Monday, March 28, 2011

"America, Love It Or Leave It" What Does It Really Mean?

The saying “America, Love it or Leave it” has been the battle cry of supposed American Patriots for as long as I can remember, probably longer then I have been alive. It sounds good, it sounds patriotic and it sounds tough. It conjures up images of the war veteran wearing all his medals during a Veterans Day parade. It conjures up images of a rural American town street lined with working families and their children waving flags during a parade. It conjures up cookouts and fireworks on the 4th of July. What does it really mean though? Does it mean a chest full of medals earned from fighting in a foreign land? Does it mean little flags being waved during a parade? Does it refer to the actual land that is called America and how the people that live here feel about that land? Or is there a more important meaning to the saying, America, Love it or Leave it?

There has always been a land mass that was most likely named after an Italian referred to as the Americas; but there have not always been Americans. So does the saying refer to the land mass or does it refer to the people that are living on that land mass? There have been many people from many different ethnic backgrounds that have visited or occupied this piece of land. Granted this has to be one of the most unique pieces of property on the planet Earth, but that is not what has made it so special, nor is that what inspired the saying America, Love it or Leave it. In 1607 Capt John Smith founded Jamestown for the London Company in hopes of finding and exporting gold. The severe winter of 1609 that was referred to as the “starving time” nearly wiped out the colony. On June 10th Thomas West De La Warr, the newly appointed Governor of Virginia arrived with supplies and convinced the colonist to stay and to find local resources to ensure the survival of the colony. In 1612 John Rolfe cultivated the first crop of tobacco finding a successful source of livelihood for the colony. The perseverance and resourcefulness that eventually saved Jamestown was the cornerstone of future colonist.

The colonization of this brave new world continued throughout the 17th century with the arrival of the Pilgrims on the Mayflower and her sister ships. Resourcefulness, ingenuity, independence, and personal responsibility were essential to the survival of each new colony established. This same resourcefulness, ingenuity, independence and personal responsibility were evidenced in the gaining independence from England and the settlement of the west in the 1800’s. That is what made America; that is what is meant by “America, love it or leave it”. America was the land people came to hack out a living on their own, a place they came to be the best they could be. The American dream was not one where everything is given to you, it was the opportunity to succeed or fail on your own merits. Sometime in the late 1800’s early 1900’s Americans lost those traits. Americans, as a whole, started relying on the Government.

Somewhere along the way terms like social justice became popular. People wanted everything to be equalized. In 1888 Edward Bellamy authored a book titled “Looking Backward”, a socialist utopian novel. The novel became the catalyst for “Nationalism Clubs” all across America. Edward’s cousin Francis Bellamy was a Baptist minister who lost his position in the ministry because he used it as a pulpit for his “Christian Socialism” theology. After losing his position in the ministry Francis used the Government and Government schools to promote his ideas. Francis took a position at the “Youth Companion Magazine”, it was here that he penned the Pledge of Allegiance. The Pledge was published on September 8, 1892 as part of the Columbus Day celebration. The original Pledge was intended to unite the schools under Government control in a militaristic fashion for indoctrination of our youth. Many laws were passed requiring the Pledge to be recited in schools all across the Nation, at the same time the same movement was going on in Germany led by the National Socialist German Workers Party, later called the NAZI Party. The initial salute to the flag was a military style salute during the phrase “I pledge allegiance” followed by a straight arm salute towards the flag with palm down. This salute was soon dropped in favor of the hand over the heart salute due to the similarity to the NAZI Party salute and the images that conjured.

I came across this several months ago when stories were going viral about town hall meetings where the attendees were spontaneously reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, much to the chagrin of the organizers. I decided I wanted to know the story behind the Pledge, I already knew that the phrase “Under God” had been added because of lobbying by the Christian organization the Knights of Columbus, but I didn’t know the origins of the Pledge. I realized as I read about it that it was a Pledge for exactly what the Constitution did not want, a centralized Government; remember the 10th Amendment in the Bill of Rights? There is a lot of good in the Pledge, each State, by becoming a member of the Union of States is pledging it’s allegiance to the Union as whole, but, it is not indivisible, each State is a sovereign entity. Would it not be more constitutionally appropriate if our pledge went something like this; “I pledge allegiance to the Sovereign States of the United States and the Union they form for as long as my State is a member of that Union. A Union born from the respect for the laws of nature; and for the liberty and freedom for all citizens”. Instead we adopted a Pledge that was a tool of the Socialist movement in the late 1800’s to promote Government control and indoctrination of our children by means of Government controlled schools and by playing on the Peoples patriotism; we bought into it, hook, line and sinker.

Socialism continued to creep into American society after the turn of the century. Starting in 1900 the newly formed Socialist Party put up their first Presidential candidate and continued to do so until 1912. The movement lost steam with the onset of WWI. In the 1930’s with faith in capitalism dwindling due to the depression socialism again started taking a foothold, this time in the Democratic Party. In the 1950’s Joseph McCarthy all but disintegrated the Socialist Party. In the late 1950’s early 1960’s the socialist hitched their wagon to the Civil Rights Movement, this was also the time of the birth of the Students for a Democratic Society, the new left. All of these events led to the decline of the traits that Americans had when they came to this country and survived the “Starving Time” of 1609. The traits of the pilgrims when they colonized the Eastern Seaboard and declared independence from Britain. The traits of the pioneers when they packed all their belongings into wagons and headed west into a wild unknown and untamed land. These traits were traded in for arrogance, an arrogance that believed everyone should share in the fruits of one mans labor whether they contributed or not. An arrogance that believed everyman should be equal in all aspects. Men are not equal, we are all born opportunities; but it’s what we chose to do with those opportunities that determine our outcome in life. Are not the fruits on ones own labor sweeter then the fruits of another?

So does the phrase “America, love it or leave it” refer to the country, the actual land? Or does it refer to strength, independence and ingenuity that our fore fathers showed when they came to this land?

Steve Avery
3/28/11

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