Our Founding Fathers Foresight!
How did state constitutions influence the drafting of the U.S. Constitution and
continue to shape constitutional rights today? Laboratories of Democracy: State Constitutions | The National Constitution Center
Another thought: Merrill Jensen, the great historian of the Articles of Confederation and pre-Constitution America, pointed out that the men who wrote the Declaration of Independence were not the same as those who wrote the Constitution. We are just a few days from the Fourth of July — many who bear witness to current cultural trends are asking the obvious question:
If you can’t stand for our National Anthem and our Flag, why don’t you give your legs to a Veteran who lost his/hers taking a stand for it.
#PatriotsUnite Are we in for the most anti-American Independence Day yet?
After proving himself on the field of battle in the French and Indian War, Benjamin Martin wants nothing more to do with such things, preferring the simple life of a farmer. But when his son Gabriel enlists in the army to defend their new nation, America, against the British, Benjamin reluctantly returns to his old life to protect his son.
Watch The Patriot 2000 full HD on Actvid.com Free
Released: 2000-06-28
Genre: Drama, History, War, Action
Casts: Mel Gibson, Heath Ledger, Joely Richardson,
Jason Isaacs, Tchéky Karyo
I always liked the line from The Patriot: “If I don’t trust one tyrant
3,000 miles away, why would I trust 3,000 tyrants one mile away?”
While some will proudly fly the American flag this Fourth, others will burn it. This divisive mood has been fed by school curricula, university syllabi and corporate employee training that paint a dark picture of the formation of our country.
Critical Race Theory In Schools Must Go – YouTube
Critical Race Theory (CRT), like other forms of Marxism, insists that the primary characteristic of any society is the conflict between its people.
CRT divides people into two basic and conflicting camps—oppressors and the oppressed—on the basis of physical differences. The battle between these perspectives is what we are currently witnessing; and indeed, it will come to a head this Fourth.
CRT and similar worldviews insist that conflict within America is an inevitable product of its design—that America stands for and is designed to exhibit the worst examples of human interaction (i.e., that our country is “systemically racist.”) Their proponents contend that any societal progress must come from fighting and even overthrowing a tainted American design, not working through it. This is entirely backwards. America is not a flawed country with a few redeeming qualities.
It is an exceptionally good country that, as a product of a flawed humanity,
can and does exhibit flaws. America’s history is one of confronting flaws, fighting flaws and righting flaws. This process has been such a regular feature of American life that it reveals the true nature of America’s design and institutions.
Our progress is not complete, but the process is nonetheless possible and even encouraged by the country’s design.
The practical result of CRT must almost certainly be that kids of different races will be suspicious of both their country & of each other. One group being taught that they were oppressors & the other oppressed, & that these are STILL their respective roles! America is better than that! We are NOT a racist nation, nor a systemically racist country.
Yes, racism WAS long firmly embedded in our nation’s practices- but we right these wrongs! So we must teach kids to celebrate that progress, not to go backwards!
But CRT wants to pretend that none of these obvious facts are true- as if we were stuck in slave days. We twice elected a black man as President, and now have a woman of color as VP. There is no legal hindrance to ANY position based on race or gender. We have laws that protect against: exploitation of children; race and gender discrimination.; Affirmative action policies have redressed historical imbalances.
Our country is more fair & equitable on race/gender issues than almost anywhere on the globe. The idea systemic racism is dominant and at the core of US history is pure ignorance. If that were true, “oppressed” races would never be in a position to challenge the “oppressing” race. That would be a pretty poor system of oppression. Systemic racism does not exist. It’s manufactured and presented as oh yeah…. Don’t drink the kool aid, this white Florida teacher wants to keep you on the plantation.
For every racist motive that a CRT proponent reads into the founding documents, there is ample virtue expressed therein.
The Declaration of Independence insists that Americans are naturally, unconditionally entitled to equality and freedom. The result of the Founders’ efforts was a country destined for a free citizenry with equality under the law.
The blueprint wasn’t perfect. Reflections of antebellum society, Lecture: Antebellum Society like the three-fifths compromise, are frequently used as evidence of a flawed design. But to focus exclusively on such features would not do justice to the founding documents. The truth is that they nurtured a better society despite their historical context.
America, by design a republic, recognizes individual rights that withstand the whims of government and the attitudes of the majority. The Bill of Rights promises the freedom to speak and demonstrate, to assemble and be free of government harassment, to every individual no matter the contemporary mood of the public about race, class, gender or any controversial issue. Most importantly, the Bill of Rights is not conditioned on citizens’ outward characteristics. There is no three-fifths limitation on any of its rights.
To allow for the progress that was to come, the Framers designed an amendment procedure for the Constitution. And to enable citizens’ “pursuit of happiness,” America was developed inextricably with a free and accessible market that would ensure economic liberty. And as for the equal application of the law, judicial review developed as a noble and immutable part of American jurisprudence.
America’s design shaped America’s history. And America’s history reflects a trend of progress towards the Founders’ aspirational ideals of virtue —not in opposition to them. America fought a civil war to end slavery and a world war to defeat fascism; it begat the women’s suffrage movement and the civil rights movement.
Over this history, America has developed a reputation around the world that causes many millions to immigrate. The American dream entices the most remote populations and inspires democratic revolutions abroad. American symbiology—like the Statue of Liberty, the personification of freedom atop
the Capitol rotunda or the blind Lady Justice that adorns every American courtroom—is synonymous with noble virtues.
The Progressive Era | Boundless US History (lumenlearning.com)
The Progressive Era was a period of social activism and political reform in
the United States that flourished from the 1890s to the 1920s. Even for those who disagree, the American conceptualization of liberty uniquely defends the activist. It protects the protestor; the harshest citizen critics are free to express themselves peacefully. Surely these are the primary characteristics of American society. And, surely, these are reflections of a good society, worthy of celebration.
It is right to acknowledge the sins of our past, but wrong to distill our country to flaws shared by all humanity. Those who would welcome a “revolution” idealize systems of government which—in practice—stifle reform and endanger dissent.
A government with no basis in natural rights—or a government that is not predicated on freedom—would mean a government of elites who define justice and allocate resources according to their own views. This would be a government destined for oppression.
The world recently witnessed the civil rights efforts in Hong Kong—
and the Chinese government’s extraordinary action to stamp out resistance. The effort has quieted largely without reform. China is governed by an elite. The communist party leaders define the “social good,” allocate resources according to their own sense of fairness and certainly never celebrate freedom. This is no example to follow.
Whether one looks into America’s original design or around the world,
it becomes clear that the stars and stripes are still worth hoisting.
Independence Day: Any Reason to Celebrate?
Bryan Griffin is a lawyer, writer, and specialist in
American foreign policy in the Middle East.
The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.
Can anyone tell me why American independence
was worth fighting for? By Bryan Caplan
That all men are created equal. Those six words were the culmination of 200 years of argument and reasoning, and despite the Declaration’s contention, they were not self-evident then and they still aren’t self-evident in too many parts of the world today. That alone is why July 4 is worth celebrating, that’s what we need to remember when we celebrate our independence.
Why do you think a continuation of British rule (over what really became the USA) would have saved the American Indians or ended slavery earlier?
In 1833/34 the British freed the relatively few slaves they held because they could do so cheaply. They continued to trade for the produce of other countries’ slaves. The cotton gin would have made slavery in the North American cotton belt just as profitable under British-domination as under USA control, so there would likely have been just as much resistance to abolition. If the British had possessed the cotton belt and its slave labor force, they would not likely have abolished slavery in 1833–and might have maintained it until 1860-1870.
You will recall that the British actually came within a whisker’s-breadth of recognizing the Confederacy in 1862–if they had owned North America, how eager do you think the British would have been to shoot their own cow while it still gave milk?
As for the Amerinds, it seems most unlikely that Britain’s policy of restraint after the French & Indian War (Seven Years War) could have survived for long. Perhaps if Britain had crushed the American Revolution, that would have forestalled the French Revolution and all its sequelae right through Napoleon’s empire–but in that case either the weakness of the French or the avarice of Britain’s North-American administrators probably would have allowed rambunctious white settlers into Indian territory by the early 1800’s. You offer no reason to suppose otherwise, given the economic patterns of the time.
I see no reason to belabor the point, but as others here have indicated, even a modest amount of historical reading will provide you with ample reasons to revere the American Revolution (which was indeed cited and emulated by people everywhere during the 18th and 19th Centuries, even into the 20th, as they shook off the descendants of the medieval aristocracies which oppressed them for centuries).
The proposition that it was all about lower taxes takes a bit of a hit when you learn that the Boston Tea Party was staged by tea-smugglers who were annoyed that the duty on tea had been reduced to almost zero so that they could no longer undercut the legal importer, the East India Company. It was probably “about” many things, particularly frustration at being constrained from taking more land from the Indians, and fear that the Mansfield decision put slavery at risk. Both of these were big pocket-book issues for many of the gentry who plotted treason.
America is the only country on earth established upon pure principles, rather than happenstance of history and war. I hardly think you have a point at all…
Not to mention without freedom you would likely not be typing on a computer, or using the internet…
I think it’s fairly obvious that the Left was the beneficiary of the American Revolution for most of its antebellum history. The most dominant American political movement between 1800 and the 1850s was the pro-slavery pro-South wing of the Democratic party. A typical pro-slavery pro-South Democrat would have believed some variant of the following package of ideas during this era:
1). That it was legitimate for the United States to initiate economic and military warfare against other nations for its own aggrandizement, especially if this meant the annexation of territory.
2). That it was legitimate for the United States to initiate military warfare in order to “defend the revolution” from its enemies.
The War of 1812 is the major case in point.
3). Equality for the majority could only exist for long on a basis of human slavery.
4). Violations of civil liberties ranging from postal and political censorship
(i.e. the “Gag rule”) to intercommunal violence were necessary to maintain
civil order.
As you might have inferred from this list, the slave-holding ideology of the American South had quite a bit in common with what we nowadays call the “Hard Left”.
Vacuum energy, wasn’t it Lincoln who destroyed newspapers he disagreed with? Haven’t we gone around the world getting into wars (even if we don’t actually declare war) much more after the Civil War than before? In terms of ideological lines of descent, I think (2) Mencius Moldbug – Bing video is more on the money than you.
Most libertarians interpret the Revolutionary War as a libertarian crusade.
But when you ask about specific libertarian policy changes that came about because of the Revolution, it’s hard to get a decent answer. In fact, with 20/20 hindsight, independence had two massive anti-libertarian consequences: It removed the last real check on American aggression against the Indians, and allowed American slavery to avoid earlier – and peaceful – abolition.
If libertarians have little reason to celebrate American independence, who does? Leftists? They ought to take the Indian and slavery issues seriously, too.
I guess getting rid of titles of nobility and such was a step toward greater equality, but a step worth shedding blood over?
How about conservatives? They’re likely to say “This war created our country – of course it was worth it!” But without the war, conservatives would still have a country to get misty-eyed over – it would just be Britain instead of America.
If you’re going to love whatever country you’re born in, it’s hard to see the point of fighting to make a new one.
My favorite example: In Lawrence of Arabia, Lawrence keeps telling
the Arab tribes to stop fighting each other: “You’re all Arabs! You should join forces against the Turks!” But he could just as easily have said: “You’re all Turko-Arabs! None of you have anything to fight about!”
According to Gerald Gunderson, the 1765 per capita tax burden on American colonists was less than 1/5 of the burden on residents of Britain. The colonists liked being left alone by Britain. All that began to change after the French were defeated. The colonists revolted to avoid changes in policy, particularly an increase in taxes to British levels.
The Founding Fathers Feared Political Factions
Would Tear the Nation Apart – HISTORY
The Constitution’s framers viewed political parties as a necessary evil.
If you want a more complete list, read the Declaration of Independence., in it they list all of the reasons for the revolution, and most are along libertarian lines. Seems as though a lot of (small) things changed, though it took until after the war of 1812 for our sailors to no longer be pressed into service. Also, there was little evidence during the revolution that we couldn’t have solved the slavery problem in a peaceful way.
The Five Conceptions of American Liberty | National Affairs
The Declaration of Independence is one of those documents everyone talks about and nobody reads.
Date: July 4, 1776
To: Posterity
CC: Government
From: Second Continental Congress, Philadelphia
Subject: “We’re Not Going to Take it, Anymore”
God knows, sometimes a man has to stand on his own two feet.
We think that time is now.
Let us explain what we’re about to do and why. We know you’ll understand.
Who do you think should run your God-given life? You, or the government?
The answer is as plain as the nose on your face: you should.
The government is here to protect your life, not to run it. When it tries to, you have the right to say no. If it gets really bossy, you have the right to tell it to drop dead. Of course, you shouldn’t cause big trouble for nothing. It’s best to put up with most of the crap in the world. It’s not a perfect world and never will be. But when a government keeps insisting that it owns your life and all your stuff too, you have the right to start a revolution.
Well, we’re starting one. Here’s why. If this list won’t convince you, nothing will:
1. The government is ignoring its duty to protect us.
2. The government won’t allow us to handle the business that it ignores.
3. The government won’t allow us the right to vote on our laws and our taxes.
4. The government has made it difficult for us to protest.
5. The government has stripped all power from any of us who disagree.
6. Power to the people! But until we get this mess straightened out, the government is inviting all kinds of trouble, and we’re the ones who are going to have to deal with it.
7. The government refuses to let us live where we want to.
8. The government refuses to let us peacefully settle our own disputes in our own courts.
9. The government insists on treating our judges like its puppets.
10. The government is growing too big, too fast, and it cost too much.
11. We are occupied by the government’s army.
12. The government keeps us quiet at the point of a gun.
13. No matter what we say, the government keeps trying to run our lives. For example:
a. There are a lot of soldiers with guns around here
b. These soldiers are killing people, and nobody does a thing.
c. The government won’t let us trade with the rest of the world. We can’t earn a living.
d. We have to pay taxes, but don’t have any say in which ones or how much.
e. Kangaroo courts.
f. Kangaroo justice.
g. The government intimidates innocent people.
h. The government makes up its own rules.
i. The government usurps the power of the people.
j. The government kills innocent people.
k.The government kills more innocent people, and destroys their property.
l. The government kills even more innocent people.
m. The government takes innocent people captive, and forces them to kill other innocent people or be killed.
n. The government encourages Indians to kill innocent people.
It’s not our fault that it has come down to this.
God knows we’ve tried to get along.
But the government insists on treating us like slaves.
The rest of the civilized world isn’t listening to us. We’ve warned them about what’s going on. We’ve asked for their help, begged for it, really. But they have ignored us, even though we speak the same language and share many family ties. Now we have no choice. Reluctantly, we are forced to call them our friends if they don’t fight us, and our enemies if they do.
That’s the way we see it. Who are we? We represent the United States of America. We ask the Big Guy upstairs to help us do the right thing for the right reasons. Power to the people! The old government is finished. It doesn’t matter anymore. If we want a war, we’ll decide that, no one else. If we want peace, we’ll decide that, too. It’s our business if we want to trade and make money.
As of right now, it’s our country.
One of the complaints in the declaration of independence was that the king refused to institute laws that the colonists deemed necessary but having said that I think that Britain had left us alone because we were relatively unimportant and where ruining India my guess is that at some point we would have drawn their attention had we not broken away. Also I think that the founders were probably more resistant to big Government than Britain.
My understanding is the American Revolution set the ground for large strides in the establishment of democracy, constitutional government, and a system of checks and balances on said government’s powers. Why not count other additional policy changes?
Was Britain always more libertarian than the US?
Well, there are three big questions I have
1) How would this have affected immigration to the United States? Would there have been as much multi-ethnic immigration if the US were a colony?
2) Would the US remaining a colony have slowed economic growth. Britain was pushing mercantilist policies at the time that might have affected growth and indirectly immigration as well.
It is notable that the other British off-shoots still lag the US and I think I remember that their growth accelerated rapidly after independence.
3) Perhaps, most importantly, how would that have affected the evolution of world politics.
I can see ill effects depending on how the US grew.
A) The US could have grown more slowly with less immigration and less productivity due to its colonial status. This would have reduced the ability of the West to combat Nazism and Communism.
B) The US would have grown just as rapidly and tipped the balance of power towards the British Empire. Britain would have remained an Empire in the mold of Rome and had all of her resources sucked into maintaining dominance over its colonies until the entire thing came crashing down.
How Did the Roman Empire Fall in a Day.
I should think it’d go the other way (though this difference might have been established pre-independence — but that argues for the Revolution as more or less maintaining the status quo). And don’t you also sort of have to say that if the US had stayed a colony, it would have had equal or greater levels of economic growth and immigration? Further out, you have to explain how there’s no WWII or how Britain would have won (maybe the former is an easier case to make), and similar to the Cold War, right?
How Reagan got us out of the first cold war.
Surely there are some definite downsides to US power as far as world liberty is concerned, but compared to a counterfactual of most other great powers, I’m not sure I’d want to swap out “US as great power” for another. If you want to play the counterfactual history game and say that this political independence didn’t require the revolutionary war, well that takes more of an argument. As well, one might argue that the American aggression against the Indians was inevitable whether we stayed an English colony or not.
(Canada stretches coast to coast) and if the American colonies were still an English constituency that wanted to continue slavery then perhaps England wouldn’t have outlawed slavery as early as they did. Since England had the dominant navy at the time this would have affected slavery in many other countries..
In the world in 1775: Where was self government?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that each citizen had equal legal rights?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that each person could hold their own opinion about the government and express it?
In the world in 1775: where was the notion that every citizen should have a role in selecting the government or representatives?
In the world in 1775: where was the notion that disputes should be peacefully settled through rule of law vs. strongman?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that commerce, business, and wealth were something to be freely pursued by all citizens?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that individuals could choose their work and indeed, were responsible for doing so?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that one community or nation should actually have multiple religions and that individuals were free to worship as they please?
In the world in 1775: Where was the notion that one person in a society is not inherently “better” than another?
It seems that many intelligent and thoughtful colonists believed that, once started, the revolution was worth fighting. Who am I to question their judgment as we all, by definition, know far less of the circumstances than those who fought?
It is also worth noting that many of the colonists tried to resolve their differences with the British government peacefully through petition and were rejected. I am mostly happy with the country that we have and believe in our ideals — which are profoundly libertarian (but not anarchist). As for freedom and liberty, only one in ten English owned property in 1775 compared to nine in ten American colonists. Without property, and the rights to control it, who among us possesses liberty?
Remember too, Edmund Burke was on our side, not the Crown’s.
O.k. Now ask: did the United States and the principles upon which it was founded. Not become a beacon for this for a long time and arguably many vestiges left in our current society?
You should read DE Tocqueville who traveled widely in the U.S. in the first decade of the 19th century, scarcely 25 years after the country was created.
How much of THE UNITED STATES would have occurred had the revolutionary war been lost? Would Britain have carried this forward?
Get real! The alternative world might still have some of these ideas, but to say that we would have anything like the freedom we have now, or that many other countries would have such freedom now that it is completely taken for granted — is ridiculous. Of the many human virtues, the extended baby boom generation of today values not freedom nor does it value personal responsibility.
Lenin, Marx, Freud, Veblein, et al have triumphed in our inner thinking so that we don’t even see the air because we are swimming in the ocean. We celebrate victimhood in all its forms today. Turn on the media today to see independence day coverage and I predict you will see a celebration of the many forms of victimhood that are now the respected orthodoxy.
America must be bad; it must be made fun of — because its traditional heritage is a repudiation of victimhood. America and American ideals must be denigrated in every cultural forum because they are still the major threat to the zeitgeist of our times. If civilization survives, a thousand years from now, this part of history will be looked upon by the intellectuals of the twentieth century as more bizarre than the medieval propagators of superstition.
#Jesus Christ is Lord!
Sometimes the safest place is in plain sight.
Patriots, maybe it is time to set up a place where we can all come together. Would be nice to have us all in one place, off the grid, in our own world….until things get sorted out. That would be my dream right now! There will never be an off the grid…patriots are being watched like never before, especially after Jan. 6th.
I would love to move to an area with neighbors who are all like-minded.
LIVING Off the grid, means homeschooled kiddos are learning to love God and our country. Homegrown food, friendly neighbors and a community church ..
I’m so there!! The way things used to be. I can sew and make things with sticks and string. Post apocalyptic skills. That sounds nice, but withdrawing from opposing liberal voices, their angst, vitriol and slanderous lies weakens the effects of our voices on their “psyche.”
In Fort Bend County, Texas just SW of Houston. They’ve been conservative forever, then suddenly, Hillary won the county in 2016. We’re mostly rural except for the Richmond-Rosenberg area and the northern edges. It just didn’t ring true. Something was VERY wrong. We’re being overrun with blue state refugees who are trying to #TurnTexasBlue.
It’s disgusting. You try to educate them & say please don’t ruin my state but these
progressive zombies THEY DGAF.
Americans need to remember to give each other free speech.
Remember, even when we don’t like what is said, it is rude to attack each other.
I’ve been taught to weather the storm and we need to be there for those who just fell off the banana boat and are waking up. Show them the light!
Ever watched the movie The Village (2004) In-Depth Movie Review
“‘The Village’ depicts the tale of an isolated town confronting the astonishing truth that lies just outside its borders.”’
At first glance, this village seems picture perfect, but this close-knit community lives with the frightening knowledge that creatures reside in the surrounding woods. The evil and foreboding force is so unnerving that none dare venture beyond the borders of the village and into the woods. But when curious, headstrong Lucius Hunt plans to step beyond the boundaries of the town and into the unknown, his bold move threatens to forever change the future of the village.
Janna Berger was deployed by the military and couldn’t see her dog Murphy for two years. She has had Murphy for three years and was worried that he wouldn’t recognize her when she returned in November 2019. But it seems that in spite of some initial trepidation, nothing could be further from the truth.
If you believe in the science of masks,
but not the science of life beginning at conception —
then you do not believe in science.
You believe in political ideology.
Toby Keith – Happy Birthday America (Official Lyric Video)
Where to see bald eagles in (almost) every state (msn.com)
This Is How Each State Got Its Shape (msn.com)