{"id":505,"date":"2012-07-04T13:30:31","date_gmt":"2012-07-04T17:30:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/?p=505"},"modified":"2012-07-04T13:30:31","modified_gmt":"2012-07-04T17:30:31","slug":"independence-day-mother-of-all-politically-incorrect-holidays","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2012\/07\/independence-day-mother-of-all-politically-incorrect-holidays.html","title":{"rendered":"Independence Day: Mother of all Politically Incorrect Holidays"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong><\/strong>Most of the holidays that Americans celebrate stand in tension with the prevailing leftist orthodoxy.\u00a0 That is, with few exceptions\u2014most notably Martin Luther King Day and, perhaps, Labor Day\u2014our holidays, from Easter and Christmas to Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and Memorial Day, are \u201cpolitically incorrect.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, from fear of being labeled an anti-American, the leftist would vehemently deny this.\u00a0 However, when we consider these holidays in light of his worldview, his act of denial reduces to an exercise in futility.<\/p>\n

The leftist, after all, is not a figure that is notable for his fondness of Christianity\u2014at least not inasmuch as it has traditionally found expression.\u00a0 Christianity is and has been the dominant faith of Western or European (read: white<\/em>) civilization for the last two millennia.\u00a0 Since its advent, its superstitious bigotry and claims to exclusivity have forced the world to reckon with racial and other sorts of oppression.\u00a0 Or so the leftist believes.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Yet Christmas and Easter are the Christian world\u2019s two premier holidays.\u00a0 Severally and collectively they serve to remind the planet that one-third of its population\u2014over two billion <\/em>people\u2014continue to believe in miracles, <\/em>particularly the miracle that the one and only <\/em>God of the universe became aMan.\u00a0<\/p>\n

How can the (clear thinking, consistent) leftist not <\/em>despise Christmas and Easter?<\/p>\n

Thanksgiving also has religious significance, albeit of a more subtle degree.\u00a0 This is enough to make the leftist distrustful of it.\u00a0 But more to the point, Thanksgiving is a holiday that forever reminds the leftist of \u201cthe genocide\u201d that the European settlers perpetrated against \u201cNative Americans.\u201d<\/p>\n

This renders it detestable in his eyes.<\/p>\n

Obviously, the primary reason informing his detestation of Thanksgiving is the sole reason accounting for his hatred of Columbus Day.\u00a0 For however murderous, and murderously \u201cracist,\u201d the American pioneers were, they were a bunch of little rascals compared to the Father of all \u201cracist\u201d oppressors: Christopher Columbus.<\/p>\n

Memorial Day is a painful signifier of the nationalist chauvinism, the \u201cjingoism,\u201d for which the leftist has nothing but contempt. Nor does it help matters that the overwhelming majority of veterans who we memorialize on this day were white men <\/em>whom we credit with changing\u2014and saving\u2014the world. Ditto for Veterans\u2019 Day.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Even Saints Valentine and Patrick Days must be anathema to the leftist.\u00a0 For one, they are \u201csaints\u2019\u201d days.\u00a0 Secondly, the latter is the one day when a white ethnic group gives unadulterated, robust expression to ethnic pride.\u00a0 It can be\u2014and is\u2014read all too easily by the leftist as an affirmation of a distinctively European tradition.<\/p>\n

Mothers\u2019 and Fathers\u2019 Days are celebrations of the family, the one institution that protects the naked individual citizen from the totalizing governmental designs that the leftist wishes to impose upon him.<\/p>\n

As for Washington\u2019s and Lincoln\u2019s birthdays, it should go without saying that the leftist regards them as of a piece with all great, dead white men: they were \u201cracist\u201d bigots whose achievements must be diminished or denied and failings amplified.<\/p>\n

Yet the Mother of all Politically InCorrect holidays, the one with which the leftist is most uncomfortable, the one that he disdains more so than any other, is Independence Day. Since it is his twofold conviction that \u201cracism\u201d is both ubiquitous and uniquely awful that lies at the heart of his ideology, it should be expected that this is the one holiday that he should disdain the most.<\/p>\n

If the Tea Party movement; the Republican Party; \u201cthe right;\u201d the conservative movement and every other predominantly white organization, business, and institution are \u201cracist\u201d simply and solely because<\/em> they are predominantly white, then those men who gathered to pledge their \u201clives, fortunes, and sacred honor\u201d to declare their independence from England over 200 years ago were that much more \u201cracist,\u201d for they were all white men. <\/em><\/p>\n

And it isn\u2019t just that the men who founded this country were white that gives the contemporary leftist night sweats.\u00a0 That they were white men who were resolved to shed blood\u2014their own and that of those who would deprive them of their liberty\u2014if this was the price to be had for living as free <\/em>men that accounts as well for the leftist\u2019s angst.<\/p>\n

From the spirit of liberty that animated the patriots who forged of these former colonies a new nation springs all manner of evil, as far as the leftist is concerned.\u00a0 It is the ultimate stumbling block in his quest to \u201cfundamentally transform\u201d the country into the egalitarian utopia of his imaginings.<\/p>\n

On this Fourth of July, let us call all of this to mind.\u00a0 In doing so, let us make ourselves into worthy inheritors of our Fathers\u2019 legacy as we too resolve to fight to the end to live freely.<\/p>\n

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 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Most of the holidays that Americans celebrate stand in tension with the prevailing leftist orthodoxy.\u00a0 That is, with few exceptions\u2014most notably Martin Luther King Day and, perhaps, Labor Day\u2014our holidays, from Easter and Christmas to Thanksgiving, Columbus Day, and Memorial Day, are \u201cpolitically incorrect.\u201d Of course, from fear of being labeled an anti-American, the leftist…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-505","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nIndependence Day: Mother of all Politically Incorrect Holidays<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" 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