1976, 2007
Though I was just a wee lad, I am old enough to remember the Bicentennial of 1976. Now, in 2007, we are 'celebrating' (not really) the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. I saw this article from the New York Times:
WASHINGTON, May 7 — President Bush welcomed Queen Elizabeth II to the White House today with remarks that celebrated the values that have bound the United States and Britain across the Atlantic and across the centuries.
“Our two nations hold fundamental values in common,” Mr. Bush said. “We honor our traditions and our shared history. We recognize that the strongest societies respect the rights and dignity of the individual. We understand and accept the burdens of global leadership, and we have built our special relationship on the surest foundations: our deep and abiding love of liberty.”
“Today our two nations are defending liberty against tyranny and terror,” Mr. Bush said on the White House South Lawn amid Stars and Stripes and Union Jacks. “We’re resisting those who murder the innocent to advance a hateful ideology, whether they kill in New York or London or Kabul or Baghdad. American and British forces are staying on the offense against the extremists and terrorists.”
Never mind Bush's cheap use of the event to try to sell his failed war on terror (global leadership! who's following!)- what is symbolic here, and fundamentally different from the 1976 bicentennial is the emphasis on shared values - not shared culture and blood ties - the former of which is nodded to, the latter, ignored.
This probably reflects a shift in power that started in the 1960s - and the massive demographic changes brought about by the disastrous 1965 immigration reform act (which will be the death of the US) which were only just beginning to be felt in 1976.
Now, on both sides of Atlantic (unless the Queen is just playing along) our elite would like us to believe that we can be a nation of abstract ideals - despite the consistent failure of such non-nations -evidenced by France's failed 89 revolution onward.
No longer do our 'English cousins' pay homage to us, we are to believe that someone can step off the boat from Pakistan and be 'British' or off the boat from China and be "American". If my anglo-saxon self repatriated to China would I be Chinese? Nonsense.
Are we a proposition nation? Or are we a nation held together by an Anglo-Protestant core (which despite its name you can assimilate too) ? Since the 1960s Americans have been conditioned to not even countenance the latter. What 90% of Americans believed in 1957 is now taboo to even mention in public. Are we better off, technology aside? The answer is painfully obvious. The people trying to break that core know, either consciously or unconsciously when it goes, so will all resistance to the dismantling of the Republic.
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