Hillsdale College- Last Days of a Revolutionary: eight-minute video that warrants your time.

American exceptionalism: Constitution and Bill of Rights

A few weeks ago, a newsletter called “Texas Minute” showed up in my inbox. After providing snippets of state news, author Michael Quinn Sullivan wrote about historian Mellen Chamberlain’s 1887 interview with the last surviving member of the battle of Concord. Historian Mellen Chamberlain asked ninety-one-year-old Levi Preston why he decided to fight in the Revolutionary War.

The answers weren’t what the historian expected, for Preston did not speak of the oppressive British rule, the stamp tax, the tea tax, or the writings of philosopher John Locke.

“Well, then,” asked Chamberlain, “why did you fight?

Preston’s answer still takes my breath away: “Young man, what we meant in going for those redcoats was this: We always had governed ourselves, and we always meant to. They didn’t mean we should.” It was this concept of self-government, so natural to Levi Preston and his contemporaries, that changed the world.

Texas Scorecard

Sullivan’s phrase, “American exceptionalism,” grabbed me. True because the phrase is wholly discordant from what is taught in American public schools, universities and our own government. In 2019, a ‘revisonist history’ of the United States, the 1619 Project was greeted with rave reviews by the New York Times and the intellectual elite. It’s premise? Systemic racism is our foundation.

The Portland Association of Teachers provided a handout in its resource guide, Teach Palestine! Resources for Educators in Portland Public Schools created by Oregon Teachers for Palestine. The pamphlet targets the “over 4500 professional educators” who are members of this affiliate of the National Education Association—the largest teachers’ union in the United States. Another TWM-Teaching While Muslim- project compares Palestinians and American Indians as victims of white colonialism.

You can’t love what you don’t know. When young Americans say they aren’t proud of their country, it proves our education system has failed them.

My Generation is Being Taught to Hate America

There were a different kind of fireworks,

on Joly 4, 1776. Instead of the fun, brilliant fireworks of last week, these were the kind that killed and maimed. The explosions came from shotguns and cannons, the red that of British soldiers’ uniforms along with blood running in the streets. The Loyalists, later Tories, outnumbered the radical Patriots: the chaos, heartbreak and sacrifice of those times are unimaginable to us 248 years later.

Ryan Halliday reminds us there was no nation called America on this day. Not even a thirteen-state confederation bound more by hope than policy.

… A revolution against an empire. Families ripped apart because a war forced them to choose sides. Hopeful successes on the battlefield repeatedly followed by dispiriting defeats. The uncertainty of victory, shrouded in the certainty of death and misery and suffering for what could be years…if they were lucky. It had only been a year since George Washington assumed command of the Continental Army, and the hardest years were still ahead for the loose coalition of patriots fighting for self-determination.

Daily Stoic

It was impossible. A few farmers declaring their independence from the greatest empire on earth. George Washington becoming the general of an army that didn’t yet exist. And yet, it happened.

The history of the origins of the United States of America is the stuff of fantasy, heroic valor rarely seen. John Adams’ writings on policy, government and nationhood are some of the most brilliant analyses ever penned. One could spend lifetimes and never plumb the writings from the astounding, miraculous, story of American independence.

Think the average American

believes American exceptionalism is a fact? Or can define freedom?

If he or she stops to ponder the miracles of the nation’s history, yes.

If.

One of the most vital services that Catholic Christians provide to our nation is our witness to truth and the reasonableness of reason. This is especially true of our witness to the natural moral law (knowable by all who use right reason) and to the norms of social justice.

Independence Day and Catholic Citizens

Monsignor Stuart Swetland carries very worn copies of the Constitution and Bill of Rights in the left hand pocket in his clerical suit jacket. He began doing this while living and working on Capitol Hill in Washinton DC. The Monsignor writes that many had lost their copies and that he won numerous arguments by grabbing his own copy as reference. He continues the practice today because these documents “give witness to truth.” Monsignor Swetland is the president of Donnelly College where, he tells students, our first value is truth. And that truth is knowable. [emphasis mine]

 “I explain how a college is a community of learners, earnestly and courageously seeking the truth in all things.

While this may seem obvious to most, it is, in fact, highly controversial today. The false ideology of postmodern relativism and epistemological skepticism has permeated and dominated many (most?) institutions of higher learning, newsrooms, editorial boards and governmental entities today. Many boldly, if illogically, proclaim, “There is no truth,” yet go on claiming to be professors with nothing to profess, pundits with pointless points of view, and leaders without vision. And as Proverbs teaches us, “Where there is no vision the people perish.”

American exceptionaism: Constitution and Bill of Rights.