Before the Mount Rushmore giants, President Trump became the voice of reason, justice, and unity, of Martin Luther King, and of patriotic Americans against today’s Confederates—the rioters of 2020—and today’s Tories, the mainstream media and their elite academic masters. Trump reaffirmed the revolution of 1776 against the oldest as well as the contemporary enemies of America.
His was not the “dark” or “divisive” speech of MSM propaganda—at least no more than the Declaration of Independence, which we joyously celebrate with festivities and fireworks. Trump is now the Declaration’s principal guardian against those who promote their own tyranny as the new order and bless mob violence. He would preserve the American way of life.
The enemies of the great Americans extolled by Trump are as alien to the best in America as the Confederates of 1861. While their hypocritical pleas against racism make them appear to be anti-Confederacy, their anti-American argument in fact aligns with the nihilism of the Confederacy, its rejection of the equality of the Declaration: Be neither a master nor a slave. “Some know exactly what they are doing,” Trump declared of the mob—in the most incisive line of the evening.
The violent mayhem we have seen in the streets and cities that are run by liberal Democrats in every case is the predictable result of years of extreme indoctrination and bias in education, journalism, and other cultural institutions. Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that they were villains.
That hatred is what the Confederacy bore Lincoln and the Union. The same supercilious sophistication and aristocratic snootiness toward “deplorables” characterized the Southern aristocrats of the slavocracy—in relation to the middle and working class elements of both North and South. Thus Trump can consistently defend the valor of those Americans who fought for the South against today’s New Confederate mob.
Like all great American presidents do when confronted with such a crisis, Trump reverts to the Declaration of Independence and notes how this establishes both a dividing and a uniting principle. The rioters and their enablers fall on the wrong side of both lines. In its central principle that “All men are created equal,” the Declaration of Independence of “1776 represented the culmination of thousands of years of Western civilization and the triumph of not only spirit, but of wisdom, philosophy, and reason.” And the consequence today: “Many of these [rioters] have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing” (emphasis added).
Our nation is witnessing a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children. Angry mobs are trying to tear down statues of our founders, deface our most sacred memorials, and unleash a wave of violent crime in our cities. Many of these people have no idea why they’re doing this, but some know what they are doing.
The attacks on Washington, Jefferson, and other founders amount to a defense of tyranny. The rioters and “some [who] know what they are doing” are the Tory defenders of the tyrannical order Americans revolted against.
Those who seek to erase our heritage want Americans to forget our pride and our great dignity so that we can no longer understand ourselves or America’s destiny. In toppling the heroes of 1776, they seek to dissolve the bonds of love and loyalty that we feel for our country and that we feel for each other. Their goal is not a better America, their goal is to end America.
The battle involves not the old military-industrial complex but the intellectual-political complex we know as Progressivism. In Trump’s discerning view “Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes but that were villains.” The new Confederates would defy both tradition and nature in their fanatical lust for power. This is the collapse of heritage that President Reagan warned us about in his farewell speech. Of presidents following Reagan only Trump calls out “the new far-left fascism that demands absolute allegiance,” and its demands of persecution that follow, ranging in penalties from social isolation to criminal prosecution.
In contrast to the New Confederacy, the old Union retains the best of the American way of life:
We know that the American family is the bedrock of American life. We recognize the solemn right and moral duty of every nation to secure its borders and we are building the wall. We remember [quoting the Declaration] that governments exist to protect the safety and happiness of their own people. A nation must care for its own citizens first. We must take care of America first. It’s time. We believe in equal opportunity, equal justice, and equal treatment for citizens of every race, background, religion and creed. Every child of every color, born and unborn, is made in the holy image of God.
Therefore, when Trump speaks of the Mt. Rushmore presidents, he does not approach them as gods in temples. With Washington he speaks of his soldiers. He was not some Roman god, but a man in command of ordinary Americans and he is great for making them better. Trump also reminds us of Reagan’s invocation of the Washington, D.C. monuments in his First Inaugural. He emphasizes the democratic character of other presidents too, with the founder Jefferson and with Lincoln, and especially the one most in need of defense, Theodore Roosevelt, whom he describes as “American freedom personified in full. The American people will never relinquish the bold, beautiful and untamed spirit of Theodore Roosevelt.” In fact, he would declare “Above all, our children from every community must be taught that to be American is to inherit the spirit of the most adventurous and confident people ever to walk the face of the Earth.”
Through the unjust prosecutions of his first term, Trump has kept his promises. In particular he affirms his own inaugural address’s vision of “transferring power from Washington, D.C. and giving it back to you, the American People.” This is the Fourth of July message America was longing for, radiating the inspiration of Lincoln against the New Tories and New Confederates. His second term pledge:
It is time to plant our flag and to protect the greatest of this nation for citizens of every race in every city in every part of this glorious land. For the sake of our honor, for the sake of our children, for the sake of our union, we must protect and preserve our history, our heritage, and our great heroes. Here tonight before the eyes of our forefathers, Americans declare again, as we did 244 years ago, that we will not be tyrannized, we will not be demeaned, and we will not be intimidated by bad, evil people.
Thus, with Martin Luther King he declares “we will not be tyrannized.” Trump, not the mobs, marches with King demanding that “promissory note” of the Declaration of Independence. They both affirm America’s founding document in that “American freedom exists for American greatness.”