Philadelphia Freedom vs Domestic Enemies

by Andy Caldwell

When someone asked Benjamin Franklin what kind of government we were going to have after the constitutional convention, he responded, “A republic if you can keep it.” And, ever since then, forces external and internal to the United States have been trying to take it away. In the modern era, we have struggled externally against the empires of Japan, Germany, Russia, and now, China. What about the enemies within? Daniel Greenfield, author of “Domestic Enemies,” explains the movements and methods used against us ever since the convention.

The best summary of “Domestic Enemies” is Victor Davis Hanson’s (historian with the Hoover Institution) endorsement of the book. He writes, “In a superb analysis of the early American Left, Greenfield offers evidence of how the Left, from the founding of the American republic, opposed its emphasis on personal liberty and constitutional government.  Our present struggle against political correctness, globalism, utopianism, socialism, media bias, election rigging, racial essentialism, and the weaponization of government, is hardly news. Greenfield shows how and why they were essential to the American Left and the Democratic Party from the very beginning.”

Our Constitution limited the power of government to determine how we live, by stating that the only moral and just cause of a government is to recognize and protect the unalienable rights of its citizenry. Meanwhile, the Left seeks to govern based on unlimited power at the expense of life, liberty, property, religion, and economy. That is, left unchecked, the impulses of the Left have always resulted in tyranny.

The historical context of this battle between individual freedom vs state control comes back time and time again to a comparison and contrast of the American and French revolutions. On the surface, both these uprisings appeared to be in pursuit of some form of equality. However, America pursued that equality as one nation under God, with all the commensurate rights and responsibilities of each individual citizen to God and his fellow man via the rule of law. France ended up pursuing equity by way of the guillotine via the power of the mob/state.

The American concept of equality was the guarantee of equal opportunity sans the interference of the state. The French and socialist/communist conception of imposed equity came by way of guaranteed outcomes via omnipotent state control. Except that, the French revolution resulted in a pool of blood as did the Russian and Chinese revolutions. That is, the most murderous regimes in modern history are those that have sought to ostensibly establish equity at the expense of the lives and freedom of their own people.

Greenfield traces the influences of the European radicals in America, French and otherwise, who sought to impose their version of a more perfect society by, in the words of George Washington, “following only those laws they choose and killing anyone who opposed them in the name of a perpetual revolution.” Greenfield writes, “In America, life, liberty and happiness were individual aspirations, not imposed by government, but discovered by each and every man in his own way.”

Greenfield quotes Abigail Adams, who explained this war was between the opposing factions of  “religion and atheism, morality and depravity, liberty and the Left.”. Or as John Adams stated, “We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.” 

Thomas Jefferson explained why our Constitution determined to limit the power of government, “Any Government,” he wrote, “strong enough to give you what you want, is a Government strong enough to take everything you have.”

That’s a risk I am not willing to take.

What about you?

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