Today, Obama will be giving a speech where he will be expected to largely disassociate himself from the rhetoric of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, instead likely offering up his own vision of racial unity. While there's nothing wrong with that, and, politically speaking, probably necessary, the fact remains it was Wright being caught on tape saying "God Damn The United States" that brought this whole matter to the forefront. In other words, the real subtext (unmentionable, except on wingnut blogs) is the patriotic loyalty of a a black man as he stands on the precipice of perhaps being the first such man to be elected President.

Politics aside, from a libertarian perspective, there is a larger subtext involved, divorced from race, that involves the very meaning of patriotism itself. I find it very convenient that HBO's 100 million dollar mini-series, John Adams, based on David McCullough's Pulitzer Prize-winning book, allows this point to be dramatized.

In the clip below, King George's response to the Continental Congress' Olive Branch Petition is delivered. There will be no "British Liberty" for the american colonies, only allegiance to the King, which is owed because he protects them and supports them. At the end of the King's proclamation, the ubiquitous, "God Save the King," with which laws and proclamations were always concluded, was belatedly uttered. However, Sam Adam --from the Massachusetts delegation-- rises up and growls, "God Damn The King." Uttering that was a death sentence, signifying allegiance to the cause of (British) Liberty was greater than allegiance to the King(the State).

John Adams assigned Thomas Jefferson to write the official declaration of independency from the King, to argue that the King had usurped the Amercian colonialists right to British Liberty. The motivation for the document was actually largely strategic in nature, that the Amercian Colonies needed to be seen as a sovereign power to be able to enlist the military aid of the French or the Spainish. Instead, as dramatized in the clip below, Jefferson came back with a document that proclaimed a universal right of all mankind to liberty.

So today, Obama will give his loyalty oath, and somewhere John McCain will extolling the virtues of American Empire and proclaiming it is the job of the Imperial President to protect us. But this Libertarian can't help but to think, why, yes, God Bless Thomas Jefferson, God Bless the Cause of Liberty, but God Damn the United States.