By Bill Collier, Publisher- TLDR: Loving America Means Loving Our TRUE Manifest Destiny As a Free and Pluralistic Society of Equals and An Empire of Liberty and Justice For ALL
I love my country. If America ever needs me, I am there. Period. This country has given me far more than I could ever give back, and that includes my life. I meant it in 1987 when I donned a military uniform and I mean it now and always will.
Every country has its flaws and I don’t cotton to the idea America is objectively superior to every other country, but for me, America is the greatest country in the history of the world and is the best country for me. I will defend her always and until my last breath.
America has not always been America to EVERYONE.
Over the years we have been more and more inclusive and we have yet to fulfill our potential for every person, national people, or even community in this land. But the arc of our history has bent every more toward including everyone in this dream of true freedom surrounded by opportunity and fairness so that no person regardless of anything is ever left behind in our progress.
This work is ongoing and is being threatened by forces that come from a place of hatred, anger, and authoritarian control. The hazards to our true manifest destiny come from left and right, and even the middle, as a grievance culture, cancel culture, and jingoism compete as dark alternatives. We are seeing people look to the past to both condemn the future and their fellow Americans who weren’t alive as well as others who see in the past some idealized reality they think they can return to.
I look to the future, being informed by the past, good and bad, without using it to condemn or idolizing it to stop progress. I crave to see a time when our true manifest destiny as an empire of liberty and justice for all, an empire that protects and nurtures a totally free and pluralistic society of equals without favor or discrimination, is achieved and will always work toward that future, a goal which we have never fulfilled.
This is in fact the manifest destiny of America as a free and pluralistic commonwealth of multiple nations of people and totally sovereign persons within a federal union of free republics and local consensual democracies. This FUTURE is what makes me feel so proud of my country. I take this as an a priori article of faith that this land and its many peoples and sovereign individuals has a true manifest destiny to become an empire of liberty and justice for all.
To clarify, the “sovereign citizen” movement is a wacky, often jingoistic, archaic, and pathetic misrepresentation of what it means to be a sovereign individual in this world.
I am speaking to the future instead of getting lost and mired in the past. When we fulfill our manifest destiny to a substantial degree, then we can look back more dispassionately on the past and be more frank and honest. I do not ask you to idolize our past any more than you should use the failures of the past to condemn people or our country today. I ask you to love our future based on striving toward the goals of our manifest destiny.
As I see it, I know of no other country has the ideational framework, natural resources, or heritage and diversity of peoples that could create a future such as America could fulfill. That doesn’t mean I am right, but I suspect I am right.
Until everyone in this land almost always feels and experiences this manifest destiny, until THAT America of our IDEALS is America to EVERYONE almost all the time and in every place, then looking back is not a guide to the future but a way to keep us chained to the past. We must replace recriminations with aspirations. We must replace blame for the past with responsibility for the future.
The fact so few really understand and then also embrace and work toward this noble manifest destiny makes me grieve for my country.
Regardless of that, I love America, my country, and will always stand for her, for our flag, and for a more glorious future which will advance the cause of human dignity, human rights, and human flourishing like no empire in the past has yet done. This is my hope and it is a hope not limited by the past or present.
If perchance this future never arrives and if in future centuries America is no more, it will not be said that Bill Collier did anything other than fight for that future out of love for this country and its many peoples.
If all the national peoples and every free and sovereign person as well as every resident of every local community as a consensual democracy were to embrace this vision for our land then they would all, regardless of how they got here and even if they came illegally, be true Americans worthy of this manifest destiny and worthy of being treated as my equal and my countrymen.
But if even the “legal” citizens, by birth or naturalization, do not embrace such a vision for our country, then in truth they are no better than than the “illegals” they so staunchly fear will overwhelm this land and be used to turn it into something far worse than it has ever been. By rejecting or just neglecting this vision, these legal citizens are as much a hazard to our country’s long-term survival as anyone wants to claim the illegal migrants are.
We need people who love America and that really means loving our manifest destiny and as for me, anyone, regardless of legal status, who embraces this becomes my ally and everyone who rejects this is at least my political opponent, regardless of their Party or citizenship status.
