America, here's a thought... let's renew our vows with American democracy, for our 250th.
TAT readers,
First and foremost, my very best for your Fourth of July weekend. On a personal note and as I noted in my May 29th essay, I will not be celebrating the 250th birthday this weekend. America under the Trump and Republican regime, is not America. I will though, do as I and my family have always done, celebrate our founding values with gratitude for the courage of our founders, the sacrifice of those who have perished in defense of our republic, and the effort of the resistance to restore what is constitutionally ours. You see, America is not like other nations, as that our constitutional republic is built on ideals, not monarchies, oligarchies, corruption and lawless authoritarian rule. I will not be alone.
I’m writing this by letting my mind wander to memories, who we are as Americans and general musings about how much I am grateful to be part of the resistance to tyranny. You and the patriots that have come before, inspire me.
This morning, I am just back from visiting with my oldest and my daughter-in-law, who have both been teaching in an international school system for going on two decades now, I found it joyful and refreshing from the political turmoil I have been writing about for nearly four years now. Family is something I hold dear to my heart and I’m sure you do as well. This prompted a thought this morning as I dug through the news I had ignored while laughing, eating and savoring the kids.
As my mind drifted back to joyful family fourth of July celebrations full of great family, food, music and of course the requisite water fights with cousins, I recalled my late parents renewing their wedding vows on their Valentine’s Day, fiftieth anniversary, 24 years ago. From the warmth of those beautiful memories, I seized upon an idea. As the idea formed in my mind, I thought that it’s one that others opposed to the GOP regime in Washington may enjoy or consider as well. How about instead of focusing on the fake patriotism on display on the national mall, all honest Americans that still revel in our nation’s true ideals, renew our vows to our brilliant constitution that defines us as Americans and to each other. There is nothing partisan about this. It’s simply a celebration of “who we are as a nation” and who we will be again, post this administration.
As I look back over my youth, I realize that in many ways, I grew up in a world that the iconic artist of Americana, Norman Rockwell could have painted. Those paintings captured an America that now seems ancient history, but I believe still lives in many American hearts. Many call my dedication to our national ideals, Pollyannish, but I choose to believe that I am little different from most Americans, except maybe this crop of Trump-era Republicans. As long-time readers have read before, my mom was a lifelong Republican and Dad the opposite. I learned at home that well-informed Americans discuss ideas, framed by our constitutional values and make political decisions based on reality, not the short-term whims of political parties. Both crossed party line when necessary and often voted the same way. This is why I believe that renewing our relationship with what America was designed to stand for, could be a unifying factor in these perilous, hyper partisan times.
Our founders, especially George Washington as our only independent president abhorred political parties, often called factions in the colonial era. In his Farewell Address and other of his writings, he consistently warned against factions as one of the most severe threats to our nascent republic. He was right then and in one notable passage, it’s as if he actually prophesized a Trump-like president and a party like the Trump-era, MAGA GOP. Please see this in the quote below.
"However combinations or associations of the above description (factions) may now and then answer popular ends, they are likely, in the course of time and things, to become potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people and to usurp for themselves the reins of government, destroying afterwards the very engines which have lifted them to unjust dominion." - Washington's Farewell Address - President George Washington - September 19th, 1996
He like our other founders were men of principles based more on the Scottish Enlightenment, than the commonly but erroneously assumed Christian or other religious values, and those principles were forged into our constitution. It’s not that there wasn’t some overlap, but our founders were deeply spiritual men and recognized, “inalienable human rights” as the key to our new republic, not specific religious values. In fact, many of our founders related to Deism as much as the churches they attended. The separation of church and state and the absence of any reference in our constitution to political parties, should tell those with a bit of common-sense, that America was for everyone, not a select few. If our republic is to survive, we need to get back to basics.
We’ve sadly departed from two and a half centuries of the philosophical high of our founding principles, into beliefs now more focused on celebrity, wealth and materialism, but especially so in the Trump era. To be truly American, requires us to ignore the six, far-right justices, sitting on our SCOTUS bench. That they consider themselves as “Originalists” is absurd and offensive to those who read history. For example, if one reads history, they would find this administration’s overt preference for Christian Nationalism, would have offended our founders greatly, especially the primary writers of our Declaration of Independence, Constitution and our Bill of Rights.
"While judicial originalists continue to trumpet the importance of history, they rarely take that history on its own terms. They claim to be wedded to the Constitution’s eighteenth-century meaning, yet they fail to engage in the deeper work of reconstructing the often-unfamiliar understandings of constitutionalism on which that original meaning was based. Justice Gorsuch insisted in Rahimi that originalism was the only thing that could keep judges on the straight and narrow, “seeking to honor the supreme law the people have ordained rather than substituting our will for theirs.”8 Yet in foisting modern constitutional assumptions on an eighteenth-century past that did not share them, jurists like Gorsuch ignore the supreme law those earlier people in fact made. These originalist jurists end up rewriting the constitutional past based on the logic of the legal present. In that respect, their interpretive approach resembles the living constitutionalism they otherwise disparage. A better understanding of early American constitutionalism might not be able to solve all the constitutional problems of today, but it can expose how faithless today’s Supreme Court originalists too often are to the history they claim is the lodestar of our law." - Why is the Supreme Court Obsessed with Originalism? - Yale University Press - Jonathan Gienapp - October 21, 2024
To make matters even worse, we must not tolerate this administration’s violations of our constitution and especially their full-frontal assault on our Bill of Rights. What the administration doesn’t fight in court, like last week’s challenge to the Fourteenth Amendment about Birthright Citizenship, they simply ignore, even when federal courts order them to obey them. To any sane person, four SCOTUS justices voting against the Fourteenth Amendment last week is the judicial version of a very rude hand gesture directed at our founders. This isn’t “originalism,” it’s Sedition. Unsurprisingly, four far-right justices named Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch and with Kavanaugh producing a mealy-mouthed concurrence but with areas of dissent, represent today’s GOP.
"Following the Civil War, Congress submitted to the states three amendments as part of its Reconstruction program to guarantee equal civil and legal rights to Black citizens. A major provision of the 14th Amendment was to grant citizenship to “All persons born or naturalized in the United States,” thereby granting citizenship to formerly enslaved people. Another equally important provision was the statement that “nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The right to due process of law and equal protection of the law now applied to both the federal and state governments." - 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: Civil Rights (1868) - The National Archives
Everything we true patriots celebrate this weekend, is based on our constitution and the mostly honorable manner in which most Supreme Courts have historically honored our foundational document. If we cannot support our founder’s deep scholarship and brilliant democratic innovation, we are unworthy of the title, “American.” This is why I refuse to celebrate the laughable America 250 fiasco on the national mall. The administration is apparently having trouble selling a milestone holiday celebration of an America that they don’t believe in, and are attempting to replace with lawless autocracy and oligarchy.
"This spectacle on the National Mall in Washington, DC, part of Trump’s Trump-centric celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, is like watching your high school bully host a party that no one attends. It’s a daily humiliation for a wildly unpopular president who coopted what should be a unifying national celebration and turned it into repellent schlock." - Trump's Great American State Fair is a fabulous flop - USA Today - Rex Huppke - July 1, 2026
I don’t know exactly what Republican crowds are celebrating, but it sure as hell isn’t the America most of us grew up believing in. I know for sure that in my family of professional educators and public servants, we know the difference. I bet anyone reading this essay does too. This year especially, we will all celebrate with gratitude, that we do know who we are as Americans. Those Republicans still supporting this version of the GOP, clearly are clueless. Another part of true American identity that I will celebrate this weekend, is that America is DEI. A nation of immigrants, could hardly be anything but DEI. That today’s Republicans fight DEI and all religions besides White Christian Nationalism, is one of their most demonstrable acts against the constitution, and those who’ve shed their life-blood securing and sustaining it. All my life has been about DEI, even though it really just means what Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “all men are created equal.”
Almost last on this short list of the America I am grateful for and will celebrate vigorously this weekend, is that most of us still have our First Amendment Rights to free speech, freedom of the press, freedom to assemble and separation of church and state. We are losing ground rapidly though on all fronts. Government workers and gov contractors risk losing their jobs due to having their social media and internal communications monitored for any real or inferred criticism of this administration, Americans are arrested in our streets and their homes, for legally exercising their constitutional right to free speech and freedom to assemble, our mainstream press, like CBS, ABC etc., are too cowardly to exercise their right to freedom of the press, while the Republican Party, including our SCOTUS, continues to whittle away the wall between church and state.
My eternal gratitude is for those willing and able to exercise these constitutionally guaranteed rights within the resistance. I personally will not bend on these rights and will continue to speak loudly and clearly in support of them, just as all of you are.
Well my fellow citizens, I’ve meandered a bit but I am certain that by now, you get the point (s). Our constitution defines who we are as Americans and those who attempt to deny or restrict our rights, are not American patriots. In fact, they are the precise opposite. They you will find running amok with their little red hats, and quoting propagandists like FOX News, who I personally consider a foreign agent. Rupert Murdoch and his clan have sold out America from the very beginning and employed the tactics I know from my career in influence, to brainwash the GOP into their fake patriotism and cruel behavior towards the rest of us.
Finally, the one thing I am most grateful for is that the spirit of our constitutional republic, lives on and is on fire in all of you. America is a nation of principles and citizens like you, that fiercely defend those principles against all challengers. It is not a monarchy or any other term from our political science classes that allows leaders and their governments to oppress, “we the people.” We are the only thing that stands in opposition to tyranny and every single day, I see all of you fighting the good fight. Things may seem daunting but the tide is turning and it’s all of you that have made that happen. American patriots have yet to fail in defense of liberty. We won’t fail this time either. This is what terrifies every Republican still supporting this administration. Trump MAGA types in our neighborhoods are quieter. Trolls are fewer and lower courts are pushing back with extraordinary courage. The real power though, is in you and the true America we celebrate this weekend.
True American spirit is what has terrified our adversaries since the first World War. That spirit precedes us on the battlefield and in our generosity. The world doesn’t despise Americans, it despises this administration. We see this as foreign World Cup fans flood our nation and fall in love with Americans. Remember, we are a nation of people and laws, not tyrants and oligarchs. When this is all over, both fascists and oligarchs will rue the day they attempted to take our freedom and rob us of our constitutional birthrights. That day is coming sooner than they think and we won’t rest until it does.
This Fourth of July, will be me renewing my vows to America. I hope you’ll join me. Remember to celebrate yourselves for fighting to sustain the freedom we’ve celebrated for 250 years. You are what makes America great.
Viva Libertad
Paul