fbpx
Skip to content

The Principles of America’s Independence

Independencia, El American

Leer en Español

[Leer en español]

As America celebrates its two hundred and forty-six independence anniversary, it is important to know what it is that has made this country great. This forces us to reflect on her underlying tenets. They must be understood and serve as guideposts. Modern Marxism, in addition to its recognizable faces of identity politics, woke subversion, and Critical Theory dogmas, is undermining the American Republic. If the U.S. is to remain great, a shining “City on a Hill”, these principled tenets are worth keeping in mind.

America Is a Christian Nation

America was founded strong bonded to Jerusalem. Christianity permeated the U.S. since its embryonic stage. This is an irrefutable fact. One cannot talk about the nation’s founding and its ideological sustenance, without acknowledging its Biblical base. Formed with Judeo-Christian values and consecrated within the parameters of the multidenominational exercise of the Christian faith, diverse routes to find God were all carried out within the greater temple of Christianity. This worldview defined ways to order government and society in a manner most suitable to notions of self-government.

The national covenant with God included certain basic precepts that spilled into the sociopolitical structure of the nascent country. Natural rights, that collection of principles that recognizes a superior law (Natural Law) that extends beyond the reach of human conventional design, upholds the most cherished American values. Freedom is the most salient of these rights. Everything that was hallowed in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the earlier colonial covenants, sprang forth from the prism of natural rights. Henceforth, the Founding Fathers charted a model that recognized this Christian worldview. 

The Christian doctrine of Original Sin foretold the structure America’s mundane architects would build. Human infallibility mandated that a government must have limits. After all, if humans are imperfect and prone to sin, then rulers must work within a system where their power would be checked. Thus, checks and balances would naturally be configured into the paradigm. Divided government, with powers institutionally separated, was the direct result. 

Private property was valued, not so much as a measure of a person’s worth, but as a buffer to dilute state power. A nation of property owners would build a solid civil society. Autonomy from political instruments would be fundamental for the republican life envisioned by the Founders. Society’s sinful inclinations would be checked by a whole host of civic institutions, as well as the moral base that religiosity fosters.    

The U.S. Was Founded Upon the Sacrosanct of the Right of Revolution

The right to bear arms is the Constitution’s Second Amendment. There is a reason for that. This was not so that men can go on hunting sprees. The overarching reason for the existence of the second most important item in the Bill of Rights is the intrinsic need to have an armed citizenry. The people must possess the belligerent tools to organize and challenge the tyrannical rule, should consensual government cease to exist. So paramount is the idea of natural rights, that society is expected to rise and defend itself if a dictatorial regime violates its oath and oversteps its limits.

The Second Amendment was coherently constructed so that the sovereigns, the people, had the tools to counterbalance any potential deviation from the social compact, by those delegated through fair and free elections, to represent them. The right to bear arms is a check on government power. Therefore, concessions draped in “red flag” law limitations, should be viewed with suspicion. Limits to gun purchases relate exclusively to law-abiding citizens. These Second Amendment impediments do not apply to criminals or state actors (military, police, etc.). The people must fully retain the right to bear and hold arms.  

America’s Liberalism is Conservative in its Essence

The U.S. was one of the Enlightenment’s offspring. Its version of liberalism, however, was connected to a conservative, religious framework. The liberal creed, as it has been applied in some other parts of the world, sought to divorce the doctrine from religion, especially Christianity. This was alien to the American experience. It would be a fatal misunderstanding of America’s epistemological base if one were to conclude that the liberal tenet in the U.S. was separated from a prevailing Christian ethos. 

The U.S. embraced liberalism’s notion of self-government. Political schemes like republican governance that exercise democracy within a federal model were the plan. But American self-rule never saw religion as an enemy. The fact that religious refugees colonized the U.S., undoubtedly, played a large role in shaping the American nation. Conservatism was ever present. There is as much of John Locke, as there is of Edmund Burke, in America’s fiber.  

Recent Supreme Court decisions safeguarding election integrity, Second Amendment rights, and strict constitutional adherence are good signs. Biden’s mission to make America socialist is failing. Freedom is winning. Have a Happy Independence Day!

Julio M Shiling, political scientist, writer, director of Patria de Martí and The Cuban American Voice, lecturer and media commentator. A native of Cuba, he currently lives in the United States. Twitter: @JulioMShiling // Julio es politólogo, escritor, director de Patria de Martí y The Cuban American Voice. Conferenciante y comentarista en los medios. Natural de Cuba, vive actualmente en EE UU.

Leave a Reply

Total
0
Share