Below 
is my column in The Hill on our 250th Anniversary. Most of us will be celebrating with fireworks and cookouts today. Yet, some will celebrate not with fanfare but fury today. Rep. Al Green was asked whether he was proud to be an American on this holiday on the steps of the Capitol. He responded, “I am very proud to tell you that impeachment is an option to remove a reckless, ruthless, lawless president. I’m proud that it exists.” Well, at least he is celebrating something. For the rest of us, we celebrate a unique Republic that has brought prosperity and freedom to generations of Americans. Happy Fourth of July to all of the patriots across our political spectrum. E pluribus unum.
Here is the column:
Across the country today, Americans are celebrating a common article of faith: the belief that a free people can govern themselves under rights given to them not by the government but by their creator.
Two hundred fifty years ago, the Republic was founded as the first major Enlightenment Revolution. The Enlightenment had started roughly 100 years earlier. Many in Europe had long argued for a society based on the writings of figures like John Locke. But it would happen thousands of miles away, among a collection of colonies where a people came together and put those principles to the test. They believed that they were entitled to rights of free speech, free exercise, and property as human beings, not as subjects.
We became the fascination of Europe among writers and intellectuals who could not understand how the world’s first Enlightenment Revolution could be brought about by a people with little connection to each other or the land; with no calcified class structure or fixed institutions.
It led one Frenchman, who wrote under the name John Hector St. John, to ask, “What then is the American, this new man?”
In my book, Rage and the Republic, I ask whether we can answer that question today. Who were we then, and who are we now?
In 1776, two revolutions were developing in America and in France. One would become the world’s oldest and most successful republic The other, in France, would become “the Terror,” in which tens of thousands would die on guillotines and in the streets.
The true miracle of Philadelphia was the creation of a system that could harness the self-destructive powers of a democracy. The framers, and particularly James Madison, would create a constitutional system that forced moderation and compromise through checks and balances.
Many wanted a less restrained democratic system, but the Framers understood that such systems stretching back to ancient Athens had become little more than what Benjamin Rush called a “mobocracy.”
In France, such voices prevailed. They unleashed a blood-letting that would ultimately even devour the Jacobins themselves. They first turned on the wealth and aristocrats, then on the priests and then each other. It would lead French journalist Jacques Mallet du Pan to write that “like Saturn, the Revolution devours its children.”
Those voices are with us today. Many, including Democratic and socialist leaders, are denouncing the Declaration and the Constitution as tools of repression.
This week, various Democrats went public to call for radical revolutionary changes or criticize our founding. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani used an occasion with newly admitted citizens to trash the country, oligarchs, ICE, and our “arena of supremacy.”
Socialist Mamdani described a virtual hellscape of a country run by “oligarchs who buy elections” as “children go to sleep hungry.” He added, “We see monopolies that dominate every industry, and oligarchs who buy elections. We see masked agents terrorizing our streets, eating food cooked by our undocumented neighbors before spiriting them away in unmarked vans.”
Mamdani mocked the narrative of the republic, telling the new citizens that “the irony is that the story of America has so often been written by those who were told by others with power and influence and wealth that they were anything but exceptional.”
Others joined the celebrations with their own condemnations. Pennsylvania socialist Chris Rabb, the Democratic nominee for Pennsylvania’s 3rd Congressional District, has joined the chorus of critics.
Speaking at “America at 250 — Trump Fascism, Historical Erasure, and the Battle Over Truth” in Philadelphia, the unopposed Rabb lashed out at a country built on “stolen land and stolen labor.” He also mocked the “lofty” “screeds” that “were notoriously catering to a performative aspect of collective genius that purposely erased indigenous and black peoples.” He denounced this country as based on harmful “myths” supporting white supremacy and fascism: “Fascism is not new. These systems of harm are built into the very fabric of this nation.”
Others, such as former MSNBC host Joy Reid, declared that black Americans don’t celebrate the Fourth.
Reid dismissed celebrating what she called “MAGA America” which she described as “sad, pathetic, boring.”
Others, like Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), used the anniversary to praise Cuba as the true model of success (something Mamdani had also done in his inaugural address).
Blue states — Connecticut, Illinois, Maine, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Pennsylvania—declined to participate in the 250th anniversary celebrations on the Mall.
In Massachusetts, a historic church ended its long-standing celebration of the Fourth of July to focus on the “on-going process within the congregation to better understand our own whiteness.”
This is the home of John Adams and other patriots. Adams wrote his wife Abigail that this day would be “celebrated by succeeding generations as the great anniversary festival. It ought to be commemorated as the Day of Deliverance by solemn acts of devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with pomp and parade, with shows, games, sports, guns, bells, bonfires and illuminations from end of this continent to the other from this time forward forever more.”
We are seeing not a constitutional crisis but a crisis of faith. Polls show that fewer than half of Democrats are now proud to be Americans.
For many of us, this day remains, as Adams described it, that day of deliverance. These are revolutionary times, but we remain a revolutionary people who believe that free speech and other rights belong to us as human beings. Our belief in individual rights and the free market built the greatest engine of prosperity and freedom in the history of the world.
Many of these critics cite our flaws, including slavery, in a country based on inalienable rights. But what the framers gave us was a system that allows an imperfect people to form a “more perfect union.”
It was here that citizens could pursue their own manifest destiny. It is here that a black minister could speak on our National Mall about his unrealized dream and galvanize a nation to fight for the civil rights of every American.
It is here that an African American, and the child of a Kenyan, could become president.
It is here that the son of Vietnamese immigrants could rise this year to be Navy Secretary.
It is here that a black child growing up in a home with a dirt floor and no plumbing could become one of the longest-serving justices of the Supreme Court.
It is here that a people could survive economic meltdowns, global wars, and natural disasters, based on the simple belief that we share a common article of faith: “E pluribus unum” — “out of many, one.”
“What, then, is this American?” Look around you.
At the end of the day, the bottom line is: you people support a pedophile, and, thus, pedophilia.
Those who use the word “fascism” most freely are those who are most anxious to establish it. They are would-be dictators who are looking for an excuse for putting themselves in power and controlling the lives of everyone else. Their chief tactic is to demoralize the majority of the population by making them ashamed of our history. We must never let them succeed. Human beings have a history of almost a million years. Virtually all of the progress from savagery to current technological wonders have occurred since the ancient Greek states started Western Civilization 3000 years ago. This is the proudist story in human history.
Old TDS Al Green – on his way out and can only watch any proceedings as a spectator in the future! PERFECT and a fitting end to a crappy career! Bye Al!!!!
“I am very proud to tell you that impeachment is an option to remove a reckless, ruthless, lawless president”
Both Obama and O’Biden are no longer in office.
At one time in my life I was down to $79, was carrying everything I owned in my two hands, and started a job in a foreign country, living in a hotel, and riding to work with a co-worker who had a car. The capitalist system of economics and a War in Southeast Asia provided me the means to earn a living and obtain a University education and eventually saw me running a business and eventually owning two of my own and now with a self funded retirement I am able to enjoy the fruits of my labor and down right hard work. I sacrificed at times and provided financial support to my sister and later funded much of their college educations, spent six years looking after my Widowed Mother and still wind up in a position to have a good retirement life style.
That is the America I know….where hard work, dedication, and doing the right things pays off and done all without a hand out from the government or anyone else.
I served my Country, my family, my neighbors, and myself in a manner that benefited all of us.
I do not envy the rich or covet their belongings nor do I think the government can better spend my money than I can.
This current path I see the Nation taking is going to take us to a place none of us should want us to experience.
I have seen real poverty, real fascism, socialism, and out and out communism as well as radical religious zealotry…all up close and personal. There is no compromise possible with communists or religious zealots. They and their ideologies must be defeated…no matter what it takes or how long it takes us.
Look around you today and take a very good look at how great this nation is, how wonderful our freedom is, and why it must be protected and over watched by our dedicated surveillance as Citizens…each and every one of us.
We were challenged to ensure we keep our freedom.
Do your part and teach your children why freedom is not and cannot be “free” of cost.
I shall not die without a hope that light and liberty are on steady advance… And even
should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and liberties of
Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them…The
flames kindled on the 4th of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be
extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume
these engines and all who work them.
-Thomas Jefferson letter to John Adams, Monticello (September 12, 1821)
The Anonymules are out in force today. Obvious that their brain pans have overheated and have left nothing but the charred remains of their organic components.
Mr. Trump just did the unforgivable which was that he won and the 2nd and 3rd times he ran he gained even more votes than the 1st time. That is not the tale of a tyrant. All laws are still passed in the same format, all court decisions are followed, the House and Senate still stand.
Only dysfunctional brains overwrought with hate can regard that as tyranny. They operate almost at the level as John Wilkes Booth of “Sic semper tyrannis” fame, who assassinated the greatest president who had advanced us so much closer to a more perfect union as he ended slavery and was re-uniting the country.
So typical of the facist left these days as they push forward with the “warmth of their collectivism”.
Happy 4th of July.
The heat is moderating, the beer is cool, the brats are simmering, and the beans smell glorious. Far more important today than the ravings of the left.
It is amazing how many assumptions underly the whinings of Lefty fools like Al Green and the local crop of Anons
Professor Turley commends James Madison for his role in “creating a constitutional system that forced moderation and compromise through checks and balances.”
Unfortunately, on both accounts, the Supreme Court’s opinions this term have weakened our constitutional system of moderation and compromise both with its support for partisan gerrymandering and its support for the executive branch’s supremacy over the other two branches of government.
In Federalist No. 10, Madison’s most famous essay, he dealt heavily with the danger of “factions” (what we would call parties or special interest groups). He recognized that you can’t stop people from forming partisan groups without destroying liberty. Therefore, you have to control their effects.
How do you control them? Through the republican principle of regular, competitive voting.
If a faction is a minority, a robust election allows the majority to simply vote them down.
If a faction is a majority, the system relies on a broad, varied electorate to keep them checked.
Gerrymandering actively breaks Madison’s remedy. By drawing safe, uncompetitive districts, a partisan minority can capture a legislative majority, or a bare majority can entrench a permanent supermajority. This completely short-circuits the self-correcting mechanisms Madison designed into the Constitution.
The Court’s Slaughter case additionally does real damage to the system of checks and balances that Madison devoted his life to bake into our constitutional structure. In Federalist No. 51, Madison famously wrote that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” meaning no single branch should ever operate in a vacuum. He rejected a rigid, untouchable executive, arguing in Federalist No. 47 that the branches must have a “partial agency in, or no control over, the acts of each other.” To Madison, the executive was always meant to be bound by statutory law and checked by congressional oversight.
When competitive voting is engineered away and the executive is granted untouchable supremacy, Madison’s system of forced moderation breaks down. We are left exactly where the Founders feared most: at the mercy of unchecked partisan power.
I note that another Hill columnist had a different take on the Mayor’s remarks: https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/5952794-nyc-zohran-mamdani-patriotism-righteous-dissent/
Happy Independence Day to all. John Adams said it best, I think:
“The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America.—I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.
Happy 4th of July
It’s time to cool off on a B-1 bomber.
And that streak will end unless we eliminate the MAGAs.
It never stops. The leftist vomit is never-ending.
The US Army vomit never ended until the Nazis were eliminated. One can’t back down when face with an enemy hell bent on destroying your country.
come at me bro!
‘Polls show that fewer than half of Democrats are now proud to be Americans.’
And that half are all the foolish, privileged cohort we discuss so frequently, and like it or not, many are people here illegally or temporarily. The rest are vote blue dems spitting in one hand. The lies from the modern left broke the meters long ago, it really would be parody if it weren’t so serious. Mamdani and others were placed and funded to be ‘subversive’. There isn’t a brain cell between them, puppets, all.
It’s actually encouraging that when parsed, it is confirmed that the trust fund generations are actually a smaller percentage, as ever. It’s up to the rest of us to wake up.
Happy Independence Day!
Our constitution was created by properly educated morally observant men. It requires some intellectual vigor to comprehend the complexity of its creations and its usage. What the progressive left has created in the past century is a citizenry where almost half of them are too ignorant to manage the usage of such a document. Add in the vote for women (I am one myself but heartily admit that 99% of my gender make decisions based on emotion rather than logic and that has also skewed the power of this excellent document) and you have an electorate that is mostly incapable of utilizing the powers of this government in a sane and constructive manner. I am a firm believer that only those who own property should have the vote as it requires there be some price for their vote.
Outstanding essay!
Thank you for your daily column and through your many contributors showing that the spirit of America is strong. Personally, I started with little, but worked to achieve a professorship at a great university, and spent my career teaching and doing research. I am ever grateful for the opportunities available here in the USA, personally proud to be an American, though I am a naturalized citizen.
Ahhh!!
So you are one of those leftist professors who spent his life indoctrinating our children with anti-American socialist ideas.
As all of us here know , thanks to Turley’s many pieces exposing this tragedy, all the good conservative professors were long ago purged from our higher education system leaving behind the socialist reprobates such as yourself.
When in the course of human events a tyrant imperils a nation, it is the duty of those who cherish democracy to remove him from power.
We the People refuse to tolerate a despot who threatens our country and the world.
–He has engaged in corrupt schemes to profit from his office, plunder the Treasury, and steal from the taxpayers.
–He has desecrated the People’s House and the nation’s capital.
–He has perverted the Department of Justice to take revenge on his perceived enemies.
–He has vandalized the federal government, replacing experienced professionals with incompetent sycophants.
–He has deployed a domestic army of masked thugs to terrorize, torture, and kill.
–He has shredded aid for those most in need, at home and abroad, spreading hunger, sickness, and death.
–He has betrayed the nation’s allies and collaborated with its foes.
–And he has committed war crimes, ordering unprovoked attacks on foreign countries, targeting civilians, and massacring children.
We reject him and his enablers.
They must be held accountable and brought to justice.
And such tyranny must never contaminate this nation again.
Today we vow to set the United States on a new course.
To eliminate racism, sexism, and inequality.
To embrace honesty, empathy, and kindness.
To form a more perfect Union.
I guess 250 years was a pretty good run.
Too bad it might end this way.
aw, still talking to yourself and answering yourself, too cute.
Calm down. Biden has been out of office for a while.
Don’t forget that was following 8 years of the Chocolate grifter…
I would tell you to blow your brains out but I don’t think you have any.
said from the safety of anonymity. You do realize that the true American patriots see you for what you are, a stupid creature, not fit to live among free peoples. If you truly hold these beliefs, tell us who you really are, name and picture. Real people have no fear of standing up.
Like the white nationalist racists matching in DC today.
Paid and funded by the SLPC it seems
so is this your declaration of war?
Obama and Biden
Joy Reid’s description, “sad, pathetic, boring.” best describes the above post.
-g
Hey Anon of the Big List,
You’re going to have to come through 100,000,000 patriots to form your more perfect union. I bet a dollar you will fail miserably.