by Thaddeus McCotter
In an insightful Independence Day Twitter thread, Emily Zanotti expressed her partiality for this provision of the Declaration of Independence:
[T]his is my favorite part: ‘And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.’ Can you imagine writing that? Signing your name to that? Acknowledging that this document means you will come out of this broke, dead, and remembered as a traitor if you do not win. Signing your own death warrant. Man, that took balls . . .
In recognizing and celebrating the signatories’ fortitude, Zanotti illuminated the stark contrast between the visions of America’s founding elite and its current elite.
Without a doubt, the founding generation’s leading figures were from the colonies’ elite. Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and their fellow preeminent revolutionaries were wealthy and celebrated in their time. These were not hardscrabble peasants yearning to commit regicide and confiscate wealth.
As the Declaration makes clear, they already had their fortunes and honors. They could have ridden out the troubles with the English crown in comfort, occasionally petitioning the king for parliamentary representation or the repeal of offending acts. Thus, their stand for independence and liberty was as incongruous as it is inspiring.
The founding elite rebelled to expand the freedom of their fellow human beings. Patently, the expansion the founding generation sought wasn’t completed in their time. And while many of them tried mightily, they ultimately failed to abolish slavery and grant, without qualification, the franchise to all men and women. But to denounce the seminal victory for human freedom by comparing it to the current blessings it has borne is, at best, preposterous. It is injurious, at worst, because it masks the venality, mendacity, and cynicism of America’s current elite.
While the founding elite’s goal was the expansion of human freedom, the current elite’s aim is the curtailment of human freedom. Proselytizing its mantra of “diversity, inclusivity, and equity,” (DIE) the current elite, through Trojan horse maneuvers, seeks to coerce the citizenry into the DIE cult. Once there, this racist, Manichean ideology subsumes and subordinates the individual to the collective, which determines the status of all people based upon a subjective ranking of physical characteristics (“intersectionality”), rather than the content of their respective characters. Inevitably, this trajectory of events results in the erosion of rights and, finally, loss of freedom for the individual.
Unlike the founding generation whose luminaries believed in the universal aspiration — if not always the universal practice — of liberty and God-given rights, the current elite espouses that DNA is destiny; and they will decide whose DNA is more favored than others on the intersectionality spectrum of grievances and victimhood.
Why would the current elite attempt to impose this heinous curtailment of liberty and God-given rights upon their fellow citizens in a country whose very freedom allowed them to grow wealthy, powerful, and privileged?
Why, to protect their wealth, power, and privilege, of course.
In an era resounding with cries against elitists, the current ruling class knows they are in the populist crosshairs — and this targeting is coming from elements within both major parties. The situation is still manageable for them, but only if Left (Sanders supporters) and Right (MAGA) do not combine to curb the elitists in both the private and public sectors.
So how best to divide the opposition? Become strange bedfellows with the only party willing and able to go all the way to crony socialism: the Democrats and their DIE cult.
As noted previously, the Democratic Party’s power brokers aren’t democratic. Despite their professed concern for the downtrodden, today’s Democratic Party leaders hold that such “concern” can only be exercised by a top-down administrative monolith governed by a ruling elite who arbitrarily and capriciously dole out patronage and privileges and redistribute wealth to expand and perpetuate their power. The current elite — the vast majority of whom already identify with them and participate in the scheme — could find no better partner than the Democrats’ power brokers on which to graft themselves in the pursuit of transforming our republic into “our oligarchy.”
Further, offering public paeans and sacrifices to the DIE cult by trashing “systemically racist” America, notably the founding elite, the current elite can pretend they are better than their predecessors — a narrative the corrupt media is more than happy to propagate. And, having denigrated and canceled the past, the current elite will have no bar to measure their promises of creating a more “diverse, inclusive, and equitable” — though not more free, equal, and just — nation and world.
For instance, how “equitable” — let alone free — can the current elites’ desired nation be when they engage diplomatically and do business with genocidal Communist China? The current elite is cynical, not stupid. Thus, they self-righteously condemn America’s past slavery to distract from the fact they will not condemn the Beijing regime’s state policies of genocide, slave labor, and totalitarianism.
It is just common sense, however cruel: the current elite must prevent Left- and Right- populists from combining and devising and implementing the means to bring elites to heel; and, consequently, safeguard liberty, equality, and prosperity in our republic. In defiance of both parties’ populist movements, one witnesses the incestuous marriage of America’s current elite and the Democratic Party’s power brokers in the temple of the DIE cult. You weren’t invited. But they expect you to visit the registry and send a gift — or else.
Talk about disparate visions. The founding elite risked their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to rebel against a tyrannical government to expand human liberty. The current elite has protected its wealth, power, and privilege by abetting a tyrannical government to curtail human liberty.
Of course, some may say that the current elite passing themselves off as the protectors of democracy at the very time they covet an oligarchy to curtail American liberty and protect their own wealth, power, and privilege does, indeed, take “balls.” I am not so sure. For even if the current elite fails in their oligarchic aim, they will still retain their lives and much of their fortunes.
And they have no honor to lose.
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The Hon. Thaddeus McCotter is the former chairman of the Republican House Policy Committee, current itinerant guitarist, American Greatness contributor, and Monday co-host of the “John Batchelor Show.”
