INDEPENDENCE DAY

Today in the USA we mark the “birthday” of what our founders intended to be a secular republic. Americans popularly use this day, or the nearby weekend, as a means to enjoy a summer holiday 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 or refrain from all 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 rejected the age old practice of governments being wedded with established religions to force widespread 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.

Yet today we observe ongoing “faith-based” efforts to legalize discrimination against fellow American citizens under the Orwellian guise of “religious freedom.” This demonstrates that state-church tyranny is a tool many of the faithful would gladly wield if given the chance, so long as their church is the one being able to call the shots. Yet not everyone is fooled as even the heads of major corporations have called-out the blatant bigotry intended by Christians who scramble to establish this sort of legislation in various states.

And, as has sadly become commonplace, the ongoing horror of theists mass-murdering those who do not submit to their irrational doctrines continues. From night clubs to airports, in mosques, restaurants, marketplaces, theaters, train stations, hotels, bridges, embassies and universities people are being slaughtered by barbarians who claim their religious beliefs as the basis for such atrocities. We should remain profoundly alarmed and not become inured to such savagery, working with rational people from many different nations and backgrounds to combat these extremist crimes against civilization.

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. 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 and their anti-human morality.

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