"I pledge allegiance to my flag and the republic for which it stands, one Nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all."
Those words were written by Francis Bellamy in 1892 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's voyage. 134 years after Bellamy wrote these words, this pledge, along with Christopher Columbus, seem almost entirely abandoned.
But that's not all—Americans have begun to abandon the idea of America, and when you abandon an idea, another will force its way into that space. So, what is filling the void, and how do Americans reclaim what so many have foolishly given up?
America is the culmination of thousands of years of passed-down principles, virtues, traditions, and prejudices that have shaped what modern American minds call Western Civilization. To track these ideas down, it would be a travesty to start anywhere other than Greece—a people who recognized the Kosmos as orderly, believing them to be knowable through rational reasoning. The civilization that took the veil off of the purely mythical and began the journey to science, philosophy, and objective truth. This treasure was the Logos. Yet a radical concept emerged from the greatest thinkers of this time, asserting that human beings possess the capacity for self-government. People are capable of making moral choices and having a hand in their destiny. This is the Telos. And then the principle that a higher objective moral order exists in human nature and that this was separate from any government or any king. This is natural law.
One of the defenders of this inheritance was the Roman Empire. Roman jurisprudence and truly landmark documents like the Magna Carta advanced the ideas that the people graciously inherited. The principle that laws must apply equally to all, including rulers, was a gift worth defending. The recognition that human nature is fundamentally flawed and easily corrupted is another stepping stone towards the higher good. The idea of checks and balances can be traced to the Roman Republic, and Montesquieu could never have perfected it without his inheritance being closely guarded and passed down. The idea that to have a flourishing economy, personal liberty, and independence from the government, you needed to be able to own property and your own labor is a cornerstone upon which our nation today rests. The mere idea that government power and legitimacy come strictly from the will and consent of the citizens rather than by conquest of a people is foundational to all of the West.
These ideas were developed and guarded by great men who poured out their blood and the blood of their enemies to pass this inheritance to those alive today. Yet all of these systems and ideas were ultimately found lacking, and the West was not yet complete.
Imago Dei. Image of God. This is the rock upon which the West could be forged into the future. The foundational idea that asserts the individual man is created in the sight of God and possesses a moral equality that transcends all worldly governments and institutions.
The classical virtues that built the West rested upon the pillars of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance.
Unlike all other cultures throughout history, the West did not view history as an endless repeating cycle. Instead, it viewed it as moving towards a purpose and pushed forward toward moral, social, and cultural progress.
America did not invent these ideas, and societies have rediscovered them over time. History becomes lost to time, civilizations conquer problems, and they cease to be issues. Yet issues never vanish completely. And once they rear their ugly head, a new civilization must delve into the chaos. It must rediscover the ideas that saved the ones who came before or join their ancestors in history.
So could Aristotle and Plato have been merely following their ancestral prejudices to the conclusions they came to on the structure of the kosmos? Plato argued there was a single supreme form of Good or cosmic architect of the kosmos. Aristotle mathematically deduced that the universe required an "unmoved mover," a first cause that started everything. These ideas were very different from the polytheistic beliefs of the Greeks.
It is time to recover the knowledge of our ancestors and to reestablish the truths once held as self-evident. If Aristotle and Plato, in the face of adversity, came to these conclusions, then there is no excuse for Americans today not to do the same.
The American ethos and culture is that of a warrior and highly religious people. Steeped in Christendom and ancient principles, the idea that formed the West cultivated a country like no other seen before. These people were aware of their shared history and knew the consequences of their failure when they began the fight for their independence. This American spirit led Francis Scott Key to say, "O say can you see." It is the spirit that led Americans across the Great Plains into the wilderness with nothing more than belief in a higher purpose worth pursuing. The same spirit that placed a man on the moon. The American spirit is more than just an idea, though. It is that inheritance that has been passed down from all of these civilizations, from the West, and from Christendom. It is shared principles, morals, history, and ancestry, and when understood as such, it is a rightly ordered spirit. Abandoning any of these four ideas leads to a chaotic, disordered spirit. It leads to people who believe that being American is nothing more than geography, history, or ancestry.
Today, Americans see people who, in large part, have abandoned either of these four ideas or believe there is nothing worth fighting for… and that anybody can be American. This idea is deeply damaging and has nearly cost Americans everything their ancestors built. They have forgotten what the treasures in our society are, and now they are being plundered. It is time to wake up and realize multiculturalism's failure.
A nation cannot survive for long while importing millions of people who have no connection to the traditions, principles, and history that formed it. When mass legal and illegal immigration transforms a country's national character, undermines assimilation, and weakens its connection to its own inheritance, the nation will falter.
America is losing its shared principles, morals, history, and ancestry to conquerors marching in the front gates. Just as destructive as the unassimilated migrants are those who lie about this great nation to subvert the spirit of this country. A country that abandons the civilization that formed it cannot expect to preserve its character when the people shaping its future no longer share that inheritance.
It is time to accept the West's inheritance, reunite the culture under the shared history our ancestors fought for, which goes back over 4,000 years, and fight for future generations of Americans.
Cole Ellison is a writer focused on American identity, culture, and Western tradition.
Image generated by ChatGPT.
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