Amid Assaults on Life and Liberty, America in 2016 Can Take Heart from Its History of Resilience

When we ponder the fate of nations, it is best to think in terms of direction, not perfection. No nation has been or will be without its flaws, and this is but one reason why the Left’s fixation on flagellating the American past is so singularly unproductive. Name a country, and we can list its sins. We cannot, however, list virtues and contributions to the human condition that can match those of the United States.

Our nation’s founding documents articulated principles that have always whispered in our ears, convicting us when we fall short and imparting boldness and courage when we stand in the right. If our Constitution is our law, then our Declaration of Independence is, in Timothy Sandefur’s memorable phrase, its conscience.

The Declaration’s assertion that our rights come from God, not government, gives us the confidence to assert those rights and judge our government. Generations before have tried our leadership and found it wanting, and generations before have corrected it time and again to grant our nation — in Abraham Lincoln’s memorable phrase — a “new birth of freedom.”

We need such renewal today. Our direction is pointed away from perfection. In the past year, our political culture has demonstrated contempt for life, hostility to liberty, and a willingness to substitute the pursuit of happiness with the counterfeit of an entitlement- and grievance-based culture that encourages class warfare and racial strife.

Our courts, in league with ideological bureaucrats and progressive corporate bullies, are systematically dismantling our nation’s first liberty, religious liberty.

If the legal low point of America’s ongoing quest for liberty was the Supreme Court’s notorious Dred Scott decision, then, when it comes to life, our current Court is Dred Scotting itself into infamy. Decades ago, it literally made up constitutional “law” and fabricated entirely new legal standards to create a “right” of doctors to kill unborn children at a mother’s request. To protect that “right,” it tramples democracy still to this day.

This Independence Day comes on the heels of the Supreme Court’s worst abortion decision in decades, one that declared to the states and to the people that the right to an abortion was so precious in its eyes that it would even render the mothers themselves more vulnerable to abuse to secure quick, easy, and cheap access to the instruments of fetal death.

At the same time, our courts, in league with ideological bureaucrats and progressive corporate bullies, are systematically dismantling our nation’s first liberty, religious liberty. It is now mandatory in the state of Washington for pharmacists to dispense abortifacients, even if they want no part in killing a child. In California, Christian colleges face extinction in the face of legislative threats that they compromise the fundamentals of their faith or face ruinous financial penalties.

#share#The list could go on, but underlying and motivating the assaults on life and liberty is a distorted culture of rage and entitlement — one that dismisses the possibility of living with differences and seeks instead the destruction of opposing beliefs. Tribal Left and the Trump Right clash in a zero-sum conflict, discarding both individual and economic liberty in the interests of an “I win, you lose” triumphalism. Might makes right — a concept that is utterly alien to our founding Declaration.

Indeed, we are reaching a point where I defy any observer of the American condition to point to a single unifying cultural and political trend in American life. As the Orlando terror attacks starkly reminded us, not even a common enemy can unite our political class. We are polarized and growing more polarized.

But we are not without hope. Think of the context of Lincoln’s call for a new birth of freedom — on the soil of the bloodiest battlefield in America’s bloodiest war, the war we fought against each other. We are so very far from that dark time, and our own generation’s “new birth” requires far less courage and sacrifice. Indeed, the act of resisting the current corruption requires very little courage at all.

#related#What must we do? Certainly the times don’t demand that we abandon our core convictions in the interest of creating some sort of mythical, moderate muddle. But it does require defending the liberties even of our ideological opponents. It doesn’t require that we stop advancing our own economic interests, but it does mean that we approach those less fortunate with a generous heart (and sometimes open wallet.) And it means that we do not tolerate — even to the point of personal pain — the “might makes right” politics of our failed elite and their sometimes-malignant constituencies.

Seeking political renewal may mean wandering for four years — or eight years — in the political wilderness, but that’s far less traumatic and perilous than even four minutes on Little Round Top. We don’t (yet) need the courage to take a bullet, merely the character to withstand scorn or maybe risk a job. America has seen far worse than what it faces on this Independence Day, and unless the character of its people has changed irretrievably, it can and will change direction once again. The new birth awaits.