Whistling Dixie
by R.C. Sproul Jr.

Tomorrow is a holiday, at least for some people. All across this great big land people will be gathering for picnics and fireworks, in honor of the birth of the country. Or is it in honor of the country? The survival of the country? In Vicksburg tomorrow there will be no celebration. There the 4th of July is a time of mourning, a time to remember the destruction of their town by Yankees on July 4. What did you do this year? Patriotism is a form of loyalty. But as we've been discussing, loyalty is due first to truth, then to people or institutions. What is my duty when I live in a country not by choice, but by conquest? I live in Virginia, which once aspired to independence, but whose dreams were destroyed by the United States government. I'm supposed to love them? Are these United States something I ought to feel loyalty to, or should instead my loyalty to freedom and my state cause me to revile country? Complicating the matter still more is the truth that my country once, more than any other in history, represented the truths I want to be loyal to. Does a love of freedom mean, I love my country, which was founded on freedom, or hate my country, which daily destroys freedom? This struggle is reflected in the sage bumper sticker I've seen from time to time, "I love my country, but fear my government." But even here there are complications. What are we being loyal to when we are loyal to a country? Certainly not the geography. Hopefully not the government. Surely it must be the people, but in a democracy, the line between government and people can be a thin one. How can I hate the government, and love the people who love the government? And there is at least one more complication. Things could be worse. What if the Red Chinese invaded? Surely the horror of titanic tyrants might drive one to be loyal to petty tyrants.

A few weeks ago I had the pleasure of listening to the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer. The story centered around his participation in a plot to kill Hitler. Now there is a brain teaser. Can you plot to kill the leader of your government if he has ascended to the depths of Hitlerian wickedness? It strikes me as something of a close call. And if it is, surely we can conclude that refusing to be loyal to our state is a wise choice. Though we have no soldiers carrying out the slaughter, our own Mengeles, under the protection of the state, have killed far more unborn than Hitler's gas chambers killed the born.

I won't be celebrating tomorrow. You won't see me waving a flag which represents a state that will kill those who seek to protect the unborn, and protect those that kill the unborn. Like the living in Vicksburg who will be mourning their dead, I, a slave, will be mourning our lost freedom. I will fulfill my patriotic duty, by honoring our foregathers who fought for and won freedom in 1776, and honoring our forefathers who fought for and lost freedom in 1865. And neither the turncoats up north who betrayed our founding principles, nor the racists who seek to steal our southern symbol, can change those plans. Let the denziens of the empire wave a flag that is supposed to represent a republic. Let the dregs of resistance insist that it's about skin color. I don't care. Let them have and besmirch the symbols; I will hold onto the things symbolized.

We must no longer be fooled by rhetoric which raises the ghosts of Washington, Jefferson, and Adams. Were they not too busy spinning in their graves they would be plotting revolution, not pandering to our divine right four-to-eight year kings. They would be on their soapboxes, verbally turning us, their historical children, over their collective knee. I have no loyalty to those that would enslave me. They take my land and make me pay rent. They take my wages, and bicker among themselves over what I might be allowed to keep. They tell me what work I can do, where I can live, where I can work, who I may hire, what I must pay them. And now they want to make me carry papers about, a national ID so they can track my every move. Only a dog would lick the hand of such a master. I am not a dog. I am a man. And I serve King whose burden is light. And so I will be loyal, loyal to my family, loyal to my church, loyal to my neighbors, loyal to my heritage, loyal even to what is supposed to be the law of the land, the Constitution. And because of those loyalties, I will not be loyal to our governments. Because these governments betray me, and my family, my Lord and my neighbors, our heritage and our law, I will give them no loyalty. I shan't, of course, take up arms. My Lord has enjoined me to obey wicked states, to give them their due. Obedience is their due, loyalty is not.

Tomorrow will be a sad day in the Sproul home. The music you will hear there will be not triumphant strains of Sousa, but the mournful sound of our rebel song, whistled slowly, as we consider what we have lost. Oh, I wish I was in the land of cotton, old times there are not forgotten, look away, look away, dixieland.