The meaning of American independence

The national holiday we celebrate today is more often referred to as the Fourth of July than Independence Day, but at least that makes clear what date we are marking. We should, however, commemorate the historical event and all that it symbolizes, for the common world calendar ensures that the whole world has a July 4^th just we like do. American independence has transcendent constitutional significance. No other nation in the world before 1776 had ever established (constituted) itself in the world on the basis of political principles which are true for all times and places. The most famous part of the Declaration of Independence is "all men are created equal," rather than merely all Americans, or all whites or even all males.

Cynics are fond of ridiculing the language of the Declaration because they think they really know that its authors didn’t mean to include everybody. After all, the pre-revolutionary institution of slavery was not immediately abolished, women were not generally regarded as equal in rights to men, and the vote was not even extended to all males. So it was all a pretense, right?

Wrong. Northern states prohibited slavery by the time the Constitution was ratified, women had the right to vote in several states, north and south, and the voting franchise was extended to most white males within a generation or two.

Of course, we had no power to "secure these rights" anywhere else but on our own soil, and that was hard enough, as the Civil War and the long struggle for civil rights attest. But the meaning of independence, in the first place, is that the American people, through their chosen representatives, were free to throw off ancient shackles as soon as possible, however much they might disagree about the timing or even the wisdom of that welcome change.

In other words, no European nation, however powerful or influential, could impede the progress of the American people toward their fullest security for equality and liberty. America would long remain the only country so free, as Europeans underwent a cycle of violent revolutions and even world wars before that greatest of all battles was won. And the rest of the world took even longer, with a decidedly mixed record of success.

For much of our history we have been a beacon to other nations and peoples, drawing millions to our shores and inspiring revolutions abroad. An almost inevitable consequence of the influence was that the growing power of the United States has spared the world some of its greatest evils.

Depending on their agenda or what part of the Constitution they are talking about, both liberals and conservatives like to argue that the American government is severely restricted in its power and authority in order to ensure our freedoms against infringement. But they fail to understand what Alexander Hamilton, for example, understood, which was that "the vigor of government is essential to the security of liberty; [and] that, in the contemplation of a sound and well-informed judgment, their interest can never be separated . . . "

The most fundamental obligations of the government of the United States are to "provide for the common defense" and "promote the general welfare." In the midst of revolution without a national government, the Continental Congress had to find a way to fulfill these obligations, and barely succeeded. The object of the Constitution was not to give us a weak government but rather a powerful one.

Living in a world of monarchical governments, hostile Indian tribes and fierce pirates, the government needed to be, in Hamilton’s words, "energetic," not lethargic. The world is a dangerous place always, the only difference at any time being the nature and scope of the dangers. Had the national government not possessed the requisite power, the authority of the Union would not have been upheld against secession.

A united America is a boon to the world. Consider if our nation had not been united under one energetic government when in 1916 German submarines began to sink our ships and patrol our Atlantic and Gulf coastlines, not to mention block our shipping lines overseas. Only a strong American government could have kept the Gulf of Mexico from becoming a German lake.

More ominously still, consider the horrendous consequences if we had not had the means to keep Great Britain in the war against Nazi Germany until such time as the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and brought us into a two-front war. Our military, industrial and financial power was critical.

In both world wars, American power was decisive. In the earlier conflict, Germany defeated Czarist Russia at about the same time as America entered the war on the side of the Allies.  Absent American intervention, how does the thought of a Prussian dictatorship all over Europe strike you?

In the later war, an even more tyrannical German regime left unchecked would have held sway all over Europe, the Middle East and North Africa, and perhaps farther, doubtless putting an end to liberty for decades, if not centuries.

The superpower status of the United States kept most of the world safe from Soviet domination and ultimately proved too much for that evil empire to survive its own inherent weakness and inferiority. Today our government is the primary check on the world's despots and their blood brothers, the Islamist fanatics plotting against our freedom.

In sum, American independence means that we Americans alone decide how we are to be governed, and our formidable power has blocked or ended the rule of overbearing empires. This great good we celebrate today is a blessing for all mankind.

Liberty's the answer, year-round

It’s not hard to love Independence Day. There are fireworks, picnics, baseball games, and a long weekend. What’s more, the air is filled with patriotism. On the Fourth, it seems everyone is thankful for freedom and proud to be an American. My Fourth of July wish is for this attitude to last all year long. Our public dialogue these days seems to focus on pragmatic questions, like “How much will taxes go up?” or “Can government spend enough money fast enough to mitigate unemployment?” That sort of talk is a missed opportunity for those who believe in both America’s greatness and its founding principles.

Today we are celebrating the act, two hundred and thirty-three years ago today, of fifty-six courageous patriots who signed the Declaration of Independence. Together with the framers of the Constitution, signed some eleven years later, these founding fathers birthed a nation based on individual freedom and its corollary, a strictly limited government.

This risky experiment was a tremendous success. The freedoms built into the American system led individuals here to create the world’s leading society – the most innovative, the wealthiest, the most charitable, and arguably the most moral. While other countries labor to keep their citizens from leaving, America is a beacon of hope for immigrants around the world who want the freedom to make their dreams into reality. America rebuilt Japan and Europe after World War II. Millions around the world, in places like France, South Korea, Bosnia and Iraq, owe their freedom from tyranny to the U.S. We provide 60% of the world’s food aid, and we are spending $15 billion fighting AIDs in Africa.

There is a sentence in the Declaration that we all know by heart: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” This stirring sentence is, of course, an ideal. While at times, our nation has fallen short, striving for this ideal has made America the world’s greatest country. I’m proud to be an American, and if you’re an American you should be proud, too. So let’s talk about it!

Even on the other 364 days of the year, let’s remind others what’s special about this country and push to preserve it. Whether we’re talking about health care, taxation, or environmental policy, let’s remember to ask what’s consistent with America’s tradition of liberty. When my father fled Communism and came to the United States in the 1940s, he was not seeking someone to pay his dental bill – he was seeking freedom. When the subject is foreign policy, let’s bring up America’s special role in the world. If we’re talking about regulating what a Cheerios box says, or about campaign finance laws, let’s talk about freedom of speech and what our founding fathers endured so that we would have the protections of the Bill of Rights hundreds of years later.

Let’s change our public dialogue – whatever the question, make the answer, “liberty.”

May God watch over our uniformed men and women, fighting for our freedom this Independence Day, and may God bless America.

On July 4, a sense of place

(Denver Post, July 5) In lieu of fireworks, a cannon boomed at sunrise and sunset over Lewis and Clark’s campsite on a Missouri River tributary in present-day Kansas on July 4, 1804. They drank a toast and named the place Independence Creek. It was the first-ever Fourth of July celebration west of the Mississippi, writes Stephen Ambrose in Undaunted Courage. This weekend, 233 years after the Declaration of Independence claimed for Americans our “separate and equal station… among the powers of the earth,” the Colorado map abounds with reminders of the nation’s heroes and heritage. We overlook them amid the daily routine. Let’s note a few examples and think about why they matter. Colorado was at first part of Kansas Territory. We were later called Jefferson Territory, commemorating the man who authored the Declaration, bought the vast West from France, and dispatched Lewis and Clark to explore it. Jefferson County is all that’s left of that, though a town in South Park also bears his name.

Independence was a mining camp between Leadville and Aspen. It’s gone, but mighty Independence Pass remains, great for summer snowball fights when we were kids. Independence Street traverses Jefferson County, a hundred blocks west of Washington, Adams, and Madison streets. Other Denver streets honor Franklin and Jay, Jackson and Lincoln, Grant and Sherman. Up the Platte there’s also a Mt. Sherman and a town of Grant.

But as for the community where I live, “there was no Centennial,” James Michener assures us in his 1974 novel by that title. No, in pioneer days there wasn’t, but since 2000 there has been. Life imitates art. Colorado’s moniker as the Centennial State, of course, came with our statehood year of 1876, a century after the original Glorious Fourth. Town names logically followed, first fictional, then real.

Lest this historical ramble seem too lofty, we can also recall the old Centennial Racetrack near Littleton, where, if nothing politically profound occurred, at least liberty and the pursuit of happiness flourished. And for the Michener fans, we’ll note that a road in Douglas County bears the name of his imaginary Venneford Ranch. An Aurora restaurant even enshrined his trapper Pasquinel.

All quite diverting, but proving little, you say. What’s in a name anyway? Cinderella City once sat astride Jefferson Avenue in Englewood, after all. What is history, you’ll scoff with Napoleon (he of the astute Louisiana land sale, three cents an acre), but “a set of lies agreed upon.” Or blunter still, you’ll say with Henry Ford that history is bunk. But as an American and an heir of Western civilization, I’ll say it’s not.

Listen to the land. Get past the nondescript stuff, tune out the schlock, and you’ll hear Colorado place names echoing with inspiration from something new and special for human freedom that began in 1776 and hasn’t stopped yet. It has continued through 1787, 1815, 1863, 1876, 1917, 1941, 1964, 1989, 2001, and right to our own day when Navy Seal Danny Dietz was memorialized with a statue and a president was nominated at Mile High.

To look lovingly at the map of our state is to know Faulkner’s wisdom that “the past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.” Our past is present and our past is good. It elevates and nourishes us. Barack Obama talks about remaking America, transforming America, laying a new foundation. He’s welcome to try, but a lot of us will resist fiercely for the reasons indicated here.

Make her better, yes; but honor her, celebrate her, cherish and guard her above all. The heart’s blood of generations mapped her. The truer our sense of place, of history, of destiny – the sweeter our Independence Day.

'Axis of Evil' outfoxes Uncle Sam

(Boston) While the world watched the fraudulent Iranian elections, by chance I found myself here in the historic capital of American election fraud. Just a few steps from Boston’s City Hall the Union Oyster House has been a favored haunt of local politicians since Colonial times. As we sampled the culinary delights of this Beantown landmark my companion- a wryly self-described “humble servant of the people”- noted that two centuries earlier Governor Elbridge Gerry had enjoyed similar fare here. It was he who invented “gerrymandering”, a method of redistricting now institutionalized in every state as the most successful form of election fraud in American history.

Through the years Boston continued to invent, refine and export to grateful imitators nationwide many new breakthroughs in election fraud. One of the most productive was creating the key patronage post of Cemetery Commissioner said official being responsible not just for mowing the grass above the graves but much more importantly insuring that those loyal Democrats beneath the grass were not deprived of their right to vote “early and often” every election day.

While stealing votes outright was more cost effective sometimes it was necessary to buy them. Even then these thrifty New Englanders deplored wasteful spending. Jack Kennedy’s grandfather Boston Mayor “Honey Fitz” Fitzgerald insisted that the “Machine never bought more votes than actually required”. In another context his son-in-law Joe Kennedy sternly told a Chicago alderman that he “wasn’t paying for a landslide”.

Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ignored these counsels of moderation, apparently being quite willing to pay for a landslide and/or steal more votes than actually required.

The initial U.S. response to this self-evident fraud was somewhere between an embarrassment and a disgrace (when you sound less tough than the Europeans you know you’ve dropped the ball badly). Waffling between saying it didn’t matter who won the election and being fearful of accusations of “meddling” Obama and company demonstrated once again why foreign and national security policy has been the Achilles Heel of the Democratic party for over forty years.

In its obsequiousness Obama’s expression of gratitude to “Supreme Leader” Ayatollah Khamenei for his willingness to look into irregularities in a few precincts rivaled the notorious bow to the King of Saudi Arabia.

Amazingly none of this qualified as the week’s top example of U.S. spinelessness. After North Korea’s “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-IL defiantly announced that he was (A) weaponizing his nuclear stockpile, (B) conducting further tests of his Hiroshima sized bomb, and (C) scheduling tests of an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capable of reaching the U.S., the Obama Administration announced it would adhere to a new “get tough” policy proposed by Chinese and Russians at the United Nations.

The heart of the policy involves intercepting North Korean vessels suspected of carrying nuclear presents to friends like Syria or Iran and asking permission to board and search; however if they say no, that’s O.K. too.

When loony right-wingers in Congress questioned the adequacy of this response the Administration gave further evidence of its resolve by announcing that if North Korea persists in its’ nuclear naughtiness in next year’s budget we may refuse to make further cuts to Missile Defense spending beyond these already included in this year’s budget.

Right now, if you’re keeping score the old “Axis of Evil” – Syria, Iran, and North Korea-is definitely ahead on points. Obama’s much hyped but pathetic speech in Cairo (“America is one of the largest Muslim nations; my daddy was a Muslim”) clearly signaled he isn’t going to fuss too much when Iran inevitably gains full nuclear power status. As noted above he’s O.K. with letting Russia and China via the UN set the limits of U.S. toughness with North Korea.

The only member of the “Axis” who’s even been scored upon in this contest is Syria and that only because the Israelis who know a threat when they see one helpfully bombed that country’s rising nuclear facility flat.

The Boston Globe (owned by the N.Y. times since 1994 and hopefully soon going bankrupt) was “deeply troubled by this unilateral Israeli action” and this week even had the effrontery to editorially call on Obama to “oblige Netanyahu to rearrange his governing coalition to be more in accord with U.S.. policy toward the Palestinians”.

What’s wrong with this picture? A lot, and the price of folly may be exacted sooner than we think.

William Moloney’s columns have appeared in the Wall St. Journal, USA Today, Washington Post, Washington Times, Philadelphia Inquirer, Baltimore Sun, Denver Post, and Rocky Mountain News.

Is this the best we can do?

Much is being made of the Dick Cheney vs. Barack Obama "debate" now going on in the media over national security. The Wall Street Journal has it on the front page today, after Cheney and Obama gave dueling speeches yesterday -- Obama from the rotunda of the National Archives and Cheney from the American Enterprise Institute. As has been his consistent message, Obama again reiterated his view that the Bush administration had "gone off course" in using enhanced interrogation techniques and off-shore prisons, saying that he is seeking to restore "the power of our most fundamental values". The former Vice President, meanwhile is having none of it. Calling the Bush policies "legal, essential, justified, successful and the right thing to do", he again took on the administration's critics by pointing out that "After the most lethal and devastating terrorist attack ever, seven and a half years without a repeat is not a record to be rebuked or scorned, much less criminalized. It is a record to be continued until the danger has passed."

This is an exceedingly vital debate. President Obama has made decisions on the basis of politics that I believe are putting our nation at risk. He caved to the left in precipitously deciding to close Guantanamo without any alternative plan; now it turns out that many of the most hated Bush policies -- using military tribunals and indefinite detention -- will continue. Why? Because more than half of the remaining Guantanamo detainees are too dangerous to try in court or to release back into the civilized world. But where will they go once Guantanamo is closed? No one has a clue, because nobody in Congress wants these lethal prisoners in their backyard. In the halls of Congress, NIMBY is the rule -- unless, of course, it's pork.

The problem for those who think that Obama is on a dangerous path, however, is that it is Dick Cheney leading the charge. Where is the spokesperson for the opposition to this president who isn't past his prime and considered a cross between an "angry white man" and Darth Vader?

We know, of course, that John McCain -- the Republican candidate for president just a short 6 months ago who got more than 44 million votes in the election -- is of little help on this issue, having campaigned himself against enhanced interrogation and for the closing of Guantanamo. So he's been -- by necessity and by temperament -- silent in this debate. But where are the others? Are there any conservatives who have a future (as opposed to a past) in politics willing and able to stand up and say to the nation what it already suspects? That Obama's inexperience and desire to "make everyone happy" is putting us at risk? That his world view -- and thus his emerging foreign policy -- is dangerously naive?

You have to give Obama credit -- he certainly likes to talk as if he is reasoned and balanced in his approach, that he has command of the vital issues that face us as a nation. He is nothing if not outwardly confident. But this president doesn't deal well with specifics and facts. He's long relied on soaring rhetoric that sounds great but says nothing. Like many liberals, he makes statements of opinion as if they are fact, saying it in such a way that it seems beyond dispute -- but offering no evidence to back it up. As the WSJ recounts in its lead editorial today: The President went out of his way to insist that its existence "likely created more terrorists around the world than it ever detained," albeit without offering any evidence, and that it "has weakened American security," again based only on assertion. What is a plain fact is that in the seven-plus years that Gitmo has been in operation the American homeland has not been attacked.

It is also a plain fact -- and one the President acknowledged -- that many of the detainees previously released, often under intense pressure from Mr. Obama's anti-antiterror allies, have returned to careers as Taliban commanders and al Qaeda "emirs." The New York Times reported yesterday on an undisclosed Pentagon report that no fewer than one in seven detainees released from Gitmo have returned to jihad.

Mr. Obama called all of this a "mess" that he had inherited, but in truth the mess is of his own haphazard design. He's the one who announced the end of Guantanamo without any plan for what to do with, or where to put, KSM and other killers. Now he's found that his erstwhile allies in Congress and Europe want nothing to do with them. Tell us again why Gitmo should be closed?

President Obama is making things up out of whole cloth and peddling them as fact; he is tremendously vulnerable on these issues, because what he says doesn't pass the simple smell test. Why is it Dick Cheney -- a man whose career is over -- shooting the arrows at the president and his party over this?

Is this really the best we can do?