As we celebrate July 4, it’s important to go back a few weeks and recall what happened on June 14. On that day, we saw one portion of our country take time to celebrate the 250th Anniversary of our nation’s army, and a different portion protest what they seem to believe is a rising monarchy in our nation’s capital.
Now, there have always been differences of opinion among Americans. It’s one of the characteristics of a functional democracy. Over the past five years, however, we have experienced a fundamental division in our nation that must be confronted.
About 30 years ago, Jerry Porras and Jim Collins wrote a book called “Built to Last,” chronicling their research on organizations that thrive and survive over long periods of time. One of the most important durability-inducing elements they cite is the adherence to a small set of core values, inviolable traits that define the principles and behaviors around which the company’s founders built the organization. To reject or violate those values is to advocate for the organization’s demise.
While a country is not synonymous with a company, I am convinced that the same concept can be applied to a nation that wants to thrive and survive. I’m also convinced that a difficult conversation about America’s core values is long overdue.
It’s worth noting that core values are not the drivel that some companies produce using marketing jargon and wordsmithing to come up with a list of sugary, generic adjectives that will be palatable to just about everyone. Core values are the authentic principles that underlie the character of an organization — or a nation — over time.
For the better part of the past 50 years, the U.S. has been struggling with an increasing sense of confusion around its core values. Recently, however, that confusion has morphed into a serious and dangerous division, calling to mind Abraham Lincoln’s reference to the words of Christ, reminding Americans that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.”
More and more people, like me, are concerned that our country will not be able to stand if we remain so divided. We cannot continue to go forward simply agreeing to disagree, or worse, not even acknowledge our disagreements and allow ourselves to be torn apart. It’s time that we, as a nation, face and answer a few basic questions before it’s too late.
What are those questions, the ones that underlie our values? Here are the most obvious ones.
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Are we founded upon Judeo-Christian values and dependent on God’s providence, or are we a nation that is essentially agnostic, removing faith in God from public life, education, and the military? It can’t be both.
Do we believe in freedom of speech, press, and religion, or are we willing to allow elected and unelected influencers to determine what are and are not acceptable words and beliefs? Again, these are incompatible.
Do we believe in a limited central government, or do we prefer a powerful, singular federal provider of rules and services? Pick one.
In light of these questions, I see two ways to move forward.
First, we can go back and honestly embrace the core principles that the founders believed would hold us together and keep us united, and then recommit to those principles, without apology. It’s as simple, and sometimes difficult, as that.
Or, second, we can dismiss the ideals of our founders and decide, after 249 years, to create a new country. We can roll the dice and bet that we can conceive of a better model than Adams, Hamilton, Jefferson and the others did.
What we can’t do, and what we’ve been doing for too long, is avoid these questions and let our core principles, and an entire nation, die a slow death as we drift further and further apart while the media, academia, and creative judges determine what America really is. We are a democracy, still, and we must choose our own path, or it will be chosen for us.
Now, there are many differences between companies and countries, not the least of which is the inability of countries to “fire” their own citizens, or even simply facilitate their departure. An organization’s CEO, on the other hand, can say to employees who don’t want to adhere to its core values that it’s time for them to work somewhere else. A nation cannot do that, and rightly so. However, if that nation wants to survive, it also cannot overly accommodate or apologize to those who oppose its values.
It’s worth noting that this challenge we face today existed at the very beginning of our nation, though to a lesser extent. Even then, there were those who had sided with the British or who would have preferred a monarchy, perhaps one led by George Washington. They were not all forced to leave the country, but they were required to come to terms with the principles of this experimental nation if they wanted to stay.
So, if we decide to recommit to our founders’ ideals — and I’m certainly in favor of that path — then we must politely and unequivocally say to citizens who dislike the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, or any foundational aspect of American life: “You don’t have to believe what we believe, practice any particular faith, or even celebrate the freedoms upon which we are founded. You don’t. But you do have to make peace with the reality of our core values and ideals, which are based on those things. Or you can make plans to live somewhere better suited to your preferences.” 
That is neither intolerant nor snarky; it is clear. And clarity is kind.
We must stop allowing people to pretend that the nation’s values are something other than they are, because there is nothing kind about that.
It&#8217;s ironic that the nations in the world today that have the most intolerant and unkind values are the ones that won’t even let people opt out and leave. Just look at North Korea and Cuba, though there are others. This is, of course, absurd.
But for a free nation like ours to bend over backward to accommodate those who hate what we stand for is equally absurd. So let’s make a decision so that we can reverse the trend toward divisiveness and disunity, and get back to rebuilding a nation around the values that have served us for 250 years.
* * *
Patrick Lencioni is one of the founders of The Table Group and is the pioneer of the organizational health movement. He is the <a href="https://www.amazon.com/stores/Patrick-M.-Lencioni/author/B001ILFMB2?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_2&amp;qid=1751571498&amp;sr=8-2&amp;isDramIntegrated=true&amp;shoppingPortalEnabled=true&amp;ccs_id=3de65105-8f38-4be0-90f1-d7c66bb8daa2">author of 13 books</a>, which have sold over 10 million copies and been translated into more than 30 languages.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Fireworks on the Fourth of July, Washington, D.C.

Can We Still Agree On America’s Core Values? A Nation Divided On Independence Day

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Let’s be real: most of us aren’t crossing the Delaware this 4th of July. We’re crossing the backyard in flip-flops to open the cooler. And that’s fine. That’s American, even. But while we’re manning the grill and dodging bottle rockets, we’d do well to remember: this day isn’t just about fireworks and flag-themed cupcakes. It’s about something far rarer — and far more worth preserving.
Because America didn’t just happen. It was made — and paid for.
Two hundred and forty-nine years ago, a bunch of men in powdered wigs looked at the most powerful empire on Earth and said, “Nah—we’re going to try something different. Hold my beer.” They didn’t tweet about tyranny. They fought it. They signed their names on a document that would’ve earned them a hangman’s rope had things gone south. And then they backed it up — starving, freezing, bleeding, and winning, so that one day you and I could argue over gas prices and post pics on Instagram.
They weren’t fighting for tax credits or better trade deals. They were fighting for the radical belief that our rights come from God, not government. And they risked everything for it.
We, by comparison, are just risking the brisket.
But maybe that’s the point. You don’t have to be Washington at Valley Forge to honor the Spirit of ’76. You just have to be intentional. You just have to remember.
Because the truth is, most Americans today couldn’t name five Founders. Some think the Revolutionary War was a Marvel spinoff. And every summer, like clockwork, the usual suspects try to reduce the Founding to a footnote in oppression — something to apologize for, not admire.
But the American Founding wasn’t a mistake. It was a miracle. Were the Founders flawed men? Sure. We all are. But the system they built — this Constitutional Republic grounded in natural rights and self-government — is still the greatest experiment in liberty the world has ever seen.
And it’s worth celebrating.
So, this Independence Day, take a minute — take five — to appreciate not just the fireworks, but the fire that lit the Revolution.
Maybe take some time to think about Jack Jouett. You’ve probably never heard his name. But when British troops were closing in on Thomas Jefferson and the Virginia Legislature, Jouett rode through the night, 40 miles on rough terrain, branches slashing his face, to warn them.
He didn’t do it for fame. He didn’t expect a reward. He was just a regular guy who refused to let tyranny win on his watch.
So too were the legions of cold, hungry, bleeding men in Washington’s army who crossed the icy Delaware River on Christmas night, 1776. They marched barefoot through the snow to launch a surprise attack on a Hessian outpost in Trenton. Some died before the battle even began. But the rest fought, and they won. And with that win, the Revolution roared back to life.
These weren’t abstract ideals on parchment. These were men, enduring literal hell so that future generations could taste Heaven’s gift: liberty.
And that gift has only survived this long because, in every generation, regular people stepped up to keep it alive.
That includes you.
John Adams said, “Posterity! You will never know how much it cost the present generation to preserve your freedom. I hope you will make good use of it.”
So, if you want to make good use of it, here’s your checklist for a meaningful 4th of July:
<ul>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Read the Declaration of Independence with your kids. Yes, even if they roll their eyes. Especially if they roll their eyes.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Fly the flag. Not because it looks good on your porch, but because you know what it cost.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Ask your kids what freedom means to them. Not a lecture — a conversation. They’re starving for meaning. Feed them something real.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Turn off TikTok. Read a chapter of the Federalist Papers. Or watch The Patriot instead of a reality show about people with fake names and real dysfunction.</li>
<li style="font-weight: 400;" aria-level="1">Say grace. And thank God you live in a country where you can.</li>
</ul>
And if you’re Gen Z, no one expects you to recite the Constitution from memory. But maybe — just maybe — start asking questions. Read a book. Volunteer. Serve your neighbor. Build something with your hands. Log some service hours instead of screentime.
Because guess what? Next year is America’s 250th birthday. That’s not just a milestone. It’s a moment. A year from now, when the fireworks explode and the flags wave, don’t be the one just snapping selfies. Be the one who knows why it matters. Let this year be your warm-up lap. Spend the next 12 months loading the intellectual cannons. Read the Founding documents. Relearn the history. Equip yourself with truth.
Because if America is going to survive another 250 years, it won’t be because we got more “progressive.” It won’t be because of people like Barack Obama, who infamously said “I believe in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism.”
No, if America is to survive, it will be thanks to people who fought to conserve who we are: a nation under God. A people forged in sacrifice. A Republic—if we can keep it.
You can’t defend a country you refuse to define. And you certainly can’t celebrate one you won’t even elevate.
So, fire up the Weber. Salute the flag. Tell your kids the truth. Thank the ones who served. And say a prayer for the country that lets you do all five without asking permission.
We don’t need more guilt. We need more gratitude.
We don’t need perfect people. We need present patriots.
And we don’t need another political lecture. We need more parents, more truth, more God, more America.
Now, hold my beer. The brisket is burning.
Gates Garcia is the host of the YouTube show and podcast We The People. Follow him on IG and X @GatesGarciaFL
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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The Everyday American’s Guide To The Fourth Of July

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Right now, the West is in its ascendancy, not in its decline.
Over the weekend, President Trump championed a peace deal that is now cut between Congo and Rwanda, brokered by the White House to stop the bloodshed in Congo, where a militia allegedly backed by Rwanda occupies huge areas of land.
President Trump explained that he is brokering peace throughout the world, saying, “This is a tremendous breakthrough. In a few short months, we&#8217;ve now achieved peace between India and Pakistan, Israel and Iran, and the DRC and Rwanda. And a couple of others also, Serbia was getting ready to go to war with a group I won&#8217;t even mention because it didn&#8217;t happen. We were able to stop it.”
He&#8217;s right about that. He also continues to maintain his strength in the face of an Iran that has pledged further nuclear development. He said to Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei, listen, you keep lying and saying that you won? You didn&#8217;t. You got your ass kicked.
“I&#8217;m putting out a little statement,” <a href="https://x.com/breeadail/status/1938650917127233987">he stated</a>. “I&#8217;m going to respond to the Ayatollah’s statement yesterday that ‘We won the war.’ Won the war? And I said, ‘Look, you&#8217;re a man of great faith, a man who&#8217;s highly respected in his country. You have to tell the truth, you got beat to hell … It would be great if they (Iran) didn&#8217;t have that hate. But the last thing they&#8217;re thinking about is nuclear weapons right now.”
“Would you consider bombing the country again?” <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgenq599kwo">he was asked</a>. “Sure. Without question. Absolutely. That would be unbelievable,” he answered. “But, you know, our incredible fliers; I call them the shots. These guys are unbelievable. Think. From 52,000 feet, they hit the equivalent of a refrigerator door. They actually hit it right in the center, so it&#8217;s much smaller than that.”
But at a time when the West should be resurgent and on the upswing, instead you have America&#8217;s major cities: New York City, L.A., and Chicago, being run by full-scale left-wing nutcases who are deeply ensconced with hatred for their own civilization. The same thing has happened in London in the UK. It&#8217;s been happening in France as well.
It&#8217;s a serious threat to the West. And the biggest threat to the West is not external at this point.
The biggest threat to the West is internal: the Red-Green Alliance, the communists/socialists, and the Hamasniks coming together in hatred of their own civilization.
<h3><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-ep-2228?elementPosition=5&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h3>
All of this ties into July 4. It&#8217;s going to be great. I hope you&#8217;re going to have a wonderful Independence Day, celebrating the foundation of the greatest country in the history of the world, but we should talk about a myth that has been purveyed about July 4 and about the United States in general.
This, of course, is the 1619 myth that “America was founded on slavery and that the Revolutionary War was fought for the preservation of slavery.”
There are many lies that are told about our civilization, particularly about the foundation of our civilization, in order to somehow claim that our civilization should be torn down.
If you were to poll the morons of Glastonbury in the UK who chanted “Death to the IDF” and mocked white Britons by chanting “I hear you want your country back. Well, shut the f*** up,” or the Democratic primary voters for Zohran Mamdani in New York about what they think of the United States, they would surely agree with the myth that America was founded on slavery.
It&#8217;s not true.
A huge number of the Founders overtly opposed slavery in principle. Even those who held slaves themselves did not provide significant defenses of slavery. That included George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. Washington said, “There&#8217;s not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for its abolition.” Thomas Jefferson&#8217;s original draft of the Declaration of Independence called the slave trade an “execrable commerce” and “an affront against human nature itself.” John Jay said, “It is much to be wished that slavery may be abolished, to contend for our own liberty, and to deny that blessing to others involves an inconsistency not to be excused.” Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, John Adams, and Alexander Hamilton spoke against slavery as well.
Why was slavery included in the Constitution of the United States originally? Because there were still slave-holding states in the United States. Many of the northern states were not slave holding states, but the southern states were. And the question was, could you get together a coalition to defeat the British, or could you not?
This was not a fight on behalf of promoting slavery. Slavery remained legal in the British Empire until 1833. So this was not a fight in which one side was pro-slavery and one side was anti-slavery. Far from it. The leaders in America ideologically were not in favor of slavery. There was a practical on-the-ground consideration, which was that many of the southern states were reliant on slave labor. 
Again, that&#8217;s an evil not to be excused, but to claim that the Revolutionary War was about slavery is to be ignorant of history. In fact, as soon as the Revolution began, there were eight states that immediately came out and started abolishing slavery: Vermont, 1777. Pennsylvania, 1780. Massachusetts and New Hampshire, 1783. Rhode Island and Connecticut, 1784. New York, 1799. New Jersey 1804.
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As the Claremont Institute&#8217;s Arthur Milikh once <a href="https://www.heritage.org/american-history/commentary/1776-not-1619">pointed out</a>:
<blockquote>The Founders laid the constitutional ground for abolishing slavery. One example is <a href="https://www.heritage.org/constitution/#!/articles/1/essays/60/slave-trade">Article I, Section 9, Clause 1</a>, which states that Congress could prohibit importation of slaves starting in 1808. On the first day that this clause became operative, Congress passed, and President Thomas Jefferson signed, this prohibition into law. Congress took additional steps to restrict slavery. It passed the Northwest Ordinance of 1787, which outlawed slavery in the Northwest Territories. Seven years later, Congress made it illegal to build ships for the purpose of the slave trade.</blockquote>
It&#8217;s important to debunk some of these myths, because those myths become the basis for claiming that the West is uniquely evil. Slavery has indeed been an evil institution, but it has also been virtually universal. 
The question isn&#8217;t whether the Founding Fathers were hypocrites about slavery. Some were; some weren&#8217;t. The question truly is: Why did it take the West to end slavery?
In fact, slavery is still practiced in many of the areas that are favorites of the Glastonbury crowd. Many of the places that they are claiming are “havens of freedom,” that require “less of a heavy Western hand,” are places that are still practicing slavery.
A huge part of the Middle East still engages in slavery. Not Israel, but many of its opponents. That is the point.
July 4 spells a clarion call for human freedom, and it has been seen that way by right-minded people ever since.
This is why the very famous Frederick Douglass speech about what July 4 meant to the slave doesn&#8217;t say that July 4 is bad. It says that the problem with the 4th of July is that the principles that the Founding Fathers sought to instill had not yet been realized.
That is the right approach, a historically accurate and mature approach, instead of the leftist scumbag wing that simply suggests the West is uniquely evil when in reality the West is uniquely good.

President Trump Speaks On Recent Supreme Court Rulings At The White House

The Resurgent West: Why Today’s Triumphs Outweigh Our Critics

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Each Passover, Jews across the world recount the miraculous exodus of their ancestors from servitude under the Egyptian pharaoh, in pursuit of a life of ordered liberty in the Land promised to Abraham. This pharaoh enslaved the Jewish people, forcing them into hard labor doubly tortuous, as their taskmasters imposed assignments with labor itself as the ultimate end. The pharaoh even ordered the infanticide of Hebrew male infants in an attempt to cement his power over the Hebrews. The Passover dinner retells the story of our enslavement, the Ten Plagues inflicted upon the Egyptians, and Hebrews’ miraculous deliverance. The ancient Hebrews left a tyranny that subjugated their spiritual and physical freedom to the dictates of a human regime at odds with the Divine.
Importantly, escape from tyranny wasn’t their ultimate aim. The ancient Hebrews embarked at this moment on a journey to their Promised Land. These tribes became the People of the Book — striving to form a civil society under the rule of law, complete with education of the young, the establishment of courts, protection of property, and concern for innocent life.
The American Founders certainly recognized that this “Season of Our Freedom” is relevant for the United States of America. The national motto proposed by Benjamin Franklin of “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God” accompanied an image of Moses leading the Children of Israel across the miraculously parted Red Sea as they escaped the tyrant of their times. The Israelites desired to worship God freely, raise families, and enjoy the fruits of their own labor. The protections of our Bill of Rights guarantee us similar rights.
The Israelites and the Pilgrims both journeyed to a new land not just in pursuit of generic freedom — but freedom of a far deeper type. The foremost concern of the Pilgrims arriving on the shores of Cape Cod in 1620 indeed was freedom of religion and conscience. Like the Israelites, these early settlers forfeited many of the comforts of their prior home as they endured a harsh climate in unfamiliar territory surrounded by hazards. Those Pilgrims entered a covenant to “combine ourselves together into a civil body politick” — one with the family as society’s foundation, with national traditions and core values transmitted in the home.
<div id="attachment_906725" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-906725" class="size-large wp-image-906725" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-864x576.jpg" alt="Passover matzoh jewish holiday bread with kipah table background. " width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1217401397-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes="(max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Cavan images. Getty Images.</div>
The Passover seder recognizes that the story of the Jewish people neither began nor ended with the Exodus story. In its recount, we recognize also that we must be active participants in maintaining our freedom. We recognize also that, in a sense, this deliverance happened to us personally. Through the long dinner, children at the table play a large role in reading the story, asking questions, and contributing to the conversation.
As the quarter-millennial celebration of our independence from King George III approaches, let’s take some lessons from the Passover celebration. Instilling an understanding of and respect for our founding in the next generation ensures they too will seek to protect our nation from corrosive influence. Yet, far too many children are apathetic or ignorant of the fundamental rights enshrined in our Constitution or even the basic functioning of our republic. Too few are taught of the sacrifices made by the Founders and the freedoms they sought to protect. Even worse, some educators attempt to poison young minds against the nation’s foundation. Parents possess the responsibility and an opportunity to instill this love of country. Honoring the flag, reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, respecting the national anthem, commemorating Independence Day all instill pride in country—in addition to academic studies.
Let’s remember too that our freedom is not secure forever simply by virtue of our winning our own War for Independence. As we stray from the guarantors of our freedom — rule of law, the Bill of Rights, the separation of powers, strong families — the great promise of this nation “conceived in liberty” becomes threatened. At the Passover seder, we recall audibly and collectively that, “We were slaves of Pharaoh in Egypt.” Remembering life prior to liberty, celebrating our victory over tyranny, savoring our freedom, reflecting on what a life of liberty should mean, and involving the next generation in all of this will protect our freedom — both as Jews and as Americans.
* * *
Joel Griffith and Paul Teller, both Jewish Americans, are Senior Fellow and Executive Vice President, respectively, of Advancing American Freedom, the issue advocacy organization founded by former Vice President Mike Pence.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Metal plate with matzah or matza and Passover Haggadah on a vintage wood background presented as a Passover seder feast or meal with copy space. Translation: Passover Haggadah

The Season Of Our Freedom: Lessons From Passover For Americans

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If 2014 was a “<a href="https://manhattan.institute/event/the-great-awokening" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Great Awokening</a>,” then 2020 was the start of a second wave – a movement that’s led the entire nation to wrestle with questions around race, diversity, and our origin story.
But what will 2026 – the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence – bring? Some hope it’ll be a time to celebrate and commemorate the American story. But others – including many influential organizations – stand in opposition, seeking instead to fundamentally transform Americans’ understanding of our history.
Foremost among these activist organizations is the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, our <a href="https://monumentlab.com/monumentlab-nationalmonumentaudit.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“nation’s largest supporter of the arts and the humanities.”</a>
In 2020, Mellon placed <a href="https://www.mellon.org/news/mellon-foundation-announces-transformation-its-strategic-direction-and-new-focus-social-justice" target="_blank" rel="noopener">social justice at the center of its grant-making initiatives</a>. Since then, it’s issued <a href="https://www.heritage.org/american-history/commentary/the-mellon-foundations-assault-american-history" target="_blank" rel="noopener">numerous and sizeable</a> grants supporting anti-racist and pro-LGBTQ+ programs.
Notably, it gave <a href="https://www.mellon.org/grant-details/gender-and-lgbtq+-history-20450131" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$150,000 to the New-York Historical Society</a> in 2021 to support a “Gender and LGBTQ+ History Fellow.” In 2023, that same society <a href="https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/10/06/somethings-queer-colonial-williamsburg/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">partnered with Colonial Williamsburg</a> to host a teacher chat on “Queer History and Methodologies” and a workshop on “Best Practices for Teaching Queer History.” This course, open to educators from preschool to college level, was officially approved by New York state as qualifying toward public educators’ continuing education requirements.
In 2023, the Mellon Foundation joined the Alice Walton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and Pilot Philanthropy in a “<a href="https://www.mellon.org/news/new-investments-for-more-diverse-leadership-in-art-museums" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Leadership in Art Museums” initiative</a> that committed over “$11M in funding to museums to increase racial equity in leadership roles…” at museums.
This program is in addition to the <a href="https://www.nationalparks.org/news-and-updates/press-releases/mellon-foundation-grants-over-13m-to-the-national-park-foundation-to-support-thirty-postdoctoral-fellowships-in-the-humanities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">National Park Service Mellon Humanities Fellowship</a>,” which funds postdoctoral fellows at national parks to research “how the parks are impacted and/or informed by issues related to gender and sexuality equality, the legacy of the civil rights movement, and the history of labor and productivity.”
One of these fellows, placed at James Monroe’s Highlands (his home from 1799 to 1823), wrote <a href="https://clioandthecontemporary.com/2023/10/31/engaging-different-communities-highland/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">that 2020 marked</a> a “racial and social” reckoning at museums, which she described as “preservers of white supremacist versions of the past.”
In 2022, Mellon <a href="https://www.nationalparks.org/news-and-updates/press-releases/mellon-foundation-grants-over-13m-to-the-national-park-foundation-to-support-thirty-postdoctoral-fellowships-in-the-humanities" target="_blank" rel="noopener">expanded this post-doctoral program</a>, committing over $13 million for 30 new fellows at our national parks. Another Mellon fellow remarked that this program “has the potential to transform the stories told at many of the country’s national parks.”
Words like “transform” and “reimagine” are often indicators of post-modernist mischief.
For example, the Mellon Foundation has committed <a href="https://www.mellon.org/article/the-monuments-project-initiative" target="_blank" rel="noopener">$500 million to transforming</a> our nation’s monuments landscape, in part because it saw a lack of “U.S.-born Latinx, Asian, Pacific Islander, or self-identified LGBTQ+ people” in the list of top 50 individuals most frequently memorialized.
This sort of transformation seeks primarily to achieve equity of identity characteristics rather than recognition for meritorious deeds that all Americans can claim as part of our history. Ultimately, this approach favors inclusivity over accuracy.
As was previously noted, the Mellon Foundation has been partnering with the National Park Service on some of its initiatives. The National Park Service and Foundation are currently making changes to the Jefferson and Lincoln Memorials, to be completed by this spring and the 250th anniversary, respectively.
Work at the <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/thjework.htm?utm_source=article&amp;utm_medium=website&amp;utm_campaign=experience_more&amp;utm_content=small" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jefferson Memorial will include</a> “expanded and reimagined exhibit space” and “new state-of-the-art exhibits” that will provide “more perspectives as it shares Thomas Jefferson’s multi-faceted story.”
<a href="https://www.nps.gov/wamo/planyourvisit/undercroft.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">At the Lincoln Memorial</a>, new exhibits “will highlight the construction history of the memorial and discuss how the Lincoln Memorial has become the nation’s foremost backdrop for civil rights demonstrations.”
Both of these efforts have been enabled by donations from philanthropist and businessman David M. Rubenstein, who funded the exhibits on slavery at Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello and <a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/understand-montpeliers-leftist-turn-follow-the-money" target="_blank" rel="noopener">James Madison’s Montpelier</a>.
Americans can hope that the new exhibits at two of our foremost national memorials will be informative, balanced, and accurate. But the ones funded by Rubenstein at Montpelier are decidedly not.
There are currently <a href="https://www.montpelier.org/visit/galleries-and-exhibits/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">no exhibits at Montpelier focused on James Madison</a> and his contributions. And the ones on offer contain <a href="https://www.heritage.org/conservatism/report/tale-three-presidential-houses-the-good-the-bad-and-the-ugly" target="_blank" rel="noopener">many distortions, “gotcha” efforts, and at least one factual error</a>.
This raises concerns for the memorials both of Thomas Jefferson, Madison’s close friend and ally in the cause for human freedom, and for Abraham Lincoln, who urged us to give all honor to Jefferson—to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times.
Today, a visible divide exists between those who want to commemorate our first 250 years of history and dedication to the principles of the Declaration of Independence and those who want to transform and reject it.
In this moment, perhaps we should turn to Abraham Lincoln, who began his famous <a href="https://teachingamericanhistory.org/document/house-divided-speech-3/">House Divided speech</a>, “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.”
Anniversaries are times to reflect, assess, and resolve a way forward. More, they are cause to celebrate, remember, and demonstrate gratitude.
America is indeed exceptional. This free country has granted us, its current posterity, the opportunity to continue in the work we are in, to prove to ourselves, and the world, that the noble ambition of a self-governing nation can indeed be kept.
* * *
Brenda M. Hafera is the Assistant Director and Senior Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Simon Center for American Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
Note: This article has been edited for clarity.

New Dawn over Washington

Post-Modern Mischief At America’s National Parks And Museums

Post-Modern Mischief At America's National Parks And Museums

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Equity

Heritage Foundation

LGBTQ

Museum

National Park Service

Woke Culture

There was an attempt at a military dictatorship in South Korea in which the president of South Korea issued a command for martial law. It was reversed hours later, but what exactly was going on there? 
South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol is a member of a party that controls the presidency but is in the minority in the actual parliament of the country. He claimed the majority in the parliament (a party called the Democratic Party in South Korea) is basically a tool of the North Koreans, citing them to be crypto-communists preventing the functioning of the government. 
Essentially, the Democratic Party of South Korea, which represents a large majority in the National Assembly, has been threatening and attempting to impeach the state prosecutors who are looking into the Democratic Party leadership. The prosecutors were supposed to be looking into the family of the president of South Korea, and they had apparently decided to exonerate the president’s wife. Meanwhile, the same prosecutors were additionally looking into the leadership of the Democratic Party regarding corruption charges. In turn, the Democratic Party attempted to impeach these prosecutors. 
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So, the South Korean president looked at the opposition party (which controls the National Assembly) and contended they were attempting to clean out the prosecutorial part of the government in order to protect themselves or weaponize it against him. Therefore, he would declare martial law. 
The South Korean parliament voted unanimously to defy the country&#8217;s president and lift his martial law declaration.  
But there’s something deeper happening here. 
This sort of constitutional crisis is now taking place in a variety of countries. It’s happening in Israel, where there are fights between the prosecutorial wing of the government and the government of Benjamin Netanyahu. It&#8217;s happening in Hungary, where they&#8217;ve been fighting over state prosecutors. It&#8217;s happening in Brazil, where Lula da Silva, the authoritarian Left-wing leader of the country, is now attempting to militarize the justice system against Jair Bolsonaro, his predecessor. And, of course, there are shades of this in the United States. 
Why, exactly, is all this happening right now? 
To understand that, we must understand the role of the prosecutorial system in democratic republics, because that has changed over time. And this has implications, by the way, for everything, up to and including the Hunter Biden pardon and the Biden DOJ weaponizing itself against Donald Trump.
Democratic republics typically rely on checks and balances to prevent the government from engaging in authoritarianism; that is the basis of the United States Constitution. The House and the Senate check one another. Both are checked by the presidency, and all three of those bodies are checked by the judiciary and vice versa. 
Traditionally, one of the checks and balances to avoid tyranny was impeachment. If you didn&#8217;t like members of the government or you suspected that members of the government were corrupt, a bipartisan majority would work to oust those corrupt officials. 
This is obviously problematic when it comes to getting rid of corrupt officials because if the corrupt official happens to be a member of your party, then you are very unlikely to vote for their impeachment. 
In Democratic republics, the question of how to police corruption is a very real question if there is a corrupt public official. The United States Constitution says that person is impeached in the House, and then there is a full trial in the Senate. 
When the Constitution was designed, Alexander Hamilton and the rest of the Founding Fathers believed the Senate would be the most objective body. United States senators were not appointed by party or by public approval. They were appointed by the state legislatures, and they served six-year terms. The goal was for them to be more independent of the public passions than the House.
The judiciary could not do it because the judiciary could be hijacked. But the Senate was sort of half political: answerable but also indirectly answerable to the public — and thus more insulated from public pressure.
Hamilton pointed out that setting up a separate impeachment court (which we might now call the DOJ) wouldn&#8217;t actually solve the problem because that, too, could be politicized.
The problem is that over time, in a wide variety of countries, as democratic republics and their checks and balances have transitioned into administrative bureaucracies in which enormous power is centralized in the executive branch, checks and balances have atrophied until Donald Trump was impeached twice. The impeachment power was almost never used by the Congress of the United States, for example.
We made a decision at the outset of the 20th century that was echoed in other burgeoning democracies that law enforcement checking corruption was not to be done by the elected bodies of government. Instead, it was outsourced to so-called independent branches of government.
In the United States, that is the Department of Justice; in South Korea, it is the state prosecutor&#8217;s office; in Brazil, the prosecutors, the police, the judiciary; in Israel, the attorney general, and so forth.
There is a problem that happens here, and this is a problem with the administrative state. The problem is that state prosecutors can also be corrupted by politics, as we have seen in the United States. And then the solution isn&#8217;t to change the people in government anymore, because these are independent branches, and they&#8217;re unelected. It&#8217;s not a matter of replacing some people with other people.
If you fire some people, that&#8217;s considered interference with the magical “objective branch.” If you leave people in place and they target your political opponents, it&#8217;s weaponization.
That&#8217;s what leads to constitutional crises. Once the job of policing corruption from the elected branches of government — like the Senate of the United States or the National Assembly in South Korea — is outsourced to state prosecutors, sooner or later, state prosecutors will attempt to go after the wrong people, the legislature after state prosecutors, or the president after state prosecutors, in order to prevent weaponization.
This is the problem with sending up fake “objective legal enforcement” bodies. It creates constitutional crises because the only solution to a politicized law enforcement branch is to either overthrow the government for interfering with the system, which is what the president of South Korea attempted to do, or to call for the overthrow of the government for weaponizing the system.
Constitutional crises are the result of supposedly untouchable, nonpartisan institutions that can either be weaponized or interfered with.
This is happening across the West. It&#8217;s a major, major problem. It&#8217;s the problem with administrative governments. It&#8217;s a major problem in regards to the idea that it is the job of impartial legal bodies to police corruption.
So democracies are throwing themselves into crisis, specifically over this.
Let&#8217;s say that you are in the United States and you are really, really angry that Donald Trump became president in 2016. What do you do? You could try to impeach him, but it will probably fail if you don&#8217;t have the votes because it&#8217;ll break down along strictly partisan lines. 
What do you do instead? You rely on the DOJ; you rely on the FBI. You weaponize those institutions against Trump. And that prompts Trump, if he becomes president, to clean out those institutions, in which case he will be accused of weaponizing those institutions. And so the constitutional crisis just continues to roll on, all because this sort of bipartisan consensus around impeaching presidents who are guilty of crimes has gone away in the United States. 
You could say it died during the Clinton era. And the United States is now feeling the aftereffects. 
The same is true in Israel. In Israel, the attorney general&#8217;s office has put Benjamin Netanyahu under three separate prosecutions; all of them appear to be somewhat specious. The goal is obviously political. Netanyahu has been in power for some 14 of the last 15 years in Israel. He&#8217;s a masterful Machiavellian politician, just in pure, raw talent terms. And so the attorney general&#8217;s office has been weaponized against him, as claims Netanyahu, which I think is largely correct in a wide variety of cases. 
But every time he tries to mess with the prosecution, he&#8217;s accused of tampering with democracy.
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Once these institutions are set up as the final arbiter of guilt and innocence, then anyone who tampers with them on either side is then considered a threat to democracy, even if the person who is actually militarizing law enforcement is the person who is in power.
In Brazil, the law enforcement mechanisms have been weaponized by Lula da Silva against Jair Bolsonaro. That means as Lula is cleaning out the judiciary institutions, he&#8217;s being lauded as someone upholding the norms of democracy while he, at the same time, engages in widespread censorship. Instead of corruption being seen as a political issue to be answered by the political branches and eventually the people, because it&#8217;s been outsourced to law enforcement, the law enforcement branch can be routinely corrupted.
Not all that long ago Lula himself had been banned from running because of his own corruption convictions. Then, in 2021, a Left-wing Supreme Court judge annulled his corruption convictions and allowed him to run again. After he ran and won, the Brazilian police formally accused former President Bolsonaro and his aides of an alleged 2022 coup attempt. That happened just last week.
Bolsonaro has said he would fight the case. Meanwhile, Lula is openly consolidating power in the executive branch in wildly anti-democratic ways. But he has been praised by many members of the media as an anti-authoritarian politician. Yet the reality is that Lula has been a close ally of Venezuela&#8217;s Nicolas Maduro, who&#8217;s been a close ally of the Cuban regime. In fact, it&#8217;s rare to find some sort of authoritarian regime that Lula doesn&#8217;t like. From China to Nicaragua, from Iran to Russia, he has cozied up to authoritarians everywhere. But because he&#8217;s a Left-wing authoritarian, the perception is that he&#8217;s not really an authoritarian, even if he engages in widespread censorship.
This is what happens when democratic republics delegate the power to check political opposition to a supposedly objective, nonpartisan branch of government. It&#8217;s not real. It doesn&#8217;t work. Administrative states do not work for precisely this reason because they&#8217;re never dispassionate, ever.
It&#8217;s true in a wide variety of countries, from South Korea to Israel to Hungary to Brazil.
It&#8217;s always a problem.
Again, all of this breakdown is happening because so many people across so many Westernized countries have decided they no longer trust the mechanisms of checks and balances of the democratic republic and, instead, are going to delegate all power to these impartial institutions.
Then, those institutions break down.
And then, the entire country starts to break down.

South Korean Lawmakers Overturn President’s Declaration Of Martial Law

WTF Just Happened In South Korea?

Brazil

Democratic Party

Impeachment

Martial Law

Parliament

prosecutors

South Korea

250 years ago today, future president John Adams declared this was “one of the happiest Days of” his life. As he <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/01-02-02-0004-0006" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recorded in his journal:</a>
<blockquote>&#8220;This was one of the happiest Days of my Life. In Congress We had generous, noble Sentiments, and manly Eloquence. This Day convinced me that America will support the Massachusetts or perish with her.&#8221;</blockquote>
Why so happy? Because the First Continental Congress, meeting in Philadelphia and composed of respected Virginians like George Washington and Patrick Henry and Massachusetts natives Sam and John Adams, had endorsed the <a href="https://www.masshist.org/database/viewer.php?item_id=696&amp;img_step=1&amp;pid=2&amp;mode=transcript#page1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Suffolk Resolves</a>, a series of 19 resolutions written by defiant colonists from Boston’s surrounding counties.
Why was this so monumental?
In one sense, the Suffolk Resolves were not unique. Other localities throughout the colonies issued similar statements of resistance. American colonists had long governed themselves through their own institutions, assemblies, and charters. They resented Britain’s creeping interference and were preparing, as they would in the Declaration of Independence, to present to a “candid world” the principles of a new nation. And yet the Resolves stand out as a refined version of widespread conversations that had been occurring in the colonies about political principles and was an intellectual precursor to the Declaration.
The Declaration itself encapsulates the principles most central to the American national character. It did not spring suddenly from the singular pen of Thomas Jefferson. As <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Jefferson/98-01-02-5212" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jefferson himself wrote</a>, it was “an expression of the [A]merican mind,” and its “authority rests then on the harmonising sentiments of the day.” In voting to draft, finalize, and pass the Declaration, participants in various committees and associations, like the Committee of Five and the Continental Congress, had to come to an agreement. All told, the members of the conventions, committees, Congress, and the colonies achieved a consensus in “more than fifty separate instances at a minimum” as Dr. Danielle Allen demonstrates in &#8220;Our Declaration.&#8221;
Such a consensus was possible because, prior to the Declaration’s issuance, the American people had deliberated and united around a set of moral and political maxims. They did so in and through church pews, pulpits, and pamphlets. In a 1638 sermon, Reverend Thomas Hooker, who founded the colony of Connecticut, declared that “<a href="https://connecticuthistory.org/the-free-consent-of-the-people-thomas-hooker-and-the-fundamental-orders/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">the foundation of authority is laid, firstly, in the free consent of the people</a>.”
Religious institutions were gathering places for the 70-80 percent of colonists who attended service on a regular basis, according to &#8220;We Still Hold These Truths&#8221; by Dr. Matthew Spalding. Likewise, Thomas Paine’s &#8220;Common Sense,&#8221; published in the early months of 1776, sold approximately 500,000 copies when the population was just four million.
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Public documents were a means of disseminating and discussing the ideas America would be dedicated to upholding. The Suffolk Resolves made clear that the actions of the British were not mere violations of man-made laws. Reaching back to first principles, Americans contended that infringements on the right of representation and self-government were, “gross Infractions of those Rights to which we are justly entitled by the Laws of Nature, the British Constitution, and the Charter of the Province.” Violations by the British of the laws of nature were the ultimate grounds for separation.
Natural laws are not about the physical laws of the universe, like gravity, but the moral laws that human beings do not author and cannot themselves change. For example, murder is and has always been wrong, despite it occurring in all human societies, and it would remain immoral even if Congress passed a law to make it legal.
Human beings have inherent equal dignity, a principle that is interwoven through America’s documents leading up to the Revolution and is resoundingly affirmed in the Declaration of Independence. Nine of the early state constitutions contained expressions of human equality in some form, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-American-Founding-Conditions/dp/1316506037/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2H20U7BN7TC4J&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6qtc2rDHt-eUAnvUNOWGcHoydmfDDWYvpVCEfsosvd0EIwzTqv-kOfaQ2wvE-5-nivfxK_gCKiOydGmsvehF9Axk0jevsI92E_SVXYrSLJUYNZe3XhWYq_STdhR2rS39tf6XIAg2YjNKFwciDl3hhwOw1EZz9fff6X07sToEIl3o4L-5HKnbL19VO7vzSMmJwDDkHKzseLZQyv7OS9e7us9WCCeQH8xqMxjINBMzx6g.iz2h0xgI27hDriV1LLtgh5AlgL1thYUFaB6cToR16ug&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+political+theory+of+the+american+founding&amp;qid=1717520575&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=the+political+theory+of+the+american+founding%2Cstripbooks%2C100&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">founding scholar Dr. Thomas West</a> notes.
The <a href="https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/virginia-declaration-of-rights" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Virginia Declaration of Rights</a>, adopted in June 1776, states that, “all men are by nature equally free and independent and have certain inherent rights.” And the Declaration of Independence memorialized this principle with the phrase, “all men are created equal.”
Men is a substitute for all human beings, regardless of sex or social status. As John Adams <a href="https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/04-10-02-0007-0007" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote, equality</a>:
<blockquote>&#8220;It really means little more than that We are all of the same Species: made by the same God: possessed of Minds and Bodies alike in Essence… All Men are Men and not Beasts…The Equality of Nature is a moral Equality only: an Equality of Rights and Obligations; nothing more.&#8221;</blockquote>
All species have their defining characteristics. Most essential to humanity is our capacity to reason and engage in self-government, not our physical features, like skin tone or size. Through reason, we can discern right from wrong rather than act on mere instinct. And human beings are capable of controlling their impulses, passions, and desires.
Such capacities mean it is unjust for people to rule over one another absent their consent. England had repeatedly violated those principles by dismissing elected colonial assemblies, rejecting colonial laws, and imposing their own without obtaining the consent of the colonists. Thousands of miles away, Parliament believed it could uphold the common good and represent Americans as subjects. But Americans had formed themselves into a new kind of people, united around the principles of human equality and consent of the governed, and the character of that people rebelled against being relegated to an inferior status.
Sustaining that character requires ongoing work. Each generation of Americans has to decide to recommit itself to the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and it is remarkable that we have the opportunity to do so. We can choose to govern ourselves now, both as individuals and as a nation, if we maintain the principled consensus of our past.
While today marks the anniversary of the Suffolk Resolves, we are rapidly approaching an even more crucial anniversary: the 250th of the Declaration of Independence. Will we resolve on that day to continue in the work we began on July 4, 1776, or will we depart from the intellectual heritage that made possible our ongoing experiment in self-government?
* * *
Brenda Hafera is the Assistant Director and Senior Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Simon Center for American Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

john-adams-our-second-president

Why John Adams Called September 17 One Of ‘The Happiest Days’ Of His Life

Why John Adams Called September 17 One Of 'The Happiest Days' Of His Life

American Revolution

Great Britain

John Adams

Massachusetts

Woke ideology is everywhere. Over the past thirty years, it has captured many American institutions.
Like many people, I once assumed that young Americans who dabbled in a little political correctness at college would soon grow out of it when they left.
I was wrong. Rather than change when they entered the world of work, they changed the workplace. Today there is hardly an HR department in corporate America that is not committed to promoting Diversity, Equity &amp; Inclusion (DEI).
A generation ago, corporate America did not know what a preferred pronoun was. Today you cannot apply for a job without declaring yours.
DEI means that Martin Luther King’s vision of a color blind meritocracy is in danger of slipping away. Obama’s election to the White House was supposed to herald a post-racial America. America today feels like it is increasingly re-racialized.
If you had told me at the time of the Iraq war that American students would be protesting in support of Hamas in 2024, I would not have believed you. So prevalent are the extreme Left on campus it’s seldom considered newsworthy today.
Conservative America needs to launch a concerted effort to fight back. It is not enough to hope that Congress passes legislation. I’m done hoping my governor gets around to issuing an Executive Order to defeat DEI.
We need to take action ourselves by ensuring our own families are immunized against the woke mind-virus.
Born in Britain and raised in Uganda, I came to America by choice. Shocked at how social media and progressive professors often teach young Americans to think the worst of their country, I did not want my young daughter to grow up seeing things that way.
So, I started to tell my daughter what I felt she needed to know about her new home.
America, I explained, was founded in liberty. Sure, I joked, the first Americans might have beaten Brits like us at Yorktown, but the important thing is that liberty that won. 
Returning from a trip to Washington DC, we talked about why the US Constitution was one of the best systems of government in the world. The Founders, we discussed, borrowed from both the English and the Roman tradition (There’s a reason the Senate is called the Senate). 
America might be a superpower, I wanted her to understand, but America has for the most part used that strength wisely. The United States has not built an empire, but used her might to set other people free.
Talking in our kitchen one day, I pointed at all the everyday objects around us – light bulbs, microwaves, a passing airplane – to illustrate that Americans are remarkably inventive.
Discussing <a href="https://tourosynagogue.org/history/george-washington-letter/washington-seixas-letters/">George Washington’s letter</a> to the congregation at Touro synagogue one evening, I explained that Jewish and Christian beliefs are the key to understanding Americans’ strong sense of individualism.
As we celebrated our first Thanksgiving, I told her it was a chance for every American to feel gratitude for being here, whether your ancestors arrived at the end of the last ice age, or like our family, a few months earlier.
No matter how carefully we raise our children, it is inevitable that as they grow up they will be exposed to the “woke” mind virus. Teaching them these basic truths about America, I believe, will give them an antidote against it.
When our children come across progressive professors, or leftist ideas on social media, or through friends of friends, knowing the truth about their country will prove important.
If we do not teach our families these truths about America, TikTok and progressive professors will fill the void.
That’s why I decided to take these six lessons and turn it into an illustrated children’s story book, “<a href="http://meganandmiles.com.">What Makes America Special</a>.” I want every child in the country to be able to draw from the lessons I taught my daughter about our new home.
We all take for granted the things we are familiar with. It is human nature to overlook what we have always known. So take it from me as an immigrant when I tell you that this is an extraordinary country.
America’s success is not a question of having lots of natural resources. The American achievement cannot be attributed to geography or the climate. This country is exceptional not because the laws of physics are any different over here.
The United States has flourished because of decisions made in a courthouse in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787, which hardwired freedom into the DNA of the young Republic. So long as America stays true to that tradition, each generation of Americans will bequeath an even greater country.
It is essential we pass on knowledge of that tradition to the next generation.
* * *
Douglas Carswell is the President &amp; CEO of the <a href="https://mspolicy.org/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mississippi Center for Public Policy</a>. He was previously a Member of the British Parliament.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

First Light at the Capitol and Washington Monument

The Best Antidote To Wokeness Is Knowing The Truth About This Country

Education

Readers Pass

Last July 4th seemed like the least patriotic birthday America has ever had. In many cities, parades were dismal or non-existent, fireworks were banned, and the American flag was hard to find. 
Once the world’s most powerful symbol of triumph, it has been torn down by Americans who believe it is instead a bigoted reminder of a hateful history. With the immense power that 2024 holds on the future of this national divide, it is imperative to remind each American citizen why the colors of our flag are still worth celebrating.
America has defined freedom for 248 years. She has fought against oppression and regulation, against tyranny and evil. She has defended the liberties of speech and religion, the gifts of open trade and innovation, the rights of life and innocence, and the ability to not only pursue happiness, but to define it for oneself. America has sent her own men to fight for not only the freedom of her citizens, but also for that of strangers.
Freedom is the American identity. It is the pride in this identity which wraps itself in another word: Patriotism. This spirit has endured every challenge of our nation’s lifetime. Patriotism fortifies delicate liberty. “A republic, if you can keep it;” her strength must be ceaselessly reinforced.
But patriotism, it seems, has gone out of style. In its place has emerged a form of tyranny disguised in a quintessentially American shade of blue. A record low number of Americans are proud to be American.
The so-called ‘fight for freedom’ has begun to rot its own definition.
The misuse of these words is changing our national identity. A fight for freedom is not a fight for rights, as the Left has decided to define it. Many aspects of the American life are freedoms, not rights. Education is a freedom, not a right. The ability to choose which doctor to go to is a freedom, not a right. When the government tries to make something a right, it steals whatever freedom it began with. Forcing businesses to hire people based on their skin color takes away the mechanisms which allow them to thrive and grow. No one has a right to be hired. Rather, everyone has the freedom to seek out employment and do whatever is so required to be a desirable employee. The excellence of America lies where these freedoms meet. The freedom to pursue excellence is what it means to be an American.
To risk true freedom in an effort to establish the rights of some is a step proven dangerous by history. French philosopher and judge Montesquieu declared that “the liberty of one citizen is of greater importance to the public than the ease or prosperity of another.”
If we preserve special treatment for some, we take it away from others. Montesquieu reminds us that the only true freedom comes from liberty. No one has a right to success or special privilege, but true freedom provides everyone with the chance to try. Patriotism has always been the glue of America, and it still comes in all three colors. Neither red, nor white, nor blue is more important than the others. Together, they preserve freedom. Divided, they cannot stand. Today, our flag is still flying. That is enough to invoke celebration and pride. Every casket it has ever draped demands as much.
America is the only country in the world to which people choose to move. They risk their lives and leave their families in a bid to buy into the world’s greatest pursuit of liberty. To live as an American is to live with the freedom to become anything. That is a freedom worth celebrating.
For all the talk about privilege in this country — white privilege, male privilege, hetero-privilege — let us not forget that being an American is the greatest privilege of all.
* * *
Elsie Halvorsen is a recent graduate of Harvard College, class of 2024.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Usa Celebration With Hands Holding Sparklers And American Flag At Sunset With Fireworks

The Greatest Privilege Of All

4th of July

Bill of Rights

White Privilege

Some July 4th traditions endure better than others. We’ll always have fireworks, parades, and family picnics, it seems. But there was also a time when presidents offered eloquent speeches on America’s birthday — ones aimed at fostering unity and gratitude. And who can deny we could use more of that in such fractious times?
Sure, few of us would clamor for another presidential speech. But in an age where we’re losing a sense of who we are and the significance of our heritage, it’s a tradition worth renewing, especially with our 250th anniversary on the horizon.
<a href="https://www.vindicatingthefounders.com/library/electric-cord-speech.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Both Abraham Lincoln</a> and <a href="https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-celebration-the-150th-anniversary-the-declaration-independence-philadelphia" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Calvin Coolidge delivered</a> particularly notable July 4th speeches. In his opening, Coolidge noted that, “It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July.” The event, of course, was the birth of a new nation.
It’s all too easy to forget the remarkableness of the deeds done, the selflessness of the risks taken, and the magnitude of the accomplishments of our Founding Fathers. General George Washington defeated the most formidable military in the world. The Constitution was the “miracle of Philadelphia,” and remains the oldest written constitution in existence. Such undertakings were assumed for the benefit of not only those first Americans, but their posterity.
The issuance of the Declaration of Independence was still more noteworthy. As Coolidge explained, “It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history.” The Declaration put forth the revolutionary idea that no human being is born to rule over others absent their consent. That idea makes each American the fortunate inheritor of a unique trust: a nation committed to self-government.
<div id="attachment_759175" style="width: 748px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-759175" class="size-large wp-image-759175" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-104560161-738x576.jpg" alt="Grace Coolidge (1879-1957), First Lady of the United States, United States President Calvin Coolidge (1872-1933), the wife of Coolidge's friend Frank Stearns, and C. Bascom Slemp (1870-1943), Secretary to the President, sitting in their box at the sixth game of the World Series in Washington, D.C., USA, circa 1925. Coolidge and Slemp are pictured waving their hats, cheering on their team, from the box, draped in a United States flag. (Photo by FPG/Getty Images)" width="738" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-104560161-738x576.jpg 738w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-104560161-300x234.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-104560161-768x599.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/07/GettyImages-104560161.jpg 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 738px) 100vw, 738px" />FPG/Getty Images</div>
That trust establishes a connective chain of gratitude and obligation for the American people today. The Founding generation launched the experiment. The current generation has the task of continuing it by governing themselves, assuming their duties and respecting the rights of others, in equal measure. Without an appreciation of their heritage, we can’t expect them to remain galvanized to maintain a life of freedom for their children.
Such reflections serve to inspire, just as they humble. Contemporary Americans are the posterity, but not the singular source, of America’s material blessings. From the Founding to Lincoln’s time, America had grown in size, population, and wealth. It was the “iron men” who fought for the principles of America, who enabled the “degree of prosperity that we now enjoy.” The Founders established a commercial republic, respectful of property rights and disdainful of class distinctions, that unleashed American ingenuity, entrepreneurship, and mobility.
Both Lincoln and Coolidge believed such enterprise could ultimately be traced to the Declaration of Independence. It is the principle of human equality that eliminates fixed social status and gives individuals the right to eat the bread that their own hands earn, <a href="https://mason.gmu.edu/~zschrag/hist120spring05/lincoln_ottawa.htm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">as Lincoln explained</a>.
In turn, Coolidge contended that, “The things of the spirit come first.” He warned that, unless Americans cling to the Declaration, “all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren scepter in our grasp.” Material pursuits, when not bound by eternal and immutable principles, become destructive. Self-reliance degrades to autonomy, greed, and consumerism. Profound abundance, absent the transcendent and sacrificial, ushers in a crisis of purpose and meaning. Coolidge’s words portend our time.
Fortunately, Coolidge also provided a path forward. Examinations of the past serve to underscore the unifying work that went into the Declaration and offer hope for renewed consensus. The Declaration was not an exegesis of privileged, select statesmen but “the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies.”
For example, the principle of equality was present in nine of the early state constitutions, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Political-Theory-American-Founding-Conditions/dp/1316506037/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2H20U7BN7TC4J&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.6qtc2rDHt-eUAnvUNOWGcHoydmfDDWYvpVCEfsosvd0EIwzTqv-kOfaQ2wvE-5-nivfxK_gCKiOydGmsvehF9Axk0jevsI92E_SVXYrSLJUYNZe3XhWYq_STdhR2rS39tf6XIAg2YjNKFwciDl3hhwOw1EZz9fff6X07sToEIl3o4L-5HKnbL19VO7vzSMmJwDDkHKzseLZQyv7OS9e7us9WCCeQH8xqMxjINBMzx6g.iz2h0xgI27hDriV1LLtgh5AlgL1thYUFaB6cToR16ug&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=the+political+theory+of+the+american+founding&amp;qid=1717520575&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=the+political+theory+of+the+american+founding%2Cstripbooks%2C100&amp;sr=1-1" target="_blank" rel="noopener">according to Founding scholar Dr. Thomas West</a>. Ideas about inherent natural rights and equality were put forth in the Virginia Declaration of Rights, penned by George Mason, prior to the Declaration of Independence. The recognition that “all men are created equal” was made accessible by the Judeo-Christian tenet that all are equal in the eyes of God. And influential religious leaders like Rev. Thomas Hooker preached to the approximately <a href="https://www.amazon.com/STILL-HOLD-THESE-TRUTHS-Rediscovering/dp/1935191926" target="_blank" rel="noopener">70-80% of colonial Americans</a> who attended church that, <a href="https://connecticuthistory.org/the-free-consent-of-the-people-thomas-hooker-and-the-fundamental-orders/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">“The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.”</a>
Both Coolidge and Lincoln believed American unity resides in the Declaration. For his part, Lincoln believed that the principle “all men are created equal” establishes a common moral sentiment. It is the right of every American to “claim it as though they were blood of the blood, and flesh of the flesh of the men who wrote that Declaration.” For so we are.
That is the electric cord in that Declaration that links the hearts of patriotic and liberty-loving men together, that will link those patriotic hearts as long as the love of freedom exists in the minds of men throughout the world.
It is fidelity to a set of principles, rather than exclusive religions or ethnicities, that defines Americans.
Matching Lincoln, Coolidge <a href="https://coolidgefoundation.org/events/virtual-event-inspiration-of-the-declaration/#:~:text=In%20the%20speech%2C%20titled%20%E2%80%9CThe,created%20equal%2C%20that%20is%20final." target="_blank" rel="noopener">contended</a> that:
<blockquote>About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful … 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.</blockquote>
Americans can find contentment, solitude, and pride in the resilient principles of the Declaration of Independence and the connectivity they offer.
In Fourth of Julys gone by, Abraham Lincoln and Calvin Coolidge delivered two speeches worthy of Americans’ lasting consideration. Who will be the next statesman to do so? It may be some time, as such genius is difficult to match. Yet perhaps it is not so essential that presidents today echo their masterful words. What matters most is that we Americans believe them ourselves.
* * *
Brenda M. Hafera is the Assistant Director and Senior Policy Analyst at The Heritage Foundation&#8217;s Simon Center for American Studies.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

American Flags in Foreground with the White House in the Background

Claiming Our July 4th Birthright

Abraham Lincoln

Calvin Coolidge

Presidency

The results of our pornography-drenched society are in. And they’re hideous.
Pornography has disconnected men from women. It has led to less mating – after all, why date when you can get the dopamine hit of seeing bodies in various combinations at the touch of a button – and serious, society-wide sexual dysfunction (certain studies now claim that up to 30% of young men now suffer from erectile dysfunction). It has emptied wallets and souls. The average age of first pornography viewing for males is now 12. Some 73% of teens aged 13-17 have watched pornography. The brain can respond to pornography and its attendant dopamine hits much like a drug. And just like a drug, for some, higher doses may be necessary in order to achieve the original effect.
In the last few years, the question of pornography has reared its seamy head. The availability and regulation of pornography has cut across political lines: libertarians see pornography as a harmless good, a simple and disposable product that harms no one; traditional conservatives see pornography as a damaging and soul-crushing symptom of hedonistic individualism; radical leftists see pornography as a form of female empowerment, with women “finally” controlling their own sexuality; traditional liberals see pornography as exploitation of women, a form of patriarchal domination.
Oddly enough, our pornographic society is a sex-free, relationship-free society. We date less. We get married later, if at all. We have fewer children, if any. We do not form the little platoons of society – the family – necessary for its preservation. Not all of that is pornography, of course. But the utter pervasiveness of pornography isn’t a minor factor, either.
All of this was foreseeable. In 2005, at the age of 21, I wrote a book titled &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Porn-Generation-Social-Liberalism-Corrupting/dp/0895260166/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.FgmUDcYWQ-k9ZlvIuO-Vp3mAtqpf0gCS-q703gqFcwFQ2Iqcmi1934jgWkQvCHJ0Ec69uFf52e4Vfem5BAvl9TkHiv4XatNRmq4rAQwWqDtu2TRY3A5N5iQE59JHh7PPw4NDrnQggqkQBVXpN_iOVN16XfkAz7DmtXoXt8HK2M9XkWabmmO17A17Mi-ETB4ykgMqqsVq3v6P9cnWEfEQfKVKlOXR6MJfxpTMrYdgXMwL8elRv7z-IFFFOhC7iD31mgccTm-5cM-aUdwIg1FY_Iq4-UUgK4yZOTdL8JktDsI.4dEtzxnT8g1s-SbFTXZpYZzUZIKOGtzotAimZzBm848&amp;qid=1717512451&amp;sr=1-18" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Porn Generation</a>&#8221; – a book that was widely seen by many on both Right and Left as alarmist and prudish. That descriptor – prudish – was, at the time, one of the worst slurs you could toss at someone. It meant that you were repressed, that you were a Bible thumper. That you were – gasp! – judgmental. In the book, I wrote that pornography had become absolutely mainstream, from music to television to movies to education.
That was before the era of Kim Kardashian.
Here is what I wrote:
<blockquote>Our culture has bred hollow young men, obsessed with self-gratification. Young women are told to act like sex objects – and enjoy it…Society told the porn generation that final moral authority rests inside each of us – and in our vanity, we listened. The mainstream acceptance of pornography has become a social fact….In the absence of community-promoted traditional standards, subjectivism reigns. Nothing is expected of anyone; everyone may make his own rules about what is best. The “live and let live” societal model is a recipe for societal disaster.</blockquote>
To put it mildly, I was right.
Our society has begun to figure out that the sexual mores of a morally relativistic society are destructive – that age-old ideas about monogamy and marriage and the value of heterosexual relationships, cultivated over the course of millennia, might be more valuable than the latest slogan about the joys of licentiousness. Pornography’s obvious vacuity and the damage coincident with its ubiquity is a reminder that consent is not, in fact, the highest moral value: that just because people choose to engage in an activity does not make that activity morally good or acceptable. There can be pragmatic arguments over the nature of government power necessary to reverse the pornification of our society – do we have to delegate too much power to the government in order to squash the problem? Ought it be solved at the level of social censure rather than regulation? – but there can be no question that consent alone does not morally justify pornography. In the words of British legal theorist James Fitzjames Stephen, “It is one thing&#8230;to tolerate vice so long as it is inoffensive, and quite another to give it a legal right not only to exist, but to assert itself in the face of the world as an ‘experiment in living’ as good as another, and entitled to the same protection from law.”
<h4><a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-ben-shapiro-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show</a></h4>
The true answer to the question of pornography has been known all along: robust social institutions, as well as local regulations that make it difficult to create and obtain. We have a duty to our children to give them a society free of the scourge of pornography and its societal externalities. The Founders knew that, which is why they never considered pornography a protected class of free speech under the First Amendment. They would have scoffed at the very idea.
In &#8220;Porn Generation&#8221; I made a series of recommendations – again, recommendations snorted at, up until the point every American child had access to smut on their cell phones. Those recommendations included better parenting, of course; more church adherence; school vouchers; boycotts against products promoting social radicalism (see, e.g., Bud Light); governmental censorship where possible; cutting off funding to universities that promote obscenity. If any of them had been pursued in 2005, our society would be markedly better off in 2024.
They weren’t. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pursue them now. Pornography is merely a symptom of a broader underlying ill: a society that promotes libertinism as liberty, ignoring that a meaningful life is about liberty within a rubric of morality and responsibility. Any society that promotes libertinism rather than traditional liberty is doomed to the scrap heap.

Ben-Article-PAID

Why Pornography Matters

Culture

Freedom of Speech

Marriage

Pornography

Social Media

This is a portion of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pdm3riVNJ4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">speech</a> delivered by <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/show/the-michael-knowles-show" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Michael Knowles</a> at CPAC on Thursday, February 22, 2024. 
America is experiencing an identity crisis. I think everyone can agree, we no longer know who we are.
Lots of little errors have led to our present identity crisis — the most obvious being that we no longer have functional borders. Just as a house without walls is not a house, a nation without borders is not a nation. Over the past three years, Joe Biden has invited almost six million foreigners into our country illegally. At least three-and-a-half million were apprehended and intentionally released into the country. Another two million or more “gotaways” were never even apprehended. They all crossed our southern border with the help of criminal cartels.
This Democrat-led invasion is the largest human trafficking operation in history. The vast majority of Americans know this is wrong. The vast majority of Americans want it to come to an end. But we are told we must tolerate the destruction of our borders and the invasion of our country because we are “a nation of immigrants.”
That slogan reminds me of President Reagan’s <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIIs5L5xt6A" target="_blank" rel="noopener">famous observation</a> that “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they&#8217;re ignorant; it&#8217;s just that they know so much that isn&#8217;t so.” As a matter of history, we are not in fact a “nation of immigrants.” Neither that phrase nor that sentiment appears anywhere in our founding documents; the phrase appears virtually nowhere at all until the mid-1960s — coincidentally, at precisely the moment that Democrats first imposed on us a policy of mass migration because they believed, as they believe today, that doing so would give them a permanent electoral majority.
Even so, we are told, we must tolerate this cynical political trick because “diversity is our strength.” Once again, historically speaking, that claim is rather strange. It doesn’t come from the Founding era. It didn’t even crop up in the 1960s. That particular phrase was not coined until 1992, when Vice President Dan Quayle told it to a reporter in Japan.
Now, I like Dan Quayle as much as the next guy. But we’re not talking about Washington or Lincoln here. The idle musings of George H. W. Bush’s vice president are not quite Moses delivering the law from Mount Sinai. Wise statesmen and philosophers — anyone with a modicum of common sense, really — have always understood that strength lies not in diversity but in unity. We are not the Divided States of America. At least we’re not supposed to be. We’re the United States of America. When an enemy attacks us, we don’t endeavor to stand divided. We stand united. “E pluribus unum.” As Ben Franklin warned all the way back in 1754, we must put aside our divisions and come together as one, or else we will die.
For most of our history, America kept immigration in check. We placed strict limits on it. Not because we don’t like immigrants — we like them very much. Some of our best friends and ancestors have been immigrants. But we had always understood, as all wise statesmen have understood, that a country with an unlimited influx of unassimilated foreign people becomes unstable and risks losing its very identity, without which no nation can be any good to anyone.
In America’s earliest days, Governor John Winthrop called on us to be, not a boarding house but “a city upon a hill” — a “model of Christian charity” for all the other nations of the earth to learn from and emulate.
This gets to the very heart of our national identity crisis. America was founded to be “a model of Christian charity.” From the moment that our earliest ancestors boarded the Mayflower — which, by the way, is the name of an excellent new cigar company, <a href="https://mayflowercigars.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Mayflower Cigars,</a> highly recommended — before the Pilgrims ever stepped foot onto Plymouth Rock, America was founded to be a nation with its eyes on Heaven.
Francis Scott Key put it perfectly in the fourth verse of our national anthem:
<blockquote>O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand 
⁠Between their lov&#8217;d home and the war&#8217;s desolation! 
Blest with vict&#8217;ry and peace may the Heav&#8217;n rescued land, 
⁠Praise the Power that hath made and preserv&#8217;d us a nation! 
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, 
And this be our motto — “In God is our trust.”</blockquote>
Every American with a penny to his name knows that phrase. It’s inscribed on our currency. All of our great statesmen have believed it. Yet today the liberals want us to believe that America was founded as a secular nation. An atheist nation. They tell us America was founded on a firm separation of church and state. Once again, the problem is not so much ignorance as liberals knowing so much that isn’t so. There is no such thing as a total separation of church and state. There never has been, and there never can be. Because states make laws, and laws come from morals, and morals come from religion. Religion is simply unavoidable — for all states at all times.
That fact has been especially clear in America, where we have long been the most religious of any Western nation. Ask the liberals to identify the “separation of church and state” in our law. You’ll wait a long time — because they won’t find it. If they really look closely, they’ll find that that phrase appears once in a private letter, contradicted not only by the public statements of most of our Founding Fathers but also by the Federalist Papers, which cite God by name; by the Constitution, which protected the churches established by the states; and by the Declaration of Independence, which grounds our whole country on the fact that “we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights.”
President John Adams credited our very national independence to “the general principles of Christianity.” This is why Adams famously declared that “our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” His observation should give us pause because it isn’t just some happy slogan, as some people today treat it. Quite the opposite, actually. It’s a warning. If our Constitution is made only for a moral and religious people, then when the people cease to be religious, the Constitution will cease to function. That fact we see all around us today.
The decline in religiosity lies at the heart of our national identity crisis — not because of what men have said but because of who God is. When Moses at the Burning Bush asked God what he should call him, God responded, “I AM THAT I AM.” God is Being. A people that grounds its identity in God will know who and what it is; a people that rejects God, a wise priest once observed, will only be left with the pathetic question, “Who am I?”

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