Jack Peterson told passengers on the Incline Railway in Chattanooga, Tennessee to have a happy Fourth of July. He told them they were in the greatest country on the face of the planet. Then his employer fired him for it.

That was a week ago. As of Saturday evening, more than 415 people have donated over $14,000 to Peterson's GoFundMe — blowing past his original $8,000 goal and climbing toward a new target of $24,000.

Peterson was working as a conductor on the Incline Railway — a 131-year-old tourist attraction operated by the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority, or CARTA — when he made the announcement that ended his career. The full quote, captured on a passenger's video that went viral on July 7: "To the very, very few Americans in here, happy Independence Day. To the rest of you, welcome to the greatest country on the face of the planet, and if you disagree, you can leave."

CARTA didn't wait for a review. A director at the Incline Railway met with Peterson that same day and fired him on the spot. The agency cited "demeaning language" as the reason for termination.

Scott Wilson, CARTA's Chief of Staff, issued an apology — not to Peterson, but to the passengers. "Welcoming every guest warmly isn't a political statement — it's Southern hospitality and also a good business principle, and in Chattanooga those have always been the same thing," Wilson said.

Read that statement again carefully. Wilson didn't say Peterson was wrong about America being the greatest country. He didn't dispute the sentiment. He called it bad hospitality. A man who spent his shift telling tourists they were welcome in the greatest nation on earth got reframed as rude.

Peterson, for his part, wasn't interested in apology tours. "I think that CARTA as a company has a lot of thinking to do when it comes to supporting this country," he said. "I do not believe my firing was a correct or just one. My personal thought is, what has this country come to when someone can get fired on Independence Day for a patriotic statement."

That's a fair question. The Incline Railway has been running since 1895. It's survived two world wars, the Great Depression, and the entire cultural revolution of the last decade. But apparently it can't survive one conductor who loves his country out loud.

The GoFundMe tells a different story than CARTA's apology. Peterson titled the campaign "Support Jack Peterson After Job Loss," and within days it had raised nearly double his original goal. Regular people — not corporate boards, not PR consultants — decided a man shouldn't lose his paycheck for telling tourists to enjoy Independence Day.

CARTA operates a publicly funded transit system. Their trains run on tax dollars collected from the same Americans Peterson was celebrating. The agency's leadership decided that patriotism on the Fourth of July constituted a fireable offense, then apologized to tourists for having to hear it.

The $14,000 isn't just money. It's a performance review — and CARTA is the one who failed it.