Inquirer columnist Chris Satullo thinks that America is fraught with sin and that we don't deserve a Fourth celebration. "This year, America doesn't deserve to celebrate its birthday," he whines. "This Fourth of July should be a day of quiet and atonement."
We have failed to pay attention. We've settled for lame excuses. We've spit on the memory of those who did that brave, brave thing in Philadelphia 232 years ago.
We've "spit on the memory" of the Founders? Does he mean when the Democratic Party helped us lose Vietnam? How about when liberals somehow divined in the Founder's name a "right to privacy" in the Constitution? Were either of those times when we spit in their faces? How about when the American left destroyed religion in America, or when they invented a "right" to abortion, or when they turned our various systems of education into places where fringe, wackos reign supreme and American history, civics and... well, anything actually educational... is banished into the mists of the past? Does Our pal Chris Satullo mean those times when the Founders saw the spittle fly?
You can guess that no is the answer to my questions.
No, to Chris Satullo, the only time we've "spit on the memory" of the founders is when we reacted to the time when 3,000 of our own were killed in New York City by Islamic terrorists. He is all upset that we've tortured prisoners, illegally imprisoned people "for years," and practiced "rendition."
The America those men founded should never torture a prisoner.
The America they founded should never imprison people for years without charge or hearing.
The America they founded should never ship prisoners to foreign lands, knowing their new jailers might torture them.
Satullo hits all the anti-American, leftist tropes to be sure.
And, guess who's fault it is? (Cue the dramatic music...)
We have done such things, on orders from the Oval Office. We have done them, without general outrage or shame.
Bingo, right for the Bush Derangement Syndrome.
And what did that eeeevil Bushitler do?
Abu Ghraib. Guantanamo. CIA secret prisons. "Rendition" of prisoners to foreign torture chambers.
Outrageously Satullo calls the War on Terror a "scam."
And all for a scam. The waterboarding, the snarling dogs, the theft of sleep - all the diabolical tricks haven't made us safer. They may have averted this plot or that. But they've spawned new enemies by the thousands, made the jihadist rants ring true to so many ears.
9/11 must have been an illusion. The War on Terror is merely a Bush lie, apparently.
And Satullo's idiocy isn't close to being expended. He also has to misappropriate the history of the Founders for his socialist inspired, Peace-in-our-times, blather.
The men huddled long ago in Philadelphia had better reason. A British fleet floated off the Jersey coast, full of hands eager to hang them from the nearest lampposts.
Apparently, Satullo doesn't think the nation had anything to fear on the afternoon of 9/11? And as to the real history of the Revolution, need I remind Satullo that the British neither intended, nor had the capability of killing 3,000 Americans with one incident? Might we have had a right to take measures against a foe that killed many thousands with a single strike?
Then Satullo goes on and on about "human rights" as if WE are the guilty party on that level, as if the U.S. can be compared to Islamofascists who send children to blow themselves up, who cut off the heads of live prisoners, who have manuals on torture, and who have no respect at all for human life on any level?
I might also want to direct this historically illiterate columnist to the real historical record of the American Revolution where tax men were covered in boiling tar and sent screaming back to their tax houses that were burnt down around them by colonists showing their ire against the crown. I might show Satullo where General George Washington summarily hanged spies and shot deserters and traitors. I might alert him to the vicious internecine fighting between Colonists loyal to the Crown and those Patriots that were rising up against them.
I could show this man where Revolutionary history -- the REAL history, not the sanitized, fake one he is selling in order to beat up George W. Bush -- was quite vicious and mean. It WAS war, after all, and at a time when people still knew how to fight a war to actually kill the enemy.
Anyway, this simple minded claptrap is all full of laments and moaning, but no where is there any real logic and no deeper discussion of the real historical record is offered. Neither is there any introspection that his fellow travelers are the ones responsible in the first place for casting us in the very situations he bemoans.
Satullo ends with his most earnest attempt at piety.
Let us atone, in quiet and humility. Let us spend the day truly studying the example of our Founders. May we earn a new birth of courage before our nation's birthday next rolls around.
Humility? He doesn't know the definition of the word. For a man who so obviously has no clue about history and who so blatantly wants to steal the luster of the Founding Fathers to burnish his cracker jack prize of a crown is certainly an outrage. For him to wag his America hating finger in all our faces on the day we are to celebrate our freedom from tyranny is the height of hubris.
Still, I know that Satullo is quite sincere in his hatred of the United States. In fact, I'm sure he feels this low at every July Fourth celebration. July Fourth is probably a black day for him no matter who is president. I feel bad for his heartburn, but that he spews his bile for the rest of us to be bothered with is downright unneighborly.
Happy July Fourth, folks. Be proud of this great nation, Satullo's nonsense aside. The U.S.A. is still the shining light on a hill shining the light of freedom on all the world. Anti-Americans like Satullo might have blinders on, but for those willing to see, we stand like a rock.
Unfurl those flags and let freedom wave.
