America was, once upon a time, actually pretty big on ancestor worship.
You might not think that of course but maybe you forgot that we carved faces into a mountain. We have an entire State named after one of the Founding Fathers (clue is also in that nomenclature) which was admitted to the union in 1889 a full 90 years after Washington died. His likeness is on their State flag to this day and every highway marker has his profile imposed upon it. Of course none of this has acted as a bulwark against the leftist madness that has infected that State. Washington had some of the most obnoxious COVID polices and their largest city Seattle was home to some of the most insane leftist dysfunctional BLM nonsense. It’s about as left leaning as you can get in the current age. Despite being named after Washington it is highly likely would the man appear from a timewarp he would be disgusted and surprised at the current situation.
America though has had a strong predilection for ancestor worship. If you drive through some States you’ll see the city signs boast how far back they were incorporated. Historical preservation, especially in the East, still sees plaques attached to houses often with the name of the leading family that once lived there. The Founding Fathers as a term is laden with potent power from an ancestral perspective. They founded a nation and we are its children. They were of course from an array of different societies that pre-independence America was made up of. From the Puritan stock to the Cavalier descendants. Together we think of them in paternalistic terms. Many of the leftist outrages against this nation are in part driven by the pathetic “fuck you dad” energy they all have. They hate the idea of fathers and thus the idea of a nation, and therefore a people, having founding fathers is abhorrent to them.
Many have mixed feelings on the very birth of America. It is born of rebellion against the King. Against the Monarch. It has been often argued and observed that America is in that sense a truly whiggish nation. That rebellion is perhaps some kind of American ‘tradition’. These arguments myself and others are of course sympathetic to because there rings some truth in them. The New World had begun to create a New Man so part of the theory goes but the founders remained rooted still as did those that followed them. The act of rebellion became enshrined in the nations lore. What was in fact a civil conflict became recast as fighting against the shackles of a foreign tyranny. For all that we are still humans who have created a kind of Kingly cast of these father figures, of our ancestors. The rebellion itself has become one of the oldest forms of ancestor worship in secular modern society as we look to the actions of those who came before to guide the way.
We have other figures in the mythos of America who are almost reaching the heights of the Founding Fathers. Figures like Kit Carson who in the West many States have a connection and claim to him. Both New Mexico and Colorado honor the man as he split a fair portion of his life between the two. Kit Carson county in Colorado bears his name and his statue in Denver fell when the BLM riots were at their peak. It was not just the Civil War heroes of the South that were taken down and destroyed. Part of the reason we had those statues around is because the sons of the South understood the importance of honoring their ancestors even in defeat. Reconstruction and rebuilding the nation saw the US Army absorb those soldiers as well. Again the revolutionary zeal of black radicals and anti-white Whites saw many of those statues and places attacked and torn down because they are in essence attacking the very notion we have that remains of ancestor worship in these statues and places. These places were effectively a form of hallowed ground.
America really should have gone more fully in on these elements we have of our ancestor worship. We are kind of cursed with a half arsed attempt at it. Washington DC, our capital is actually full of grandeur in the Romanesque vein no less. We still have Son’s of the American Revolution and Daughters of the American Revolution which are also examples of ancestor veneration at the very least. It wasn’t just about the ideas, it was about these people who fought and were part of that. This kind of almost deification of Washington and others stumbled when it could have been cemented. The nation didn’t quite get itself together even though as forming its own mythos and existence and people it very almost did.
What would an America look like that had gone further in on this? Imagine statues and places erected in that Roman vein all over the country. Places that were part of the shared society and came alive on many occasions. The veneration of ancestors echoes on to us but is lost without real pomp and ceremony. Towns have 4th of July parades but imagine them culminating at a statue of Washington and the symbolism and unity that comes from this shared experience. We have that to an extent on Memorial day at our gravesites for our soldiers but it could be so much more. Ancestral America with a deeper respect for the ancestors who forged our nation would be a better place but we are not so far gone. There lingers on a surprising amount of everyday ancestor veneration in half forgotten ways.