Opinion

WALSH: If You Believe America Is A Hateful Dystopia Built On Stolen Land, Why Are You Still Here?

   DailyWire.com
Fireworks explode during an event at Mount Rushmore National Memorial in Keystone, South Dakota, U.S., on Friday, July 3, 2020. The early Independence Day celebration, which will feature a military flyover and the first fireworks in more than a decade, is expected to include about 7,500 ticketed guests who won't be required to wear masks or socially distance despite a spike in U.S. coronavirus cases. Photographer: Al Drago/Bloomberg
Al Drago/Bloomberg via Getty Images

If you feel like cringing uncontrollably, watch this video of two girls at a swimming pool over the weekend singing about how they are “ashamed to be American” because “not all folks are free” and “this ain’t our land.” Similar sentiments were expressed by a group of protesters in DC who burned an American flag on July 4th while chanting that the flag represents “slavery, genocide, and war” and that “America was never great.”

The flag-burners are fortunate that they live in this terrible place. If they’d pulled that stunt in many other countries across the globe, they’d have been dead or in handcuffs before they finished their chant. In India, for example, you can be arrested just for wearing the flag on your clothing, much less burning it in the middle of the street. Flag desecration laws in Saudi Arabia are so strict that even lowering it to half mast is illegal and subject to severe punishment. These protesters need not worry about any of that because they live here, where they have, in fact, much more freedom than they should — freedom that now includes the implicit permission to loot, riot, and vandalize, virtually without consequence.

The fact that they live here, and not somewhere over there, is in itself quite interesting. I am obviously not the first person to ask this question, but it has yet to be sufficiently answered, so I’ll ask it again: If you believe that America is a racist dystopia that was built on stolen land, and that we have no right to be here — “this ain’t our land,” as the smarmy white girls at the pool sang — and that there is almost nothing praiseworthy or good about it, then why are you still here? Why don’t you leave? There are 195 countries in the world. Two-thirds of them are largely non-white and non-western. Why don’t you move to one of them?

Now, the most obvious response is that they stay here, despite feeling this way about America, because they want to fight for change and progress. But that excuse is a non-starter. The things they hate about the US are mostly things that cannot possibly be changed. And even the things that seem like they could be changed, apparently cannot be. If this country was built on stolen land and we have no right to be here, there is no social progress that will ever alter the fact or make it better. If this “ain’t our land,” even after 250 years, then it never will be. Why would you stay on land that you believe doesn’t belong to you?

The supposed systemic racism in our country would seem like something that could be fixed, if it existed, but by the Left’s telling even the election of a black president didn’t improve the problem. It’s still as much an issue now as it’s ever been, they say. America is apparently sick to its very core. Given all of this, isn’t it a matter of moral necessity that you donate your assets to an Indian reservation and move to a country that is not a haven of white supremacy?

But nobody is doing this. The option is not entertained. As they sit around burning the flag and lamenting America’s myriad sins, never once does it occur to them to lead by example and finally flee from this empire of bigotry and genocide. They have been boycotting a fast food chicken restaurant for seven years because the owner disagreed with gay marriage. Yet the United States has been embarked on a ceaseless campaign of oppression, racism, and theft (they allege) for centuries and they do not even consider boycotting it. Why?

There are only two possible explanations: either they believe everything they say about this country and choose to stay on this stolen land because they feel it may benefit them in some way, or they do not believe what they say. The first option makes them amoral opportunists, and the second makes them frauds and hypocrites. If there is a third option, it’s some kind of mix of the first two. Whatever the answer — and I suspect it may be option three — these America-hating protesters are saying more about themselves than the country they live in.

More from Matt Walsh: The Left Says America Was Built On ‘Stolen Land’; Here’s The Reality That Narrative Ignores

Got a tip worth investigating?

Your information could be the missing piece to an important story. Submit your tip today and make a difference.

Submit Tip
The Daily Wire   >  Read   >  WALSH: If You Believe America Is A Hateful Dystopia Built On Stolen Land, Why Are You Still Here?