250 Years Later Are We Still
the Republic They Created
Sgt. Dan McKnight / Bring Our Troops Home

Friends,
250 years. In the lifespan of nations, that’s pretty respectable.

This American experiment in self-government has had its highs and lows, trials and tribulations, but here we are: still strong, but dazed, and still united, but fraying.

What is it you and I can do?

I’d like to reflect back on another anniversary, and import some wisdom you won’t find in the current generation of leadership.

Calvin Coolidge, the once little-known Massachusetts governor who through rock-ribbed principle was nominated by party faithful over the establishment’s preference to be the Republican running mate in 1920, was subsequently lifted into the White House upon his predecessor’s sudden death.

On the 150th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, President Coolidge gave a speech on July 5, 1926 in Philadelphia which make people consider to be this man of few words’ finest speech.

He said that the reason we have these anniversary celebrations to begin with is not to change the country, but to remember why we started it in the first place:

“It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound.”

Coolidge put high ideals at the center of the American project, and the assertion that the God-given rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness stand above all the physical coercion of government:

“In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man—these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals.”

And how did we receive this successful revolution? Because the people demanded it:

“We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction.”

He warns us not to put the cart before the horse: good people can create functional government, but a government cannot make a good people. But because of that, we the people ultimately bear responsibility for maintaining our own freedom:

“Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.”

We need to take a long, hard look at ourselves.

In the past 25 years our nation has fought more than half a dozen wars in multiple regions of the world and expended trillions of dollars, and in half those conflicts we still failed to achieve the goals we set out at the beginning.

We elected a president who promised to stop these endless wars.

But now we’re trying desperately to pull ourselves out of a war with Iran, which was never declared.

In the past several months, I’ve filmed a short series called America 250, reflecting on momentous stories in American history from Bunker Hill, to Daniel Boone and Lewis and Clarke, to the boxing ring.

CLICK HERE TO WATCH AMERICA 250

Reflecting on 250 years of heroes, astounding feats, and miracles, it’s difficult to believe that our shared history can be surpassed. But I believe, in my heart of hearts, that our best days still lay ahead of us as long as we, the American people, can get our heads on straight.

That requires determination and an achievable goal, which is the Defend the Guard Act.

Written at the crossroads between federalism and America First, Defend the Guard will prohibit your state’s National Guard from deploying into undeclared wars.

It’s not too late to restore the U.S. Constitution and revive the old republic which Calvin Coolidge was serenading. All it takes is some hard work and ingenuity—we have that in spades, don’t we?

Happy Fourth of July, happy 250th birthday America, and God bless you.

Sgt. Dan McKnight
Chairman, Bring Our Troops Home