Liberty is a big discipline, one we need to ponder and re-commit to regularly.
J.E. Dyer, a retired Naval Intelligence officer, blogs as The Optimistic Conservative, July 4, 2025
It’s OK to declare independence from the schemes of men to keep us in subjection.
That is the statement that comes to me as we celebrate America’s Independence Day on 4 July 2025. We are 249 years on from the original declaration, published on this day in 1776. (Technically, the first publication was on 2 July 1776. But since becoming a nation, we have celebrated the latter day, 4 July, as our national day, and cheered in particular for the nation’s continued adherence through its iterations of statehood and Union to the original Declaration of Independence.)
I think, in fact, that it is not only OK but necessary to declare independence: not as a contingent aspiration – as if it matters only because a particular king or other sovereign is a bad one – but as a matter of principle.
Something is always lurking around the corner to enslave us anew. So it’s important to keep alive within us the principled ideas of personal liberty and national liberty. We need to be organized in thought, as much as in political arrangements, to stand up to whatever seeks to enslave us: to trouble our house from within, and undermine and destroy us.
A specific sequence of events from history has me pondering this today. Although this next point isn’t the sequence I have in mind, it’s a related one. It’s a point about the effect the United States had in fighting the bloodiest war in our history to end slavery.
However you slice it, slavery was the topic that the Constitution and the idea of “states’ rights” couldn’t adjust satisfactorily. It simply wasn’t enough to cede or prove points about one or the other. America just kept ending up with the morally untenable, government-enforced institution called slavery.
There was a moral urgency to ending slavery that has had no parallel in our history. The South seceded from the Union in order to keep the option of slavery as a perquisite of states’ rights, and the North could not contemplate accepting that. The Union must be restored – a clear-eyed proposition on the understanding that America divided would lose everything – and slavery had to be eradicated. The North must not be compelled to observe the limits on human equality imposed in the South.
Without claiming that the issue of slavery was paramount in a direct and uncomplicated way, we nevertheless still arrive at the proposition of my X thread. The biggest moral blow dealt by humanity to the institution of slavery was that of the U.S. Civil War. As America assumed a place of primacy in the ensuing century, it was America’s ending of slavery in blood and thunder that warned the world it was an institution of evil and darkness, one that could never again be seen with indifference and a shrug of the shoulders.
And it wasn’t. It took time, but the march of moral sentiment against it was relentless after the American conflict. Arrangements that are effectively slavery persist today in every part of the world – but there is no attempt at mounting a moral or even pragmatic defense of slavery. Its existence is now consigned to official repudiation, even where it is unofficially tolerated in the darkness, in euphemism and excuses, outside the abrasive light of day.
That point, however, serves to set up the one I’m really going for today. The point is this: just as America was struggling to deliver a blow against slavery as an institution, a successor idea for justifying slavery was being born. That successor idea was Marxism, as brokered by Fredrich Engels and others who followed him into a scheme for political organization, and usurpation of the respected function of civic government.
The various versions of Marxism became, in politics, a new theocratic package, a demand to wield the power of collective dictatorship over everyone in society in service of a concept for moral expiation.
There’s no question that robbing all the humans of their exercise of independent discretion and will is at issue. It’s slavery we’re talking about. Collectivism under any name – communism, socialism, fascism – is an enterprise to enslave human beings. Marxism is a theory that doesn’t admit of other premises and other conclusions. Its purpose is to have one of each: as a premise, the inevitable antithesis of justifying an interaction of labor and capital, and as the conclusion, the imperative solution of seizing control of everyone and extirpating that labor-capital antithesis.
As abolitionist sentiment was building in the United States after the Constitution was adopted, beginning its crescendo in the 1840s, just when Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels were writing the “moral” justification of a new excuse for slavery. In ingenious fashion, Engels and Marx didn’t call it that. The Communist Manifesto spoke instead of a proletariat “throwing off its chains,” and labeled “capitalists” in the industrial age as the slavers.
But collectivism is something that intends for almost everyone, except the privileged organizers, to end up in chains. An it is something no one chooses to be on the enchained end of. It has to be imposed by force, as the generic implementation of slavery must be. Collectivism is a form of slavery that goes beyond both the un-executable fancies of Jacobinism – which figures in our historical thinking as the counterpoint to American liberty – and the limits of chattel slavery, which never proposed to control what absolutely everyone was doing.
For now, I propose that each one think his own thoughts about why slavery was being opposed and ultimately eliminated by the world’s upcoming superpower, at the same time radicals in Europe were dreaming up a new order of slavery and fanning the flames of “revolution” to open windows for it.
The important point for me, on our national Independence Day, is that adhering to the principles of liberty for and among free men and women will never go out of style. It will never be superfluous to refresh our understanding of why we do it, or renew our commitment. The world is always lying in wait to enslave, again, as many as it can.
In New York City in 2025, the “mainstream” Democratic Party is apparently about to run a coercive collectivist, Zohran Mamdani, as its candidate for mayor. Mamdani has spoken, literally and unapologetically, of obtaining privately-owned residential property in order to do away with private ownership and turn the structures in question into socialized public housing. This was a key measure for the communists who took over Russia in the 1917 revolution.
Mamdani hasn’t acknowledged that the city can’t possibly buy up all the properties he has his eye on at market value. But if he implemented this scheme, he’d do it by driving property owners out through weaponizing government against them. The owners won’t be billionaires with the priciest real estate. It’s quite probable that nothing will happen to the top billionaires. Rather, the targets are the middle class, who can’t defend themselves against having their hard-earned 800 or 2,000 square feet in the city hijacked out from under them.
Building the dependent class of residents who would inhabit such socialized housing is about creating a new set of slaves. Gradually, everyone who can’t escape would be sucked into it. So in 2025, we are 162 years on from Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, and one of the two major political parties from 1863 is running a candidate who wants to bring back slavery: of everyone in NYC to collectivist agencies that would control how people are to live, as restrictively and arbitrarily as ever under previous methods of slavery.
It matters, and matters very much, whether we are paying attention to the purpose, benefits, and preservation of liberty. There is always a fresh attack coming against it.
Herewith, then, the annual TOC presentation of the Declaration of Independence.
Presenting the Draft of the Declaration of Independence to the Continental Congress in July 1776, John Trumbull (ca. 1817). (Image by John Trumbull – US Capitol, Public Domain, Wikipedia)
The Declaration of Independence of the United States of America
IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776.
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,
When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.–Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.
He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.
He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.
He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.
He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.
He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.
He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary powers.
He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.
He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harrass our people, and eat out their substance.
He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.
He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.
He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:
For Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies:
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.
He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.
He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.
He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.
In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our Brittish brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which, would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.
We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States; that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor.
— John Hancock
New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton
Tunes
The Civil War theme this year naturally suggests listening to the “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” in this case sung at Trump’s Inauguration in January 2025, moved in haste into the U.S. Capitol. The Naval Academy Glee Club did the honors, marching its way through a thick crowd in the Rotunda to take its place and raise a chorus of angels.
And the Army brings it home for us with our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Let freedom ring.
Feature image: Pixabay.
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