The Stars and Stripes Forever - A Call to Sincere Citizenship

As we speak, great crimes are being perpetrated against our nation.

“Down with the traitors, up with the Stars!”

The men now manning the highest echelons of our government have demonstrated affection for avowed white nationalists and neo-Nazis. Many number amongst them. These associations have gone underreported because interactions on Twitter and in internet chatrooms hardly seem newsworthy. Yet a look at who Elon Musk and JD Vance follow, talk to, and hire shows clearly that the machinery of the Federal Government has been captured by those who would see America destroyed.

The Republican Party is fully dominated by men who do not believe in the ideals of the Constitution or the Declaration of Independence—let alone in the words of Lincoln. They, like the slaveholders they venerate, reject the ideals of liberty and justice from which this country was born. Instead, they revel in the imagined past, worshipping idols of passion and purity plundered from the graves of German nationalists. What they call liberty is merely license—license to abuse and dominate their fellow man, backed by the jackboot of the state.

This we know not merely by their friends and words but by their actions. Let us not mince words: as we speak, great crimes are being perpetrated against our nation. Their aim is at the utter ruin of the Constitution. This is most clear in their denial of Congress’s authority to control spending. Donald Trump has informally deputized Elon Musk to arbitrarily halt programs and shutter agencies established and authorized by the laws passed by Congress. If the President is not required to execute the law, the law becomes meaningless. We are left to the whims of a monarch, an arrangement the British had found intolerable long before the American Revolution.

But of all the criminal actions of MAGA Republicans, the effort to destroy birthright citizenship is the most direct attempt to destroy the American project. The ideals of the Founding Fathers would be trampled by the base prejudices of race and origin. This attempt to pervert the meaning of America was the great crime of the Dred Scott decision—denying the citizenship of black Americans. That was overturned only by victory in battle against the slaveholders. The passage of the 14th Amendment made this right explicit. Once again, the enemies of our nation seek to replace the values of America with mundane clannishness—to supplant citizenship in a republic with blood-loyalty.

The chauvinistic disease of claiming superiority by blood is today manifest in the trend of identifying as “heritage Americans” (claiming descent from the “original” colonists). The idea of privileging ancient blood is anathema to all American ideals, but there have always been those too weak to withstand the allure of aristocracy. The man who came to this country illegally to work is far more in the traditional American spirit than a citizen who prejudges by pedigree. It is embarrassing and un-American to so lack pride in your own accomplishments to look for it from an accident of birth.

Joe Biden insisted on emphasizing in his 2020 campaign that we are in a “battle for the soul of our nation.” He was partly right. We’re in a battle for our nation itself. Unlike the nations of the Old World, if America ceases to be a nation of ideals it ceases to be at all. Nothing deserving of the name will remain. Instead, we will leave to our children a hideous beast of tribalism wearing the skin of greater men. It falls upon each of us—all who hold affection and loyalty to these United States—to prevent such a fate.

“That government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall not perish.”

Let our hands and hearts be steadied in this great undertaking by the memory of the men and women who fought and died for America and all it means. The near half-million American dead of WWII stand as martyrs for the American ideal. President Roosevelt left no ambiguity of the cause for which they fought and died: “They fight not for the lust of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all [God’s] people.”

The third of a million Union dead in the Civil War likewise stand as martyrs towards the fulfillment of the American promise. The women and men who rose from bondage to demand the liberty that was their birthright knew what freedom meant. Did they shed their blood in vain? That is the question before us now, the question that stands before all others for America has passed into our keeping. At Gettysburg, Lincoln said “The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember, what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here.” Shall we make a liar out of him?

Lincoln’s words were echoing the Athenian orator and general Pericles, who said: “For heroes have the whole earth as their tomb; and in lands far from their own, there is enshrined in every breast a record unwritten with no tablet to preserve it, except that of the heart.” The countless men and women who sacrificed for freedom are our forebears, to whom we are tied with bonds stronger than blood. The republic we have inherited is a memorial to all who strove for it. It would be less a dishonor to turn Arlington cemetery into a casino than to permit the destruction of the democracy for which they fought.

Let us neither forget the sacrifices of our allies who fought for the cause of freedom, the cause for which America has stood as a vanguard, refuge, and liberator. The Poles who fought in exile for the liberation of their homeland from Nazi tyranny, only to die awaiting the fall of the Iron Curtain call us to action. So too does the legacy of the Hungarians who rose in 1956 to defy the tanks of the Red Army and demand democracy. At this very moment, Ukrainians shed their blood in the name of freedom from tyranny.

I write this to impress the grim and glorious burden that is upon each of us as citizens. Our adversaries are powerful. They have much in their favor. Hate and cynicism have appeal beyond all reason. But our cause is that of liberty and justice for all. It is a righteous cause and a mighty one. Our forerunners ground Nazism and totalitarian communism into the dustbin of history. So too was the slave-aristocracy of the Confederacy crushed in the name of liberty. We may consider ourselves lucky to have such an illustrious and auspicious banner under which to fight.

But what does it mean “to fight?” We are fortunate that the battle has not yet escalated to a civil war, but in times of war, fighting for the cause is straightforward—less so in peace. Elections are years away and this kind of moral sickness can be only denied at the ballot box, not defeated.

I propose that what is now required of us is to remember what America means, to rededicate ourselves to the cause of upholding it, and to call on our friends and fellow citizens to do the same. The existence of our nation depends on conscious, sincere citizenship. A republic cannot be sustained if dedication to it is cringe. Neither can it survive if awareness of its peril is limited to political hobbyists. To fight for America means reviving and popularizing a spirit of sincere citizenship that can overcome a culture of smug irony and detached cynicism.

In the spirit of founding father Thomas Paine, I have put these sentiments in my own words and ask you to distribute them—like they did political pamphlets during the Revolution. Particularly, I ask that you share it to unusual places for politics. Post it on Facebook, share it on LinkedIn, send it in group chats, print it out and leave it in common spaces, or read it out on TikTok—anything that might help to spread it beyond the small minority of people who willingly seek out information on politics.

The preservation of our republic is not a matter of political debate, it is a patriotic duty. There is no place in society where calls for its defense do not belong. Better by far is make your own call to action. Opinions are a dime a dozen, but your own words will be immeasurably more impactful to those who know you and respect you.

Benjamin Franklin when asked if the Constitution established a monarchy or republic responded: “A republic, if you can keep it.” This is the part where we keep it. So let us wave the star-spangled banner, take pride in being Americans, and embrace the fight to which citizenship calls us.