Celebrating Freedom—and Passing It On

This Sunday we celebrate our country’s birthday—our Independence Day. The Declaration of Independence was a piece of parchment. It became a reality through fighting—and winning—a bloody war for independence. That was 245 years ago. And this may be the year we need more reminding than ever about what was on that parchment. 

President Calvin Coolidge
image from Wikipedia

Calvin Coolidge gave a speech in 1926 at the 150-year mark of the Declaration. I shared large parts of that last year for the 4^th of July. I’ll just repeat a paragraph here: 

It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

We were reminded by Ronald Reagan that what our founders knew, and what our grandparents knew a century ago, is too easily lost: 

Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.

This past year has shown how true this is. Our nation has been particularly under assault by those who would rewrite history, to cover up the truths that are self-evident, and replace them with the antiquated miseries of tyranny. They’re trying to distort history, to claim that those things we’ve been told about our founding are all a lie, that the real founding purpose was to establish slavery on this continent.

President Trump, last year, established a commission to stop those lies—such as you read in the New York Times’ 1619 Project. Biden reversed that order on his first day in office. The essence of the lie is that America was essentially founded in 1619, when slaves were first brought to Virginia. And that nothing that comes after this point counts in a positive way, not even abolishing slavery, nor abolishing the Jim Crow laws that followed in some former slave states. Nor did Civil Rights legislation or the easing of racial tensions throughout the country count as progress. According to this theory, everything white people do, or have ever done, is based on that original sin of allowing slavery into this new world—at a time when it was present all over the world and had been through most of human history, including among natives on this continent. This theory says that whites do nothing that isn’t about subjugating other races. And if you say otherwise, you are of course racist.

It's a pernicious ideology. And it ignores all the true history—good and bad—of this nation, and much of the world. It divides by race, and calls whites (or anyone else who is socially and economically successful) white supremacists who ought to be eradicated, or at least subjugated to the races claiming power through victimhood. Hating people because of their skin color is racist. This ideology is pure racism.

This is so ugly that its proponents have gone into schools and separated third graders into oppressors and oppressed—by race. A white child is an oppressor, based solely on skin color or genetic heritage, and should therefore be punished by submitting to oppression by the definitionally oppressed others. I say teaching any child such a thing is abusive.

questions to ask your school board
screenshot from Critical Race Theory video by Christopher Rufo

It’s hard to understand how such a pernicious ideology could succeed in a country so blessed with freedom and opportunity. But people who try to get rid of freedom and set themselves up as rulers are commonplace everywhere.

There’s a moment of the movie in The Avengers in which the villain Loki comes to earth to subjugate the people. He’s a complex character, but he seems to truly believe humans are inferior and should be grateful for his “benevolent” dictatorship. He forces everyone in a crowd to kneel before him. But one man, an older German man, stands up.

scene from The Avengers where Loki forces all to kneel, and one man stands
screenshots from here

Here’s Loki’s speech, followed by that man’s very true words: 

Loki: Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? It’s the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your life’s joy in a mad scramble for power, or identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel.

[man in crowd stands]

Standing Man: Not to men like you.

Loki: There are no men like me.

Standing Man: There are always men like you.

Tyrants think what Loki thinks—that they are special, superior, and entitled to rule. Power mongers like him show up wherever humans are not yet perfect. So, everywhere. There are always people like him.

Loki quickly executes the man—before Captain America stands to take him on and the fight gets interesting. If we can’t be Captain America, we at least need to be the man who stands up and points out that Loki is just one of those we’ve seen so many times before.

There are such people, those willing to stand, regardless of consequences. In many states, legislation is underway to take on these anti-American ideas and the tyrants who attempt to rule over us.

map showing states doing anti-Critical Race Theory legislation,
screenshot from Critical Race Theory video by Christopher Rufo

Texas passed such a law, HB 3979, just a month ago. People think it’s not strong enough, and they may be right; the topic of stopping Critical Race Theory in schools is on the Governor’s agenda again for the special session coming up in a week. As I read the bill, it’s pretty good. One deficiency may be in addressing only social studies curriculum—which allows those concepts to be taught in other subjects. Another is what got added during debates.

The Texas law has essentially two segments: what should be taught, and what should not be taught. What should be taught is mainly about the positive things related to our founding. Included are race-related things in our history, some of which I wonder about, but it emphasizes original source documents, which is a good thing—with exceptions I’ll note below in a look at these prescribed things to study:

In adopting the essential knowledge and skills for the social studies curriculum, the State Board of Education shall adopt essential knowledge and skills that develop each student's civic knowledge, including an understanding of:

•          the fundamental moral, political, and intellectual foundations of the American experiment in self-government.
•          the history, qualities, traditions, and features of civic engagement in the United States.
•          the history of Native Americans.
•          the structure, function, and processes of government institutions at the federal, state, and local levels.

Let me note that these are the things that were taught when I was in school. Next come the founding documents to be used:

        The founding documents of the United States, including:

•          the Declaration of Independence.
•          the United States Constitution.
•          the Federalist Papers.
•          the transcript of the first Lincoln-Douglas debate.

 

The troublesome part of the bill comes next. As written, it’s simply inaccurate. Continuing from the list above:

 

•          the writings of and about the founding fathers and mothers and other founding persons of the United States, including the writings of:

o George Washington.

o Ona Judge.

o Thomas Jefferson.

o Sally Hemings.

o And any other founding persons of the United States.

Writings of and about our founding fathers and mothers are important. I don’t know who they’re referring to as “other founding persons” who are, I guess, not the men and women who founded our country but some other kind of person? But the writing of our founding mothers, for example, would include the letters of Abigail Adams to her husband, John Adams.

But how did Ona Judge’s writings affect our founding? I had to look her up; she was a slave in Washington’s household, who escaped, upon hearing she might be given to a relative, several years before Washington’s death and lived thereafter as a free person. (All his slaves were freed following his death.) There are no writings to read. Is her story interesting? Yes. Important enough to be demanded in a bill? No. And there are no writings to read, so the law cannot be followed.

I was aware of Sally Hemings; I was not aware of her writings. So I went searching. There is no evidence that she learned to read and write in either English or French. So, again, we can’t read her writings. Was she a significant influence on the ideas that went into our founding? I would say no. You can leave her out and still know everything about the ideas of the founding and their sources.

So, writing into the bill that we should consider the writings—not writings of and about these women, but the writings of these women—as among the most important founding source documents to read is a bit of a farce. I suspect these additions to the bill are intended to insist that our founders were slaveowners in a time when they hadn’t yet ended slavery—but which the founding ideas made inevitable. So, that’s how CRT creeps in—show that by today’s standards, our founders don’t hold up, and then paint with a broad brush saying nothing they did holds up.

I looked at the original version of the bill, and that clause about using founding documents simply reads,

The founding documents of the United States, including the Declaration of Independence, the United States Constitution, the Federalist Papers (including but not limited to Essays 10 and 51), excerpts from Alexis de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, the first Lincoln-Douglas debate, and the writings of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

They missed the Northwest Ordinance, which is often mentioned by Dr. Larry Arnn when he talks about our founding documents. But otherwise, that’s a good foundational list. 

There’s more in the final bill that seems to me to be added with the intention of highlighting race, as though that is the defining issue of our history. But that just isn’t what our nation was founded upon; that is what our founding has helped us face—with better results than probably anywhere on earth. 

There’s a relatively brief portion of the law concerning what must not be taught. I especially like this line; it must not be taught is that: 

With respect to their relationship to American values, slavery and racism are anything other than deviations from, betrayals of, or failures to live up to, the authentic founding principles of the United States, which include liberty and equality.

When you read the things you can’t do, you realize some of the racial stuff up in the “should be taught” section is not teachable. That doesn’t mean teachers can’t touch on difficult issues; it just means they cannot teach them with the CRT bent, where everything American is white supremacist racism.

While the law does mention that the 1619 Project cannot be taught, the term Critical Race Theory is not used—which is good, since that ideology uses many different terms, for subterfuge. Instead, we say the ideas of our founding should be taught, and should not be twisted into what we know is a CRT race-baiting lie.

There’s a pattern for such legislation as ours, from Citizens Renewing America, an organization headed by Russ Vought, who was the advisor to President Trump who actually authored the executive order to get rid of CRT in government and schools—the one that Biden immediately reversed. Their model is here. 

You can compare the model with the Texas law. Here’s the original version of Texas's HB 3979. And here’s the final version as passed. Take this as a cautionary tale for doing the work in your state or local area. The original Texas bill is very close to the Citizens Renewing America model; the final bill has those troubling, badly thought through, badly written, and self-contradictory parts that will mean revisiting the issue in special session. We want our children taught to love our country and the beautiful ideas we are founded on—because, well, refer to Coolidge, above.

Dr. Larry Arnn once said, 

There is only one way to return to living under the principles of the Declaration of Independence and the institutions of the Constitution: we must come to love these things again.

About that, I’ve said before, 

When I study the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, I find beauty. The more I study, the more I love them. The more I learn about the ideas behind these documents, and the men who thought them through, the more I marvel.

image found here

At our Church’s last worldwide conference, in April, President Dallin H. Oaks spoke about our Constitution and how its principles have benefited the world. Similar to Coolidge, he lists five divinely inspired principles: 

•          The source of government power is the people.
•          The division of delegated power between the nation and its subsidiary states.
•          The separation of powers.
•          The cluster of vital guarantees of individual rights and specific limits on government authority in the Bill of Rights.
•          The vital purpose of the entire Constitution. We are to be governed by law and not by individuals, and our loyalty is to the Constitution and its principles and processes, not to any office holder.

Let’s start with those things—learn them, love them, and teach them clearly to the next generation; then this nation will long endure against the tyrants who show up everywhere, forever trying to take away our freedoms.