INDEPENDENCE DAY

Today in the USA we celebrate the “birthday” of what our founders intended to be a secular republic. Americans popularly use this day as a means to enjoy a holiday summer weekend with convivial gatherings, barbecues, and evening fireworks displays while commercial enterprises lure folks towards capitalist excess with varied sales for their wares and services. While we partake of this as we please, Satanists also make time to reflect on the significance of the manifestation of this country whose expressed values favor self-determination for its citizens.

Satanism champions freedom, individualism and personal satisfaction so naturally we endorse the nation that in its 1776 Declaration of Independence promised its citizens “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness” as fundamental rights. We also find inspiration in the bold proclamation in the Treaty of Tripoli in 1797 that “the Government of the United States of America is not, in any sense, founded on the Christian religion.” This inherent secularism bucked the tide of millennia of governments in cahoots with established religions to force obeisance to whatever theist doctrines have held hegemony.

When properly functioning, the American social system serves as an ongoing experiment towards attaining a societal framework permitting individuals to control their own destiny. This is achieved via a social contract offering equity under the law which, to a certain degree, promotes meritocracy while eschewing the mob rule of democracy.

Viewing the past endeavors of our species, most freethinkers understand how rare is this approach to organizing our interactions—it could be but an ephemeral aberration in human history. While the recent SCOTUS decision mandated the right for same-sex couples to marry throughout this nation, the backlash of faith-based opposition under the Orwellian guise of “religious freedom” demonstrates that the “old ways” of state-church tyranny have not completely faded into obsolescence in the United States. Elsewhere around the globe, we currently witness theists mass-murdering those who do not submit to their irrational doctrines. We see them obliterating historical artifacts which offend their lunatic beliefs. We should be profoundly alarmed.

All who join us in cherishing personal sovereignty must grasp that maintaining the flame of freedom requires active vigilance, not acquiescence to those who would limit our autonomy based on their supernaturalist delusions. As we gather here at The Black House today, we reflect on the fragility of individual liberty, affirming our iron-willed determination to preserve free thought in resistance to all who seek our subjugation to the “dictates” of their mythological deities.

Here’s to Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness, unhampered by those whose faith will not tolerate diversity! Hail independence, now and henceforward!

—Magus Peter H. Gilmore