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4th of July, America, American Piety, George Washington, John Carroll, Pope Pius VI, Pope Pius XII, United States
When Pope Pius VI gave you your first Bishop in the person of the American John Carroll and set him over the See of Baltimore, small and of slight importance was the Catholic population of your land. At that time, too, the condition of the United States was so perilous that its structure and its very political unity were threatened by grave crisis. Because of the long and exhausting war the public treasury was burdened with debt, industry languished and the citizenry wearied by misfortunes was split into contending parties. This ruinous and critical state of affairs was put aright by the celebrated George Washington, famed for his courage and keen intelligence. He was a close friend of the Bishop of Baltimore.
Thus the Father of His Country and the pioneer pastor of the Church in that land so dear to Us, bound together by the ties of friendship and clasping, so to speak, each the other’s hand, form a picture for their descendants, a lesson to all future generations, and a proof that reverence for the Faith of Christ is a holy and established principle of the American people, seeing that it is the foundation of morality and decency, consequently the source of prosperity and progress.
-Venerable Pope Pius XII, Sertum Laetitiae
Do you have a link to the French Royalist’s analysis of the legitimacy of the United States independence? I am rather perplexed by the assumption of many reactionaries and reaction-leaning people that the United States is an illegitimate state (whether outright stated or implied).
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A good overview can be found in Leftism by Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, which includes a biography of French-American hero Charles Armand Tuffin, the Marquis de la Rouërie.
As to the assumption of illegitimacy, I believe it has much to do with the fundamental flaw of reactionaries, the equation of the past with “tradition” and of “tradition” with what is right and legitimate. Instead of applying the true and traditional principles to past and present circumstances, they tend to copy wholesale from the past, including its failures and flaws. This also tends to include conflating any powerful monarchy with a legitimate government, denying the legitimacy of other forms of government which are better suited to different circumstances.
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