Imagine a world where there is little free speech, or if there is free speech, it is tightly regulated. A world where your property can be appropriated on the whim of a local official, where troops from a country thousands of miles away could occupy your towns and villages.
A world where you are mandated to worship in just one state church. And if you practice any other religion, it could get you punished, even bring about your death.
A world where it is perfectly legal for the officers of that occupying army to move into your house, uninvited, eat your food, sleep in your bed, or your child’s — and stay as long as they want to; just because they have a scrap of paper which says they can do so.
A world where duly elected legislatures and judges are swept from office at the snap of a finger. Aptly named laws such as the Intolerable Acts, the Quartering Acts and the Coercive Acts are imposed on you and your family and friends, without any previous wrongdoings on your part.
A world where you can be charged, fined — and imprisoned without a lawyer, or a trial.
A world where your basic rights to freedom are abandoned, and it is someone else's decision whether you live or you die. A world with no habeas corpus.
Welcome to the Thirteen Colonies, circa 1775.
This was the grim reality of America, under British rule, before there was an America.
These colonists were fighting for their very lives. So how did they respond?
In their first major act of rebellion following the passage of the Intolerable Acts, the Boston Tea Party, not a single soul was killed, wounded, or even injured.
The Sons of Liberty went to great lengths to insure the safety of everyone, even the crews of the British ship.
The only damage done was to the tea itself which was the property of the state monopoly, The British East India Company.
Not even the ships that the Americans boarded were damaged.
So tell me, if these occupiers and rioters are the "inheritors" of the American Revolution, as some of the historically challenged cable TV jockeys (who think the Whiskey Rebellion is the name of a cocktail) have said, implying that the actions of Antifa are similar, how do they measure up?
In a word — poorly.
The comparison is ridiculous. Laughably stupid. Even possibly braindead.
Definitely dangerous.
These teleprompter people clearly slept through their remedial history classes in high school, so let’s give them a quick refresher. As Thomas Jefferson, the father of the Declaration of Independence said, "Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them."
The root problem of today’s culture is that public education is and has been an abject failure. Neither the cable hosts nor the rioters know what it means to build a society through peaceful means.
They are deconstructionists, plain and simple.
The great David McCullough said, "We are now into our third generation of historically illiterate Americans."
Indeed.
The leaders of the American Revolution were men of letters.
The children of Antifa are brats of obscenities.
The American Revolution was built on strong, Enlightenment-based ideas. Man is good. The individual is good. Antifa builds its riots on meaningless platitudes, gratuitous violence, and outright fantasies like the "defund the police" calls we’ve heard this week.
Man is bad, especially certain individual types.
Despite days of this remarkably shortsighted call being repeated in newsrooms nationwide, we have yet to hear just what will replace the police if they’re defunded.
Anarchy, one would presume.
I am reminded of another time in our nation's history (the 1960s) when law enforcement was under assault and bumper stickers began appearing, "If You Don’t Like Cops, The Next Time You Are In Trouble, Call A Hippie."
Instead, you see the sorry spectacle of dimwitted government bureaucrats engaging in silly, puerile photo ops, attempting to placate the angry mobs. But as James Madison observed, "It is a principle incorporated into the settled policy of America, that as peace is better than war, war is better than tribute." The tribute of Nancy Pelosi getting on her knees will not cut it with the Stalins running the Gulag originally named CHAZ (Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone); now known as CHOP (Capitol Hill Organized Protest).
Reform police? Absolutely. Eliminate limited immunity? Definitely. Better training to reduce tensions? You bet. More diversity on police forces? Certainly. But defund police forces and chaos will ensue in a matter of minutes.
Our Founders would weep if they saw journalists getting fired for disagreeing with these so-called "revolutionaries." They fought to safeguard that the rights of free speech and expression were guaranteed to all Americans. These hate-filled ruffians roaming the streets today would like nothing more than Stalin-style thought control where dissenters are "cancelled" in gulags.
Suggesting anything otherwise is willful ignorance at best, abetting thuggery at worst.
The woke cancel culture of today would have you believe that much of what our Founders did was solely done to oppress slaves.
I know, I’ve seen the absurd 1619 Project.
They hate our country so much that they want every American achievement to be rewritten as an act of evil. How long will it be before the moon landing was somehow only about white supremacy? The Normandy Invasion was unwoke? Google has already erased Franklin Roosevelt and more rewriting and destruction of our history is coming.
As President Kennedy once said, "Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable."
Craig Shirley is a Ronald Reagan biographer and presidential historian. His books include, “Reagan’s Revolution, The Untold Story of the Campaign That Started it All,” “Rendezvous with Destiny, Ronald Reagan and the Campaign that Changed America,” "Reagan Rising: The Decisive Years," and “ Last Act: The Final Years and Emerging Legacy of Ronald Reagan." He is also the author of the New York Times bestseller, “December, 1941” and his new 2019 book, “Mary Ball Washington,” a definitive biography of George Washington’s mother. Shirley lectures frequently at the Reagan Library and the Reagan Ranch. He has been named the First Reagan Scholar at Eureka College, Ronald Reagan’s alma mater and will teach a class this fall at the University of Virginia on Reagan. He appears regularly on Newsmax TV, Fox News, MSNBC, and CNN. Read Craig Shirley's Reports — More Here.
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