Honoring Independence Day

Signing of the Declaration of Independence by John Trumbull 

Although there is some debate when the declaration was signed, the document was approved by the Continental Congress on July 4, 1776. It is related that John Hancock supposedly said that Congress, having signed the Declaration, must now "all hang together", to which Benjamin Franklin replied: "Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately."

In that spirit, I would commend to you an op-ed by Angelo M. Codevilla entitled "Standing Up to the Ruling Class." Codevilla observes:

The ruling class’s component groups jointly dismiss America’s traditional liberties because they aim to replace them with their own primacy. Having seized the power to redefine liberty, our rulers tighten their definitions around their opponents’ necks like nooses. Since their desire for primacy has no limit, they can’t stop tightening. The norms that they demand that we honor help sustain each constituency by letting its members feel good about themselves while looking down on others. Their “dignitary interests” (to use Justice Kennedy’s term for who must be honored vs. those who must submit to being vilified) simply trump those of others. This is why the ruling class demonizes any questioning of its demands’ substance by imposing modern equivalents of the slave-era “gag rule.” They wage identity politics as war. 

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Peaceable behavior will not protect you from being hounded as a “hater.” A whiff of “offensive” attitudes is enough for the ruling class to make you as untouchable as the lepers of old. Nor is silence a refuge. Just as you must honor homosexuality, so you must affirm that certain Americans are “racists” addicted to “white privilege.” Do you demur? Then, Racist that you are, you must be shunned and should be fired. Do you support governmental efforts to reverse “anthropogenic global warming”? If you demur, you are a Denier who endangers our national security, and must be treated as a kook. Should you refuse to pledge your fealty to the proposition that life and the universe are the meaningless result of chance, you reveal yourself to be a Religious Zealot, an “American Taliban,” ineligible for public and private trust. Do you have reservations about the constitutionality or beneficence of administrative government? Then you are an Extremist, a proper target for Homeland Security, the IRS, the NSA, etc. Do you refuse to celebrate “terminating a pregnancy” as women’s fundamental right? Then you are a Warrior against Women, possibly a terrorist. Do you own guns? Ipso facto, you are a Violent Extremist.

The pretexts differ. But the reality is the same: Bow or be persecuted. 

Law no longer protects you. The ruling class does not punish through laws, and seldom by official actions, nor in any manner amenable to argument. Its bites come from officials and judges, from the connected and protected, whose rule is “Stop me if you can,” and who shove reason aside with epithets such as “offensive” and “hateful.” ...

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The practical problem in America has been that when the ruling class trains its united wrath against persons in any one sector — e.g., supporters of marriage as the dictionary and the law have defined it, or those who support economic probity or the right to keep and bear arms — the general public quietly stands by. No longer accustomed to speaking together, Americans hang separately. ...

Codevilla argues that the means of resisting the ruling class is to speak and argue the truth.

Consequently, if we wish to remain who we are in the face of threats and declamations meant to force us to honor intellectual and moral falsehoods, we have no alternative but clearly and loudly to distinguish between true and false, fully making the case for what we believe to be right. There is no viable alternative to confronting the ruling class’s fantasies and euphemisms substantively, in detail. 

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... For the members of the public to transcend their isolation enough to threaten the ruling class’s hold on the commanding heights of American society would require a nationwide movement with which disparate individuals could identify, and which could encourage them to join together and speak up. 

Read the whole thing.