Maybe this will be the year that we forgo celebrating Independence Day in the United States, since it’s becoming quite obvious that millions of Americans have no desire to be independent of Great Britain.
This surfaced last fall when a right-thinker named Dinesh D’Souza published an article in Forbes Magazine — which used to enjoy a decent reputation — explaining that our duly elected president, Barack Obama, could be understood only if we realized that he suffered from an anti-colonial view of the world.
Another right-thinker, disgraced former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, picked up on that. He told National Review, a conservative journal, that Obama “is so outside our comprehension, that only if you understand Kenyan, anti-colonial behavior, can you begin to piece together” his actions. “That is the most accurate, predictive model for his behavior.”
Obama was 26 years old the first time he visited Kenya. But his father was a Kenyan, and Kenya spent much of the 20th century as a British colony before gaining independence in 1964 following violent struggles which included the Mau Mau rebellion.
Now, I’m not going to hold Kenya up as a model republic. But I would like to know why it is considered abhorrent for Americans to oppose British colonialism.
As best as I can recall from school history classes, this nation was founded in 1776 in opposition to British colonialism, and fought a bloody war for seven years to be free of British colonialism.
Our seminal document, the Declaration of Independence, is a lengthy indictment of British colonial practices, ranging from trade policy to King George III having established “a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”
Thomas Jefferson wrote that. Other opponents of British colonialism included George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin, to name a few. And yet modern right-thinkers, if D’Souza and Gingrich are typical, tell us there’s something un-American about opposing British colonialism.
Maybe those are just rantings that no reasonable person would take seriously. But our popular culture suggests otherwise. These days it’s really hard to escape from the breathless coverage of the impending April 29 wedding of His Royal Highness Prince William to Catherine Middleton.
Every time I encounter something about how the Coldstream Guards band will play along the procession route, or the exquisite design of Kate’s wedding dress, or the details of the tiered wedding cake, I think “Wait a minute. Didn’t we fight a war so we wouldn’t need to care about the doings of some distant decadent aristocracy?”
I felt the same way in 1981 when Prince Charles wed Princess Diana, followed by the adventures of Duchess Sarah Ferguson, and then the affair of Charles and Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall — why should anyone, especially an American, care about any of this folderol?
But care we do, if our magazines, newspapers and television programs are any indication of what matters to us. While we have established some homegrown dynasties like the Kennedys, Rockefellers and Bushes, we’re still enthralled by the House of Windsor. You end up wondering why we shoot off fireworks on July 4, when it’s obvious that we really don’t want to be independent. Even though our constitution forbids titles of nobility, we still swoon for dukes and princes.
So it’s come to this: To be good Americans, we need to forget why America was founded.
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Announcement: I’ll be speaking about local lore and rivalries at 7:30 p.m. on April 29 at the Salida Steamplant auditorium. Tickets are $10 at the door, and it’s a benefit for a scholarship fund run by Historic Salida, Inc.
Freelance columnist Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
