SHOT – from the permanently aggrieved NH “Journalist” Robert Azzi who, from the tremendous Privilege of being an American, never sees the good of or in America:
…Too many never have it made, many like Frederick Douglass, Ida B. Wells, Harriet Tubman, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, MLK, Emmett Till, Jackie Robinson, Katherine Johnson, Breonna Taylor, Colin Kaepernick, George Floyd, LeBron James and Barack Obama who, in spite of occasional attempts by white apologists to appropriate their words and achievements, never had it made.
Today, July 4th, Independence Day, it’s important to note that such sentiments still resonate for far too many Americans who, in spite of their accomplishments and creativity, have never had it made.
“Indeed, even if we are duty-bound to honor the founding generation for establishing the constitutional and philosophical foundations of our country and the liberties they confer, we must acknowledge and not minimize how they also transgressed great moral principles, victimizing millions of men, women, and children, all while promoting principles of political humanism unique to the world.” (Michael S. Lewis, UNH Law Review, Volume 17, Number 2, 3/15/19)
Freedoms denied, transgressions unacknowledged.
CHASER: From a grateful immigrant (Lilly Tang Williams) loosed from the Tyranny of Communism – My Turn: The [American] forefathers shattered my Communist chains
My story begins in Chengdu, China, at the dawn of the Cultural Revolution, an insanity that gripped millions of my countrymen. We were destitute, as were most Chinese during this period. We lived in a primitive worker’s row house by a river sharing one tarp-covered outhouse and one water faucet with eight families. We had a mud floor that, after occasional flooding, would sprout mushrooms. My parents were illiterate workers, so their positions in the state factory were too low to be rationed much food. A full belly was a luxury. My uncle even taught me how to trap rats for food. All we knew was a life of arduous labor and chaos. Little time was spent thinking of philosophical fantasies concerning “oppression” and “rights,” so we labored to survive, hoping only that we would endure…
…It was during this time I met an American student. What he showed me would forever change my life — the Declaration of Independence. When I read the lines, “We hold these truths to be self-evident… (that all men) are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,” they shattered what remained of my mental shackles. What ideas! Rights come not from the benevolence of the state, but from God? All I had ever known were “collective rights,” the workers’ rights, the rights of peasants, etc. Never had I imagined that I, an individual, had rights. Those words only served to embolden me and my dreams. Knowing where they came from, I began to look to that “City upon a Hill.”
…I always defend the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution, the documents with the words that freed me from my enslavement and helped me choose America as my home. I have always wanted to thank our founding fathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence…
The difference couldn’t be any starker – one unable to see and receive the blessings of the foundations of our Country’s beginnings even though native-born. The other, someone who grew up without Rights and not much of a future under true tyranny and not the wildly imagined one of Azzi who sees malfeasance behind every corner of America’s philosophical highway.
The latter full of bitterness, anger, and ingratitude – Lilly Tang able to see the true nature of what America promised and continues to extend those promises.
Azzi is correct in that some of our past is, indeed, dark. What makes it darker, on this Independence day, is the refusal of him, of Howard Zinn, of Saul Alinsky’s, and yes, Obama, to see the goodness that has brought America’s darknesses to light – but then becoming a beacon of light of Liberty to millions within and without America.
While we have stumbled at times, we have worked to solve our problems – the Declaration and the Constitution were a start, the Civil War where 600,000 men lost their lives in the continuation of those promises, the stopping of the legal slavery of Jim Crow in the 1950s and 1960s and erecting new legal Laws for Liberty.
It is a shame that many who are native-born oft do not realize the legacy that has been bestowed upon them – and immigrants, coming from nations in which those Liberties are unknown, are thankful for them.
I would hold up, in addition to Lilly Tang, our own Mike Rogers who, along with his wife and dear friend Mar-Mar, realized what America truly is – a good place, a safe space, a space in which one has the ability to succeed (even if it isn’t guaranteed).
Equality, not equity. Freedom, not slavery. The ability to think for oneself and not be told what to think. The Freedom to speak and to worship instead of being forced into silence.
And the ability to be happy, as Lilly is – if one decides to take that path instead of the eternal anger shown by Azzi and his ideological kinfolks.
One appreciates and embraces what American stands for on the topside – and the other going through life only seeing the ugly side and believing that “ugly” is all that America offers. In this matter, perhaps we all should really be newly arrived immigrants so that we would no longer take our birthrights for granted.
As the old song says “you don’t know what you have ’til it’s gone.”
If the Ugly Americans have their way, that may well just happen. Those that hate America for its philosophy, its history, and way of life, and its Liberty are looking to destroy it. And we know, from history, what will happen next.
245 years of Independence. Our forefathers fought and died for it. It is clear that we must continue that battle for the current batch of Tories still fight for their “KIng” and would be happy to return us all to that time of “subject-hood”.
Join us in this battle – with gratitude and thankfulness for that gift of Liberty that we must keep safe and sacred. Why?
For the day we lose it, we will be Americans no more.
