Today is St. Valentine’s Day, a holiday centered around love — most especially romantic love. But every American, whether married, dating, or single, should all agree on the importance of loving one’s country.
Today’s holiday is named after St. Valentine, an early Roman cleric who was martyred for secretly marrying Christian couples in defiance of a government edict. But Feb. 14 is also the birthday of Frederick Douglass, one of the greatest American heroes. Douglass didn’t know his exact birthday (though he thought it was sometime in February), but he remembered his mother calling him her “little valentine,” so he picked Feb. 14 to celebrate. It is said he also “liked the traditions surrounding that date” of Valentine’s Day, which makes sense since he had two happy marriages over the course of his life. But Douglass was also a patriot, who loved America despite being very clear-sighted about its citizens’ crimes and sins that had caused him and many other slaves to suffer so greatly.
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In fact, as it turned out, Douglass loved America much more than the slave owners and their Democrat allies who launched a Civil War, willing to sacrifice the union to preserve slavery. Douglass said after the war, referring to the heroism of black troops whom he helped recruit, “We Negroes love our country. We fought for it. We ask only that we be treated as well as those who fought against it.”
Another speech that can teach us about love of country as distinct from blind admiration for everything its citizens do, and love of country in spite of everything its citizens do, is Douglass’s famous speech, “What to the slave is your Fourth of July?” Thanks to modern Democrats, most Americans have only heard the part of the speech where Douglass mourns that Independence Day was not then a holiday for all those living in America. They have not heard Douglass’s beautiful tribute to the Founders nor his conviction that Independence Day ought, by right and desire, to be the slave’s; that he wanted only the ability to stand beside the white men, as free as they, to love the holiday.
“I have said that the Declaration of Independence is the RINGBOLT to the chain of your nation’s destiny; so, indeed, I regard it,” Douglass said. “The principles contained in that instrument are saving principles. Stand by those principles,” he admonished. Truly, he did separate himself and his fellow black Americans from the joy of the holiday, citing “the mournful wail of millions,” the “sham,” and “the great sin and shame of America”. But unlike too many today who condemn slavery, Douglass wished to see slavery abolished partly because he ardently believed that most of the Founders had wished to see it happen, too (he was right) and that it wanted only the end of slavery for America to reach new heights of greatness. Replace slavery in your mind when considering the speech with any number of the crises besetting America today — including abortion, transgenderism, and the Democrat Party itself — and suddenly you will start to understand his point. What, to your unborn baby, is the Fourth of July? What, to a youth castrated for transgenderism, is the romantic holiday of Valentine’s Day?
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But Douglass has the antidote, as efficacious today as it was then: true patriotism, liberty, and justice for all, as the Founders intended it. Love of country is still the moral of the story from the orator who remembered his slave mother calling him her “little valentine.” How Douglass admired religious liberty and the “Constitution framed by the illustrious Fathers of this Republic”! Those who claimed slavery was enshrined in the Constitution (like those who claim that of abortion and illegal migration in our day) were “imposters” and indeed false patriots. The word “slavery” is not in the Constitution for a reason; just as evils like abortion and encroaching surveillance are not in the Constitution. Freedom is not a zero-sum game, no matter how Democrats have lied over the centuries about slavery, abortion, etc., and freedom can always increase if we are dedicated enough. Do we love our founding as Douglass did, enough to overcome the evils that threaten our beloved Republic?
The “Constitution is a GLORIOUS LIBERTY DOCUMENT,” trumpeted Douglass. It needed only the unbiased eyes of honest patriots to see that truth. That is as true today as it was then. Love of country does not come before love of family and love of God, but it is tied to both; how can we be good Jews or Christians and parents and spouses and siblings if we turn our backs on the nation God has blessed us with, or actively harm the nation where our children and nephews and nieces must grow up? What is love of country? Is it not the fiery zeal to sacrifice everything if necessary to secure a freer and juster future for our descendants, in accord with our Founding, just as each generation of Americans has done before us?
America will always face external threats and internal treachery, but patriots have always answered the call to defend her in her time of need. Now is our time. We have voted a new administration into office. The hard work of exposing the corruption and pulling it out by the roots begins now, from the federal level down to the state and local levels. That is our task.
Happy St. Valentine’s Day, my fellow Americans, and may it be truly said of each and every one of us that we are history-shaping patriots who love our country and its glorious liberty documents.
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