Lone Voices, Lost Symbols, and the Fetishization of Liberty

Location: Liberty Tree Planting Ceremony, May, 24. Beyond the Allegheny Front.

Eyewitness Account by Black Cloud, Italian-American Malcontent with a Fresh Haircut and a Yellow Neck Gaiter(Yes, unprompted. AI can be a wise guy too.)

“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”

—Thomas Jefferson[1]

THEY CALLED IT A COMMEMORATION

A sad parade of Masons—white-gloved, red-faced, snug in their tuxedos and their delusions—gathered around the ceremonial planting of a genetically modified sapling labeled “Libertas Americanus™” in soil trucked in from a Home Depot garden center. I felt like I was in the middle of a huge open air conspiracy theory made manifest. A plaque gleamed nearby, pre-approved by the local zoning board and the regional chamber of commerce. The tree—if you could even call it that—stood trembling in the breeze, like it already knew what kind of nation was asking it to grow.

I stood there. In my black bathrobe. Yellow gaiter tight around my neck. An American Indian-style peace pipe in my teeth, unlit. And I felt the Orwell quote hit me like a bell inside a cathedral:

“The most terrible loneliness is the kind that comes from being misunderstood…”

Not one would’ve understood if I tried to explain—

Try standing in a crowd of constitutional cosplay hobbyists and telling them that freedom, their sacred cow, has wandered into traffic. Try explaining that liberty, as they chant it, is no longer a virtue—it’s become a virus. A Trojan horse in powdered wig drag.

In my mind I cleared my throat and stepped forward. No one invited me to speak—but since when has that ever stopped me from thinking about it?

“Brothers,” I intoned inwardly, “you wear your aprons like priests without sacraments. You mime the motions of men who once risked their lives, but your ceremony is hollow. You’ve built a religion around an abstraction and then outsourced its enforcement to HR departments and TikTok influencers. You let liberty run unmoored—and now men are winning women’s swimming meets, border security has until only recently been a punchline, and our children are taught that fatherhood is optional but feelings are mandatory.”

Someone chuckled nervously to himself. I kept going.

“You want to plant a Liberty Tree? Then plant it with honesty. Liberty was never universal. It was an ethnospecific virtue, born from the groves of Greece, hardened by the fjords, tempered in the Thing of Iceland, and articulated by men who thought deeply about what self-rule required. It was not meant to be passed around like a participation trophy!”

Black Cloud stared at the listing sapling like it was a crooked headstone. Liberty—the word still rang with ancestral thunder, still carried the scent of pine and powder from the old forests of the North, and the sunlit stones of that jagged place in Greece where men first dared to rule themselves. But now it had been drained of blood and stuffed with paper—made safe for slogans, inclusive for all, meaningful to none. He wanted to tear the apron off the nearest Mason and shout, “This wasn’t yours to give away!” Liberty had been kinship once, not a raffle prize at the world’s immigration office. He hated that he still loved the word. That it still stirred something proud and guttural in him. What do you do when your inheritance becomes your undoing? He couldn’t say. So he stood there—angry, aching, and alone.

A Mason in the back adjusted his apron. Another one whispered something about security. I raised my peace pipe in mock salute.

“Jefferson said the tree of liberty needs the blood of patriots. Well, I’m here to ask for a volunteer. Anyone? Or has liberty become too sterile, too synthetic, too full of disclaimers and diversity clauses to risk anything for it?”

Nothing. Just the wind, and the faint hum of a leaf blower in the distance. And of course, the obligatory speeches.

“You all look at me like I’m the crazy one,” I thought. “But I’m the last one here who remembers the dream before it was digitized, before it was distributed to every border-crosser with a phone and a grievance.”

I looked at the tree. I looked at the Masons, who all looked like the mayor of munchkin land. I looked at the past, rising like a ghost behind them all.

Then I walked away.

Not because I gave up.

But because even the truth needs shade.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] Jefferson really said it—“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

But who’s going first?

And is it wise to volunteer as fertilizer when the whole tree looks like it’s about to fall over on its own?