despite the left-wing fashion to regret America’s birth and continued existence. In such a huge nation, it’s easy to find enough people to make a cause, no matter how good or bad, look popular. But it’s clear that the celebrating crowds and the Potomac armada are more representative of America than are the ugly malcontents sulking at home, shutting out the noise of people having a good time, and muttering sarcastically about the “land of the free.”
Gallup recently found that 65% of Americans are “extremely” or “very” proud to be citizens, and another 20% are “moderately” proud. There has been a detectable diminution of patriotism — the Left’s work is doing its intended damage — but a huge majority still takes a positive view of their country. Only 4% are not proud of it at all.
A prominent member of the grumpy minority is Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D-NY), who thought July 4 a good moment to hector the nation about being built on “stolen land toiled over by enslaved Africans” and to suggest “freedom” is the preserve of “just a privileged few.” We are not free, apparently, “until everyone is truly free.”
Even without the bunk about “stolen land,” which reveals ignorance that all human history is a tale of conquest by successively more advanced civilizations, Bowman’s take is delusional. The black, brown, white, and other hued people — there were sunburns — celebrating on July 4 were decidedly and truly free. They knew it and loved it.
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Americans are free to party, free to work, free to live free. Regrettably, anyone is also free to grift, and grifting is what racial politics has become. Rep. Cori Bush (D-MO) used July 4 to support the most fashionable grift of all: reparations for slavery. She declared that the government has a “legal obligation to pay” reparations. We’ll see, but that seems unlikely.
Slavery has been banned for two-thirds of America’s existence as an independent, self-governing nation. How odd and predictable for the Democratic champions of the Left to use Independence Day to propose more black dependence on the state.
