I begin the book with a brief history of America’s foundation. I start here because if we don’t understand where we came from, how this country was designed, and the principles that founded two hundred years of success, we will never be able to reestablish American greatness. This is crucial.
Sometimes we Americans act like we take our freedoms for granted—as though we’ve lost sight of our history and the sacrifices our ancestors made so that we could be free. Have we forgotten what it means to be free? Have we taught our kids the importance of our founding principles? Have we shown them the direct connection between preserving our Constitution intact and maintaining our liberties? Do they understand why the United States of America is strong and prosperous while other nations aren’t? Have we sufficiently explained the miracles of a free market system and the evils of socialism? I make a point of emphasizing all these things on my radio and television programs day after day and night after night. And I intend to elaborate on them here.
I make no secret of my love for America and for its founding tradition and documents. Americans are committed to the individual as well as the greater good, to liberty, and to virtue.1 I often quote one of the great founders and pioneers of talk radio, Barry Farber, who recently passed away: No country has ever accumulated more power and wealth, or abused them less, and, I would add, has used them to advance the human condition more than the United States. In the last twenty-five years, global poverty has decreased by two-thirds, largely due to free market capitalism that America has been instrumental in spreading.2 Americans generously share our wealth with the world, both through government aid and private charities. America is still the world’s beacon of freedom and the place where everyone wants to come, knowing they can pursue their aspirations and enjoy the guarantee of equal opportunity under the law.
This country paid the price for world freedom by defeating fascism, Nazism, communism, and Imperial Japan, and we are now leading the fight against radical Islamic terrorism. We emerged from World War II with far more power than any other nation in history, with the possible exception of Rome at the height of its empire. We had the world’s strongest economy and a staggering superiority in military capacity, which included a monopoly on nuclear weapons and their delivery systems. Positioned to forcibly dominate the world, we instead exercised humble restraint.3
After our costly victory over Nazi Germany, we could have implemented the Morgenthau Plan—a strategy devised by Treasury secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. to eradicate Germany’s entire industrial base. Instead, under the leadership of U.S. secretary of state George C. Marshall, America included Germany in the Marshall Plan, providing $13 billion in aid to rebuild European cities, industries, and infrastructure and to stimulate U.S.–European commerce.4
America’s critics deny our intentions were altruistic because we were also trying to shield Western Europe from Soviet expansion.5 But protecting nations from the ravages of communism—a system responsible for nearly 100 million deaths worldwide in the last century alone6—is altruistic. Throughout the Cold War, the United States served as the bulwark for freedom and democratic principles against Soviet totalitarianism and its notorious slave labor camps, mass murder, and famines. Yes, the spread of freedom and prosperity worldwide also benefits us, but that does not diminish the benevolence of our world leadership. “Americans are as self-interested as any other people,” writes historian Robert Kagan. “But for at least 50 years they have been guided by the kind of enlightened self-interest that, in practice, comes dangerously close to resembling generosity.”7
Since the end of the Cold War, Americans have widely debated our rightful place in the world. Writing in 1998, Kagan observed that our generosity seemed to be fading—not due to arrogance but “because some Americans have grown tired of power, tired of leadership, and consequently, less inclined to demonstrate the sort of generosity that has long characterized their nation’s foreign policy. What many in Europe and elsewhere see as arrogance and bullying may be just irritability born of weariness.”8
Republicans are split on this question today, as many have indeed grown weary of America’s protracted wars. President Trump reflects these tensions—he’s no isolationist, but he clearly wants to reduce our global military footprint and prioritize our national interest in his foreign policy. As I’ve said many times, the president is tired of our country doing all the giving and getting little in return. He’s tired of our brave soldiers sacrificing everything and other nations failing to contribute their fair share toward their own security, let alone ours. He is second to none in wanting the strongest possible military, and he has acted on his promises to rebuild our defenses. But he wants to use them wisely and efficiently. “Great nations do not fight endless wars,” he said in his 2019 State of the Union address. “I got elected on bringing our soldiers back home.”9 Still, as shown by his victory over ISIS and his strike on Iranian archterrorist Qasem Soleimani, Trump doesn’t hesitate to use military force when it directly strengthens our national security. And once again, these actions also benefit our allies and other nations.
America has been and continues to be exceedingly generous compared to any other nation in history. But according to the political left, nearly everything America does is selfish and oppressive. From John Kerry’s slandering our troops in Vietnam during Senate testimony in 1971 to Barack Obama’s world apology tour, they blame America first and undercut this country at every opportunity. They are consistently trying to diminish our power and military.10 They reject our nation’s heritage, its values, and its very founding. They want to dilute our sovereignty by subsuming us in a larger international collective and by eradicating our borders.
This is the key to understanding the left today. They don’t merely oppose specific American policies, they oppose our long-standing societal values, and they resent the institutions and culture that arose from those values. They have little use for liberty because it limits their ability to impose their political vision. They want to take more of your money and spend it on their priorities. And they want to dictate the most minute details of your life, decreeing what kind of straws you can drink from, what kind of lightbulbs you can use, and what kind of power your home can use.
The founders wisely worried that future generations might take liberty for granted. Going well beyond that, the left seeks to redefine liberty as selfishness. If you drive a car, or eat meat, or take a long shower, or fly to visit your relatives, or own a gun, you’re not exercising your freedom, you’re now sinning against our whole society. It’s not easy to turn a nation against its founding ideals, but with its relentless assault on our liberty, traditions, and values, that is exactly what the left aims to do. This is a fairly new problem. Americans have always taken pride in this country’s exceptionalism and its unusual goodness. But the left seems to be on a mission to erode our natural patriotism. As a result, Democrats increasingly denounce America in ways we’ve rarely heard from our leaders, such as New York governor Andrew Cuomo declaring that “America was never that great,”11 former attorney general Eric Holder claiming, “This notion of [America’s] greatness never in fact really existed,”12 and Michelle Obama saying, “For the first time in my adult life, I am really proud of my country.”
In his farewell address, President Ronald Reagan addressed the resurgence of national pride during his tenure in office, what he called the “new patriotism.” While he was gratified that patriotism was rebounding, he knew that for this positive attitude to endure it must reach deep into our national soul. He clarified that patriotism is not blind love of country or a stubborn sense that your country can do no wrong. “This national feeling is good,” he said, “but it won’t count for much, and it won’t last unless it’s grounded in thoughtfulness and knowledge. An informed patriotism is what we want.”13
This makes perfect sense. To maintain national cohesiveness, our citizens should unite in their love for the country based on the ideals that set this nation apart. Until relatively recently, this was not controversial. Immigrants seeking U.S. citizenship have to learn about our Constitution and our legal system so they’ll develop an informed patriotism that ensures their loyalty to the values that underlie and guarantee our liberties.
The importance of an informed patriotism among our citizenry is one reason why I oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants and believe strongly that for America to retain a robust national identity, immigration should be a controlled and orderly process. The left, however, depicts this type of patriotism as racist and border enforcement as anti-American. They say a border wall contradicts who we are as a people. We should be an open refuge to all people at all times. Border enforcement advocates reject that notion outright, seeing the United States as a melting pot of different peoples united behind shared ideas—that is, assimilation.
A person does not have to be born in America to become American. Dinesh D’Souza became a citizen in 1991. Though born in India, he rightly considers himself American. He notes that an American could live in India for forty years and even become an Indian citizen, but he could not “become Indian,” and Indians wouldn’t consider such a person an Indian. Being an Indian, he says, “is entirely a matter of birth and blood. You become Indian by having Indian parents.” And that’s the norm throughout the world, but America is unique because “becoming American is less a function of birth or blood and more a function of embracing a set of ideas.”14
National pride is a natural, wholesome, and even necessary sentiment. Our national security depends on our common love of country—our collective commitment to the American idea and our firm recognition that America is worth defending precisely because it is exceptional. When you abandon the rule of law and grant amnesty to those who are here illegally, you undermine the legal and orderly flow of people into this country, their assimilation into our culture, the adoption of our shared ideas, our common commitment to our national interests, and our shared willingness to preserve and defend those interests.
But while our national ideals are universal in their truth, American patriotism involves more than a consensus about a set of principles, no matter how noble. It involves embracing our national identity as well—our history as a nation. “We must know… not only our creed but also our culture,” wrote historian Wilfred McClay. “We need to take aboard fully all that was entailed in our forbears’ bold assertion that all human beings are created equal in the eyes of the Creator and that they bear an inherent dignity that cannot be taken away from them. But we also need to remember, and teach others to remember, the meaning of Lexington and Concord, and Independence Hall, and Gettysburg, and Promontory summit, and Pointe du Hoc, and Birmingham, and West Berlin, and countless other places and moments of spirit and sacrifice in the American past….”15
Already in the 1980s, President Reagan was distressed by the inroads being made by “blame America first” types. He lamented the dissemination of anti-American messages in our schools, culture, and media. “Are we doing a good enough job teaching our children what America is and what she represents in the long history of the world?” he asked. He noted that people thirty-five years of age and older “grew up in a different America.” A love of country and for its institutions was instilled in them. “If you didn’t get these things from your family you got them from the neighborhood, from the father down the street who fought in Korea or the family who lost someone at Anzio,” or even from the popular culture. “The movies celebrated democratic values and implicitly reinforced the idea that America was special. TV was like that, too, through the mid-sixties.”16
Reagan continued, “But now, we’re about to enter the nineties, and some things have changed.” Younger parents, he said, weren’t sure that it was right to teach their children to appreciate America in the same way. In the popular culture, “well-grounded patriotism is no longer the style. Our spirit is back, but we haven’t reinstitutionalized it. We’ve got to do a better job of getting across that America is freedom—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom of enterprise.” Freedom, he noted, was the exception in history, not the rule, and it must be nurtured and defended. “Freedom is special and rare,” he said. “It’s fragile; it needs protection.”17
Yes, patriotism must be based on something more than a reflexive loyalty to country, and our appreciation for freedom must be cultivated. That’s why I’ve spent considerable time on my radio and television shows focusing on history and explaining the importance of our founding documents. I’m grateful for this opportunity because I am fascinated by our nation’s origins and subsequent history. I am convinced that the more information Americans have about our actual history—not the revisionist version spewed by leftist writers and academics who want to tear down this country—the more they will appreciate America. I want to help set the record straight to promote our informed patriotism.
As I’ve said repeatedly, we must fight harder to protect what makes this country great: our Constitution, our values, the equal application of our laws, and the American people, who work hard every day, pay their taxes, and love their country.
While President Reagan is correct that freedom has been rare historically, it is at the crux of our own founding. It is who we are and what we’ve always been. It is a major part of our uniqueness. The colonists came to this land in search of religious and political liberty, and they established free, self-governing colonies. They eventually broke from the British not as rebels or revolutionaries but to recapture the freedom that Britain had previously afforded us through its “benign neglect” of the colonies. After the War of Independence, they were determined to form a government under which they could prosper as a free people. Throughout our history, preserving our liberty has been the bond that has united us as a people. Our ancestors sacrificed their lives to ensure they and their descendants would live in freedom.
I now want to take a closer look at why America is exceptional. Let’s review how the colonists organized themselves into free, self-governing societies and the founding generation built freedom principles into our founding documents.
America’s experience with democratic rule and consent of the governed long predated our formal break with Britain and our independence. This rich history of liberty was until relatively recently engrained in our body politic, and both major political parties were committed to the tradition. It was in that context that outgoing President Reagan noted the assaults on liberty that were routinely occurring in the United States, and reminded Americans of this nation’s greatness and why reinvigorating its dedication to liberty was imperative if America was to remain exceptional. President Donald Trump has now taken up the mantle of defending America’s liberty, reinforcing her greatness, and reigniting her entrepreneurial energy. Both Reagan and Trump are heirs to a legacy of freedom that began with the colonization of this land.
In 1620, the passengers of the Mayflower reached the New World five hundred miles north of their intended destination and outside the jurisdiction of the Virginia Company, from which they had obtained a land patent permitting them to form an English colony. The uncertainties of being remote from a higher government authority motivated them to establish their own government, though they pledged continued loyalty to the British crown.18 While still aboard the ship, forty-one of the 102 passengers signed the Mayflower Compact, agreeing to establish a colony dedicated to God’s glory and the advancement of the Christian faith.19
This was a “covenant” to combine themselves “together in a civil body politic.” As self-governing people, they would “enact, constitute and frame such just and equal Laws, Ordinances, Acts, Constitutions and Offices from time to time, as shall be thought most meet and convenient for the general good of the Colony, unto which we promise all due submission and obedience.” A century and a half before the Declaration of Independence affirmed the “self-evident” truth “that all men are created equal,” these bold pilgrims bound themselves together as equal men to form their own civil government.20 “What was remarkable about this particular contract,” writes historian Paul Johnson, “was that it was not between a servant and a master, or a people and a king, but between like-minded individuals and each other, with God as a witness and symbolic co-signatory.”21
This compact for self-governance was modeled on church covenants that empowered congregations to choose their ministers—a power that came directly from Jesus Christ, not derivatively from a higher church authority.22 This pattern of government by social contract was common throughout the New England settlements. In The New England Clergy and the American Revolution, Alice Baldwin demonstrates “how the New England clergy preserved, extended, and popularized the essential doctrines of political philosophy, thus making familiar to every church-going New Englander long before 1763 not only the doctrines of natural right, the social contract, and the right of resistance but also the fundamental principle of American constitutional law, that government, like its citizens, is bounded by law and when it transcends its authority it acts illegally.” Baldwin maintains there is “a direct line of descent from seventeenth-century philosophy to the doctrines underlying the American Revolution and the making of written constitutions.”23
John Winthrop, captain of the Puritan ship Arbella, articulated the Puritans’ mission in his sermon “A Model of Christian Charity,” which includes this now-famous passage: “For we must consider that we shall be as a city upon a hill. The eyes of all people are upon us. So that if we shall deal falsely with our God in this work we have undertaken, and so cause Him to withdraw His present help from us, we shall be made a story and a by-word through the world.”24 Thomas Hooker also articulated the connection between covenantal Christianity and governance—that early church governments modeled democratic government—in his Fundamental Orders of Connecticut in 1639: “[W]ell knowing where a people are gathered together the word of God requires that to maintain the peace and union of such a people there should be an orderly and decent government established according to God, [we] do therefore associate and conjoin ourselves to be as one public state or commonwealth; and… enter into combination and confederation together, to maintain and pursue the liberty and purity of the gospel of our Lord Jesus which we now profess….”25
Likewise, theologian John Cotton of Massachusetts wrote in 1645, “It is evident by the light of nature that all civil relations are founded in covenant…. [T]here is no other way given where a people… can be united or combined together in one visible body, to stand by mutual relation, fellow-members of the same body, but only by mutual covenant….”26 Rhode Island also based its political governance on church covenantal doctrine. Its charter stated that its government should be “democraticall, that is a government held by the free and voluntary consent of all, or the greater part of the free inhabitants.”27
During this period, observe Peter Marshall and David Manuel, the people “were beginning to discover a basic truth which would be a major foundation stone of God’s new nation, and which by 1776 would be declared self-evident: that in the eyes of their Creator, all men were of equal value.” It was when “we began to become aware of ourselves as a nation, a body of believers which had a national identity as a people chosen by God for a specific purpose: to be not just ‘a city upon a hill,’ but a veritable citadel of Light in a darkened world…. Americans were rediscovering God’s plan to join them together by His Spirit in the common cause of advancing His Kingdom. Furthermore, they were returning to another aspect of His plan—that they were to operate not as lone individualists, but in covenanted groups.”28
As you can see, our Constitution didn’t arise in a vacuum. The framers sifted through and borrowed some of the greatest ideas for constitutional governance from Athens, Rome, Locke, and Montesquieu. But they also called upon the ideas of social contract and representative government that had developed in their churches from the time of their early colonization of this great land.
The early American colonists were overwhelmingly Christian, but some academics downplay the importance of their faith, claiming America’s founding documents were grounded more in secular enlightenment principles than in Christianity. By the time our nation was founded, these scholars claim, the people’s religious spirit had given way to secular ideas sweeping over from Europe. While it’s true that religious fervor waned in the beginning of the eighteenth century, America experienced a profound religious revival beginning in the 1730s called the Great Awakening, when the fiery sermons of evangelical preachers like Jonathan Edwards and George Whitefield rekindled the people’s passion for Jesus Christ. This evangelical ethos continued through the Revolutionary War and our founding period. “The essential difference between the American Revolution and the French Revolution,” notes Paul Johnson, “is that the American Revolution, in its origins, was a religious event, whereas the French Revolution was an anti-religious event. That fact was to shape the American Revolution from start to finish and determine the nature of the independent state it brought into being.”29
University of Dallas professor M. E. Bradford extensively researched the religious preferences of the signers of the Declaration and Constitution and discovered that the great majority of them were devout Christians. Fifty-two of the fifty-six signers of the Declaration and the vast majority of the signers of the Constitution were churchgoing, orthodox Christians.30
Admittedly the religious beliefs of some high-profile founders are hard to pin down. For example, Thomas Jefferson may have been a Unitarian, as he believed in a superintending God even if he doubted the deity of Christ. And while Benjamin Franklin may have been a Deist at some point in his life, some of his actions contradicted the core Deist belief that God created the universe and then left it to its own devices without his supervision. Franklin, at a difficult point during the Constitutional Convention, called the delegates to prayer, and in the prayer asserted that God governs the affairs of men. This would have been pointless had Franklin believed in the noninterventionist god of the Deists. “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth—that God governs in the affairs of men,” said Franklin. “I therefore beg leave to move—that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and tis blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and that one or more of the Clergy of this City be requested to officiate in that service.”31
Though Jefferson wrote the initial draft of the Declaration, it was thoroughly edited by a congressional committee chaired by the pious John Adams, resulting in some eighty edits and the deletion of almost five hundred words.32 Jefferson later admitted he was not seeking to articulate his personal beliefs but to draft a corporate statement of Congress “intended to be an expression of the American mind.”33
While I believe the evidence shows that the Christian worldview played the dominant role in the creation of America’s founding documents, there’s no question Enlightenment ideas were also an influence. Beyond just getting our history straight, the reason this matters is that leftists credit secular Enlightenment ideas for our freedom tradition. They incorrectly see the Christian religion as authoritarian and incompatible with political liberty. If that’s true and if our Christian faith and values were not instrumental in developing our liberties, then leftists have one more argument against preserving our traditional values and demonizing people of faith.
But the founders saw no contradiction between faith and reason, and I certainly don’t, either. “For most of them, the Bible and plain reason went hand in hand, moral example for moral example,” writes Michael Novak. “Even for those few (such as Thomas Paine) for whom common sense and the Bible were antithesis, plain reason led to belief in God…. Far from being contrary to reason, faith strengthens reason. To employ a poor analogy, faith is a little like a telescope that magnifies what the naked eye of reason sees unaided. For the founders, it was evident that faith in the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob magnifies human reason, encourages virtue, and sharpens a zest for liberty.”34
Similarly, historian Wilfred McClay argues, “It might seem logical to us today that there would be a necessary incompatibility and antagonism between the passionate Bible-based Protestant religious faiths of colonists like Edwards and the methodical new science embraced by the likes of Franklin… but this was not quite the way things looked to Americans of the time. In the Anglo-American world of the eighteenth century, the spirit of Protestantism and the spirit of science were not seen to be in fundamental conflict with one another. Belief in some version of the biblical God and belief in an ordered and knowable universe were not seen as at all incompatible.”35
Admittedly, I talk about the Constitution a lot. So I want to explain here in a little more depth why I think it is such an amazing document and how it gave rise to this nation’s unrivaled greatness. What is so unique about our Constitution? The British, from which much of our freedom tradition is derived, do not have a formal, written constitution but rather a system that developed organically over centuries. British prime minister William Gladstone recognized this when he called the British constitution “the most subtle organism which has ever proceeded from progressive history.”36
Our Constitution was different. It didn’t evolve over centuries but was brilliantly crafted by a gifted group of men who were learned students of religion, history, political science, and comparative government. They understood the important distinction between pure democracies and republics, and they were aware of the shortcomings of the Athenian and Roman constitutions. Furthermore, as shown by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay in the Federalist Papers, they knew what had caused the failures of the Articles of Confederation, the colonists’ first stab at a constitution when they broke from Britain. The drafters of the Articles were jaded by their experience with the British monarchy. They were so fearful that a robust federal government would lead to tyranny that they created a loose confederation of states with a central government so weak that it lacked a federal judiciary or the authority to tax citizens or raise an army. In trying to maximize their liberties, they imperiled them by not giving the federal government sufficient power to protect citizens against domestic and foreign threats.
George Washington believed the weakness of the federal government under the Articles was leading “rapidly to a crisis” and threatening the very existence of government. He feared we were running from one extreme to another. “What astonishing changes a few years are capable of producing,” he observed. “I am told that even respectable characters speak of a monarchical form of government without horror. What a triumph for the advocates of despotism to find that we are incapable of governing ourselves and that systems founded on the basis of equal liberty are merely ideal and fallacious. Would to God that wise measures may be taken in time to avert the consequences we have but too much reason to apprehend.”
When the delegates met in Philadelphia to re-form the Union, they understood their unique historical position in mankind’s struggle for individual liberty.37 They knew they faced a monumental challenge in trying to design a constitutional framework for republican government that would weather the test of time. Alexander Hamilton noted in Federalist 1 that many people at the time believed fate had placed upon the early Americans the challenge of determining whether “societies of men” were capable of establishing a good system of government by their own reasoned reflection or whether they were destined to adopt their governments by “accident and force.”38 “They were engaged in one of the great experiments in the annals of politics, attempting to use the example of previous republics to avert those republics’ fate,” McClay observes. “They used the new science of politics in trying to remedy the fatal flaws of republics past. They used history to defy history.”39
They originally intended to amend the Articles to correct their deficiencies but soon realized they needed an entirely new constitution. They would design a system of government that would maximize individual liberties, not just because of their experience with British tyranny but because, as Christians, they firmly believed the words of the Declaration, “that all men are… endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among those are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That is, they recognized that their rights derived from God, not government, and embraced the scriptural revelation that men were created in God’s image with intrinsic worth and dignity and were therefore entitled to liberty.40 Or as Joe Biden says, “All men and women are created, by the, you know, you know, the thing.”
They further believed that man is corrupted by sin and that, left to his own devices, he would subjugate other men. James Madison was clear on this point in Federalist 51: “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition. The interest of the man must be connected with the constitutional rights of the place. It may be a reflection on human nature, that such devices should be necessary to control the abuses of government. But what is government itself, but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.”
Madison wasn’t naive enough to believe that citizens’ rights would be secured by virtue of a grant on a piece of parchment. The delegates would need to design a system that would ensure liberty by leveraging man’s weaknesses instead of ignoring them—pitting men against other men and levels and branches of government against one another. These competing institutions under the control of fallen men would keep each other in check, thereby maximizing individual liberties. “This policy of supplying, by opposite and rival interests, the defect of better motives, might be traced through the whole system of human affairs, private as well as public,” Madison explained. “We see it particularly displayed in all the subordinate distributions of power, where the constant aim is to divide and arrange the several offices in such a manner as that each may be a check on the other—that the private interest of every individual may be a sentinel over the public rights. These inventions of prudence cannot be less requisite in the distribution of the supreme powers of the State.”
Had the framers crafted a pure democracy, there would have been no safeguards against encroachments on citizens’ unalienable rights. The rights of the minority would have been subject to abuses at the hands of the majority—a concept Madison called the “tyranny of the majority.”41
The delegates’ challenge was to establish a federal government sufficiently strong to protect its citizens from domestic and foreign threats but without enough power to imperil the people’s liberties. Their solution was to build into the Constitution a scheme of governmental powers and limitations. The government would have defined (enumerated) powers, but there would also be specific limitations on government to guard against its natural tendency to expand at the expense of individual liberties. They reserved for the states those rights not granted to the federal government and distributed federal power among three separate, coequal branches of government.
As realists, the framers understood that even with such institutional checks on government as federalism, the separation of powers, and subsequently the Bill of Rights, there was no absolute guarantee against tyranny. They knew liberty would not be self-sustaining. Though they understood man’s sinful nature, they believed that by relying on God he could become more virtuous. They reasoned that the Constitution would have a greater likelihood of succeeding if the people adhered to Christian moral standards and aspired to a virtuous society. “A free society demands a higher level of virtue than a tyranny,” writes Michael Novak, “which no other moral energy has heretofore proven capable of inspiring except Judaism and Christianity.”42
In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned his fellow countrymen against adopting the militant antireligious philosophy of the French. “Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports,” said Washington. “In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician… ought to respect and to cherish them…. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion…. reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.”43
The founders strongly insisted on this point. “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people,” said John Adams. “It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” He argued that “virtue must underlay all institutional arrangements if they are to be healthy and strong. The principles of democracy are as easily corrupted as human nature is corrupted.”44 Samuel Adams observed, “We may look up to Armies for our defense, but virtue is our best security. It is not possible that any state should long remain free, where virtue is not supremely honored.”45
Almost half a century after the Constitution was ratified, in his famous Democracy in America, Tocqueville observed the strong connection between America’s religious character and its political system. “It must never be forgotten that religion gave birth to Anglo-American society,” he wrote. “In the United States religion is therefore commingled with all the habits of the nation and all the feelings of patriotism.”
Due to the brilliance and foresight of the framers and the American people’s dedication to liberty, the Constitution survived the trials and tribulations of the growing republic, including the brutal Civil War, which tested it to its limits. In 1861 President Abraham Lincoln commented on the foundational importance of the liberty principle expressed in the Declaration of Independence to the endurance of the Constitution. The Declaration’s expression “liberty to all,” noted Lincoln, “was most happy and fortunate.” He said we could have declared our independence from Britain with or without it, “but without it, we could not have secured our free government and consequent prosperity.” Our forefathers wouldn’t have pressed on if they’d had nothing more to fight for than “a mere change of masters.” The expression of the principle of liberty has proved an “apple of gold,” and “the Union and the Constitution, are the picture of silver subsequently framed around it. The picture was made, not to conceal, or destroy the apple but to adorn, and preserve it. The picture was made for the apple—not the apple for the picture.”46
A few years later, in his Gettysburg Address, Lincoln might have had that metaphor in mind when he reaffirmed that the United States was “conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” I noted above that in Federalist 1, Hamilton recognized that Americans saw themselves as having undertaken the responsibility of determining whether free people could establish a system of good government. Lincoln seemed to invoke that sentiment when he said, “Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and dedicated, can long endure.” In his conclusion Lincoln answered the question: “we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”47
Hamilton and the other framers believed that their designed structure of government would endure and that freedom would prosper under it. Lincoln was reporting that great Americans since the founding had vindicated the framers’ vision. Now, in the midst of the Civil War, Americans and our Constitution were undergoing their greatest challenge yet, and we would meet the challenge by preserving our unique system of government and sparking a rebirth of the liberties it guaranteed. McClay summed it up nicely, saying that Lincoln redefined the war “not merely as a war for the preservation of the Union but as a war for the preservation of the democratic idea… which America exemplified in the world.”48
In assessing the United States Constitution in 1878, British prime minister William Gladstone declared, “The American Constitution is, so far as I can see, the most wonderful work ever struck off at a given time by the brain and purpose of man. It has had a century of trial, under the pressure of exigencies caused by an expansion unexampled in point of rapidity and range; and its exemption from formal change, though not entire, has certainly proved the sagacity of the constructors, and the stubborn strength of the fabric.”49 Gladstone’s point was that our Constitution had stood the test of time, surviving vast territorial expansion (with the Louisiana Purchase and territories acquired from Mexico) and deep internal conflicts.
Despite the myriad cautions the framers incorporated into the Constitution, they knew, as did Abraham Lincoln decades later, that political freedom would be difficult to sustain. Human nature being what it is, there would always be internal and external threats to our liberty. This is why, in his remarks to Kiwanis International in 1987, President Ronald Reagan said, “It is time that we ask ourselves if we still know the freedoms that were intended for us by the Founding Fathers and if we will pass on to these young people the freedoms we knew in our youth, because freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. It has to be fought for and defended by each generation.”50
Over time well-meaning but pernicious forces began chipping away at the pillars of our constitutional system. I have come to believe that the momentum against our founding principles crystallized in the Progressive Era, roughly during the first two decades of the twentieth century, though the movement’s political and intellectual roots stretched back into the preceding decades among journalists, novelists, political scientists, and social scientists.51 I would strongly urge you to familiarize yourself with this period of our history. It will give you a much clearer insight into today’s left.
Concerned by societal disruptions and wealth inequalities they believed were caused by the industrial revolution and capitalism’s excesses, Progressives targeted corrupt trusts and mercenary capitalists.52 For example, Henry Demarest Lloyd demonized Standard Oil Company in his book Wealth Against Commonwealth, and economist Thorstein Veblen denounced the wealthy in his The Theory of the Leisure Class.53
Socialists and social justice reformers focused on the problems of urbanization and advocated for the urban poor. Let me stress that I strongly believe in helping the poor, but I don’t believe the answer is the government seizing control of the economy and suppressing individual freedom in the name of “equality.” Of course there should be a safety net for the needy, but socialists constantly exploit the poor as a pretext for accumulating more power for themselves and confiscating more of society’s wealth for their own ends.
Progressive academics pressed for social justice reforms following the example of European socialists. Advocates of women’s suffrage joined in the struggle for social justice.54 Progressives rejected the founders’ belief in, and the biblical teachings on, the depravity of the human condition, believing instead that people are essentially good and perfectible, and that evil resulted from imperfect social systems and corrupt institutions that were impeding man from reaching his true potential.55
But despite their high view of man, they didn’t believe the solution lay in empowering individuals with greater liberty or authority. They dismissed the notion of rugged individualism and laissez-faire capitalism, which were central to our founding and our subsequent history, and placed their faith in government.56 Big business was the problem; big government was the answer. “This is the universal human purpose of the state,” said John Burgess, a progressive political scientist. “We may call it the perfection of humanity; the civilization of the world; the perfect development of the human reason, and its attainment to universal command over individualism; the apotheosis of man…. The national state is the most perfect organ which has yet been attained in the civilization of the world for the interpretation of the human consciousness of right. It furnishes the best vantage ground as yet reached for the contemplation of the purpose of the sojourn of mankind upon earth.”57
Progressives dismissed the founders’ view that man was born free. Our rights were not God-given or inalienable. They were bestowed on us by government and could be denied when expedient or in the state’s interests.58 Progressive intellectuals dismissed the founders’ conception of republican government as a social compact among free people—government by consent of the governed. “The present tendency, then, in American political theory is to disregard the once dominant ideas of natural rights and the social contract, although it must be admitted that the political scientists are more agreed upon this point than is the general public,” wrote University of Chicago political scientist Charles Merriam, a leading progressive thinker. “The origin of the state is regarded, not as the result of a deliberate agreement among men, but as the result of historical development, instinctive rather than conscious; and rights are considered to have their source not in nature, but in law.”59 He further explained, “The notion that political society and government are based upon a contract between independent individuals and that such a contract is the sole source of political obligation is regarded as no longer tenable.”60
Philosopher and educational reformer John Dewey was one of the Progressive movement’s leading players. “The state is a moral organism, of which government is one organ,” wrote Dewey. “Only by participating in the common purpose as it works for the common good can individual human beings realize their true individualities and become truly free.”61 He insisted that freedom is not “something that individuals have as a ready-made possession.” Rather, “it is something to be achieved.” Even more cynically, he wrote, “Natural rights and natural liberties exist only in the kingdom of mythological social zoology.”62
As businessmen were successfully relying on scientific advancements, Progressives believed that government could do so as well, which also led to their increasing reliance on and expansion of the federal government.63 As such, they saw the concept of natural rights, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution as obstacles constituting formidable, institutional restrictions on the power of government to address societal problems. They didn’t conceal their desire to move beyond the Constitution’s system of limited government toward a more energetic, centralized government to tackle social and economic conditions that, in their view, the founders didn’t anticipate and provided no mechanism for handling in the Constitution.64 “Progressivism… amounts to an argument in favor of progressing, or moving beyond, the political principles of the American founding,” writes Hillsdale College professor Ronald Pestritto. “Progressives sought to enlarge vastly the scope of the national government for the purpose of responding to a set of economic and social conditions, that, it was contended, could not have been envisioned during the founding era, and for which the Founders’ limited, constitutional government was inadequate.”65
Progressives believed that government in the able hands of a self-appointed elite could advance mankind toward societal perfection.66 They looked toward an administrative state, delegating government powers to federal bureaucracies and empowering them to more closely manage and control business and the affairs of men. The administrative bureaucracy was to consist of nonpartisan “experts” who would direct the restructuring of the social world and implement the larger goals of governing powers.67 Why couldn’t society’s vast and varied problems be managed by these experts? These enlightened managers presumed that their expertise, backed by state power, could finally eradicate poverty and war.68 “Progressivism was an outlook that cared deeply about the common people and knew, far better than they did, what was best for them,” writes Wilfred McClay. “Thus there was always in Progressivism a certain implicit paternalism, a condescension that was all the more unattractive for being unacknowledged.”69
Progressives nominally advocated a purer form of democracy in contrast to the founders’ notion of republican government. For example, Progressives advocated the direct election of senators, while the Constitution originally mandated they be selected by state legislatures. However, Progressives actually diminished the people’s power by delegating such extensive power to the administrative agencies.70 They disfavored private property, and some were openly socialist. The federal government, they believed, should have greater powers to protect people against corporate abuses.
The reformers favored an expansion of the public sector and a corresponding shrinking of the private sector. The state had to expand its size, reach, and control in the name of protecting the individual.71 Enlightened bureaucrats saw themselves as better equipped to spend people’s money than the people themselves.72 They also believed it was the government’s duty to redistribute resources and control prices and methods of manufacture.73 Accordingly, the government needed greater revenues, which gave rise to the federal income tax as codified in the Sixteenth Amendment to the Constitution, passed in 1913.74 The Progressive movement thus chipped away at the founders’ ideal of equal opportunity under the law in favor of equal outcomes.
Statist politicians continued to expand the federal government and undermine the Constitution throughout the twentieth century, particularly Presidents Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson. Then, in the 1960s and 1970s, a violent, extremist left-wing movement emerged. At that time, the radical left fought for outright revolution through such militant groups as the Weather Underground, the May 19 Communist Organization, and the Black Liberation Army. When their revolutionary dreams failed, leftists adopted a long-term strategy of the “long march through the institutions,” implanting themselves in the education system, the media, much of the legal profession, and the entertainment industry, aiming to subvert these institutions from within and transform them into tools of the revolution.
Their patience has paid them huge dividends. Now firmly in control of these institutions as well as the formidable social media companies, the left subjects us to daily barrages of left-wing propaganda.75 Along with many other conservative media personalities, I do my best to fight back against this torrent of disinformation and leftist dogma. However, although their arguments are often transparently false, the left’s uniform control over these key institutions gives them a crucial advantage in spreading their message and limiting the circulation of opposing views. What we need is our own long march through the institutions, with courageous young conservatives wading back into what is now hostile territory and reclaiming a space for our dissenting views.
During the 1960s, profound changes occurred in societal attitudes and mores, characterized by a pronounced focus on self-discovery, including through recreational drug use and self-gratification. People abandoned traditional values for moral relativism. Instead of conforming to external societal norms, people embraced self-liberation and self-exploration, looking inside themselves for moral guidance.76 This was a radical departure from the past, which had recognized that the inner self of flawed human beings was not a reliable moral compass.77
When a society rejects moral absolutes, it has no basis to protect individual rights against the tyranny of the majority—because without such standards, any action, no matter how good or evil, and any deprivation of our liberties, can be rationalized. As scholar M. Stanton Evans declared, “Moral relativism, however derived, must undermine the very possibility of freedom. No system of political liberty has ever been created from such notions, nor is it theoretically conceivable that one could.”78 All forms of despotism throughout history, Evans observed, have sprung from moral relativism. For freedom to exist there must be basic assumptions about the intrinsic dignity of human beings. It is this Judeo-Christian assumption that underlies the belief that our rights are God-given and must be protected not just against individual dictators and despots but against the tyranny of the majority.
It’s no coincidence that today’s leftists regard themselves as “progressives,” as their ideas clearly trace back to the Progressive Era. But in fairness, it should be noted that while yesterday’s Progressives seemed to share some of the utopian ends of their modern counterparts, they were less radical, seeking to achieve their goals gradually.79
Since the 1960s we’ve witnessed the steady advance of progressivism and statism and the corresponding erosion of our liberties. Progressives have continued to become more extreme yet have successfully tarred conservatives as the extremists just for striving to restore and preserve what is noble and good in society. The only antidote for this madness is to fight fire with fire—to match their energy and commitment with our own and to dedicate ourselves to reviving the freedom tradition of our founders.
Heritage Foundation scholar William Schambra attributes modern conservatism’s success to its grounding in the founders’ constitutionalism. There is no question about that. That is one reason I proudly identify as a constitutional conservative and why I strongly endorse the message of my friend Mark Levin, in his many books on constitutional principles. The left’s assault on our ideals goes back to our country’s first principles. They don’t just reject conservative policy prescriptions; they reject freedom itself as it was understood by the framers.
For younger generations of Americans, the notion of liberty has become an abstraction. They don’t regard big government as an enemy of their individual liberties because they have been raised during an era of big government, and neither their parents nor their schools have instilled in them a proper appreciation for liberty and the sacrifices required to sustain it. They see no downside in government—rather than individuals, churches, and other charitable entities—providing for the needs of others. They don’t instinctively recoil at the idea of government regulating and even micromanaging the minutiae of our lives. They have become accustomed to the paternalistic attitude that they must be shielded from all adversity and disappointment—a world where everyone gets a trophy and where university campuses train students to be victims rather than self-reliant, constantly on the lookout for “trigger words” and “microaggressions” that could damage their psychic serenity.80 We do truly have a generation of snowflakes now.
While yesterday’s Progressives rejected the framers’ structure of limited government, their modern leftist offspring have taken it to a new level, undermining our Constitution every day with legislative, executive, judicial, and administrative overreaches. They also wage war against the civil liberties enshrined in the Bill of Rights—freedom of speech and religion, the right to bear arms, and the protections of citizens concerning unreasonable searches and due process.
Our fight for control of the courts has become a crucial battlefield in our struggle against the left. The left rejects the Constitution itself, which is why their activist judges routinely overwrite its provisions by judicial fiat. If they control the courts they can undo any progress we make at limiting government and protecting our liberties. President Trump has appointed more originalist judges to federal courts than any of his predecessors. This, as much as any other presidential act, has given us hope that we can restore constitutional principles and our tradition of limited government and liberty.
History shows that great nations don’t last forever. We must heed Ronald Reagan’s warnings to never grow complacent about our liberties and remain ever vigilant against foreign and internal threats against them. The left, through the Democratic Party, is promoting an agenda so radical that if substantially implemented it would divorce America from its founding ideas.
Someone shouted an ominous question to Benjamin Franklin when he was leaving Independence Hall after the Constitutional Convention: “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” Franklin presciently replied, “A republic, if you can keep it.” Franklin was laying down the gauntlet to his fellow and future Americans. Would we realize the profundity of the gift we have been given—a governmental structure ingeniously designed to preserve our God-given liberties? Would we guard it with our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor? Throughout our history, great leaders have taken Franklin’s baton, blessed and reaffirmed it, and passed it forward to future generations. It is now in our hands and we will determine whether our precious liberties will survive. Will we take them for granted or will we safeguard them with the sacred care they require?
With that in mind let me close this chapter with another inspiring anecdote involving Ben Franklin. In his notes summarizing the last day of the Constitutional Convention, James Madison reported, “Whilst the last members were signing [the Constitution], Doctor Franklin, looking towards the Presidents Chair, at the back of which a rising sun happened to be painted, observed to a few members near him, that painters had found it difficult to distinguish in their art a rising from a setting sun. I have, said he, often and often in the course of the Session, and the vicissitudes of my hopes and fears as to its issue, looked at that behind the President without being able to tell whether it was rising or setting: But now at length I have the happiness to know that it is a rising and not a setting Sun.”81
It is our duty to ensure that our “sun” continues rising. I believe President Trump reveres this nation, its Constitution, and the unique liberty tradition it guarantees. He recognizes the forces that imperil our liberties and is fighting to defeat them every single day of his presidency. We Americans who value our constitutional heritage and who believe in our nation’s benevolence and its divinely inspired founding must continue to support the president’s efforts.
Having reviewed the importance of our founding principles, how we’ve slowly veered away from them through the years, and why we must dedicate ourselves to restoring them, I’ll detail in the next two chapters the Democrats’ thoroughly radical agenda and demonstrate how it will destroy everything that makes America unique unless we join together to thwart it.