On America's Imperial Core
The stage is set. The music is ready.
On Good Friday, as the curtains of my mind rose, I was intercepted by a turquoise 1954 Chevrolet Bel Air.
Strikingly beautiful, it crawled slowly down the road in the hot Florida sun. Happily I enjoyed this stunning development. It’s in the blood. My father worked for General Motors his entire life. As a boy, he took me to the Cleveland Car Show at the I-X Center. During World War 2, the facility built tanks for the armies in Europe. Imagine those broad, wide floors now pleasantly carpeted wall to wall with the latest models from every make the world over. There was always a section for classic cars. We lingered there most.
The Bel Air parked. So did I. I rolled down my window and called out.
“That’s a beautiful machine!”
An old Latino face in a white Panama hat beamed back.
“Thank you!”
Anticipation settled in my heart, like a bow taking position on its string.
“Mind if I take some pictures?”
We talked for a while. Mostly about the car. Virtually original. Only a few small changes. I walked around it several times, snapping pictures. Over the years the owners of the car kept the license plates. The machine’s current master kept them in the trunk, ready for display.
We grew comfortable quickly. I explained my Ohio origins, a few years in my adopted home teaching at the high school, and my love of the place. He smiled.
“I’ve lived here 54 years.”
“Wow! Amazing. Where are you from originally?”
“Texas.”
“You’re from Texas?” The conductor raised his baton.
“The southern mountains,” he grinned.
The downstroke came. Fanfare rose across the land of my common man’s eye.
The Lone Star State beats with a heart all its own. As an Ohio schoolboy, it was part of American myths. The only state once a country! As an adult, I learned some of its history of politics and war.
Texan heroes die for home and inspired a people.
Santa Anna, the fearsome Mexican general, brought low by Sam Houston at Jacinto.
Remember the Alamo! Remember the Goliad! God and Texas!
The site of that quintessential last stand became a cultural hearth. Houston got a magnificent port. Other grand metropolis rose: San Antonio, Dallas, and Austin. The Republic joined the Union, knitting into the young tapestry of the United States of America. Years later, whatever their ancestry I’ve never met a Texan I didn’t like.
After the strings, the horns. The symphony has just begun.
The king is frightened. Terrified. Sons of Mars? How is this possible?
He casts them from his land to die in the wilderness.
They don’t.
The She-Wolf rescues them. Raises them among her pack.
Wild, terrible, and strong.
They come of age and return to the land.
They deal with the king, once and for all, banishing them for all time.
For their triumph, a city.
The location? Answered in Mars’ way.
Romulus goes on.
Remus does not.
Both pass into myth and go to the halls of their father, proud and upright.
The city becomes Rome.
Christ is Risen. Through Him, Rome is redeemed into more than city but civilization itself.
The highest ideal on Earth, forever.
Whether Anglo or Latin, our cultures grew from the foundations of Rome and Western civilization. Of Christ, above that. We came to the New World with no intention to return. We made nations, peoples, and civilizations of our own.
In the former lands of the Spanish crown, we met at a church called Alamo.
What if that wasn’t a battle, but a greeting? A conversation between two brothers, too long apart on great journeys of space and time, culture and history.
What would that mean? What would that portend? What is really happening in the lands we call Texas? In the lands we call Mexico? In the lands we call America? I will tell you what I see. I will tell you what the fanfare in the lands of this common man sounds like.
I see the core of a new tellurocratic empire. An American Imperium. A new expression of Rome, in all its eternal perfection. Look at the land, the people, and the cities. Look at the world around it, the decaying liberal democratic order, exhausted near death.
The crown isn’t lying in a gutter. It’s lost in the desert, waiting for a gunslinger’s sword to lift it.
It might even have Colt on the barrel.
But make no mistake, Anglo and Latin sons of Europe. This imperial core will not be forged in the ways of Mars, in fire and steel and blood. We left the Old World to escape those ways and reasons. They are not ours. The New World demands a different sort of soldier. Cowboys and vaqueros carrying the message of our people to all the corners of the continent, singing of our God and our purpose:
North America loves her sons and through imperium we protect them. Not Anglo. Not Mexican. American. The best of both worlds.
And on this Easter Sunday, we declare it is through Christ we become this whole. Our union will be forged in the eternal cycles of death and rebirth; in repentance, atonement, and new purpose given. Beyond anything any of our forefathers might’ve imagined, we forge North America into a mighty pillar of the world. Faithful. Strong. Self-reliant and independent.
A civilization to stand the test of time.
I used to just sit in my in my 69 Dodge Dart in the rain.
One of the best places I ever found.
And that special silence that would accumulate
after the first failed start
chug, chug, chug, bahhhh...
the smell of gas and old things and the sound of rain
a stolen moment of total freedom
Well it seems like we're really gonna attempt to clear out the cartels - at which point I welcome our Mexican brothers and sisters.
Both sides could benefit as long as they get our labor rules and wages since theirs are abysmal and drag ours down as well.