America Needs a Freedom Refresh Now

In my August 11, 2024 blog titled, Kamala's Freedom Fallacy, I took Vice President and 2024 Presidential candidate Kamala Harris to task for her flawed and flippant interpretation and misapplication of freedom. In the following passage from my aforementioned blog, I rely on history to expose how Harris's shallow and misguided approach to "freedom" does violence to everything the Founding Fathers said and did to promote freedom as American cornerstone virtue.

Joseph Loconte's timeless article Faith and Freedom: The Missing Link, written in 2000, can be used to expose how Kamala's intellectual recklessness runs roughshod over America's founding principles. In the follow-up to his unpacking of the importance of faith and political liberty to a post-Revolutionary War America, Loconte brilliantly makes the following deduction:

The reason goes back to the Founders' view of democracy. Freedom depends on citizens who can govern themselves, which means freedom requires virtue. But it takes more than laws to sustain morality. It requires religion - not the enfeebled variety of an established church, but the muscular faith of individual believers and congregations exercised in the public square.

For Kamala, freedom is primarily defined within the context of Democratic Party political ideals and priorities. Case in point: During her Presidential acceptance speech, Harris clearly articulated her freedom philosophy with the following:

And when Congress passes a bill to restore reproductive freedom, as President of the United States, I will proudly sign it into. law.

In this election, many other fundamental freedoms are at stake. The freedom to live safe from gun violence—in our schools, communities, and places of worship. The freedom to love who you love openly and with pride. The freedom to breathe clean air, drink clean water, and live free from the pollution that fuels the climate crisis. And the freedom that unlocks all the others. The freedom to vote.

It is undeniable that Harris's acceptance speech was her freedom-defining moment, where she elevated the politics of freedom as the prevailing narrative for America's identity. Hers, however, is a gross distortion of freedom that is fundamentally at odds with the Founders who coupled freedom with character, virtue, and integrity.

On the other side of the equation, freedom for Republicans is more rooted and grounded in what the Founders envisioned principally. Take for example the Republican Party Platform of 1860. Herein is one of the most historic, important, and self-defining statements on freedom and humanity:

8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that "no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law," it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.

9. That we brand the recent reopening of the African slave trade, under the cover of our national flag, aided by perversions of judicial power, as a crime against humanity and a burning shame to our country and age; and we call upon Congress to take prompt and efficient measures for the total and final suppression of that execrable traffic

Their Constitutional convictions are expressed with uncompromising and unambiguous passion and commitment to Constitutional integrity. The dignity of America for the Founders was not going to be ruined by the inhumanity of slavery because America was built on standards and principles that valued life which was to be honored and upheld by government and citizens throughout the Republic.

Perhaps one of the best Republican quotes on freedom that captures the meaning and spirit of the Founders comes from the late, great President Ronald Reagan, where he succinctly states the "freedom formula" that dominated early American political thought: “Freedom prospers when religion is vibrant and the rule of law under God is acknowledged.”

Compare Reagan's quote with one from then President Trump's during his first term, when he spoke at the 2020 Salute to America event on July 4th.

The beauty and the glory of our constitutional system is that it gives us the tools to fight injustice, to heal division, and to continue the work of our Founding Fathers by expanding and growing the blessings of America.  If you believe in justice, if you believe in freedom, if you believe in peace, then you must cherish the principles of our founding and the text of our Constitution.  It is our founding and our Constitution.  It is a firm foundation upon which all progress is achieved.  That’s why our country is so strong, even despite terrible things that happen over the generations.

For Trump, freedom is enshrined in America's history and founding documents and is to be treated and respected within this context. However, as much as Republican's revere America's history, the Founding Fathers, and our founding documents as conduits to freedom and liberty, there is an unhealthy conceptual compromise that must be addressed.

On February 7th, a despicable racial incident took place in Cincinnati that involved Neo Nazis protesting above an interstate highway adjacent to the predominantly black community of Lincoln Heights. The Village of Lincoln Heights is known as the first self-governing African American city north of the Mason-Dixon line. As such, the Neo Nozi radicals came to this community masked from head to toe, armed with automatic rifles, and flying Nazi flags while spewing racial hatred. Days later, when I called a local talk show about this incident, the host quickly appealed to their First Amendment freedom to protest. While he affirmed my calls for moral condemnation by local and federal political leaders, I find this rush to the First Amendment extremely troubling and disappointing because it fails to honor and elevate the foundational principles of the Founding Fathers discussed above.

To no surprise, however, this experience was repeated when I went to a Congressional office to speak about this evil and the need for political leaders to morally condemn this act of racial hostility as opposed to the typical hands-off approach offering no comments whatsoever. Again, there was the same mixed response that acknowledged the moral and legal improprieties that I raised but with the same appeal to the first amendment with the added disclaimer that they prefer to say nothing to avoid rewarding the racist group with attention from a high-level elected official. That might make political sense, but I wholeheartedly disagree on the basis of integrity and ethical principles on which the Founders would agree. Ironically, Republicans have been very vocal in condemning and legislatively opposing issues like DEI, CRT, and antisemitism on college campuses, and yet antisocial Neo Nazi racial aggression merits total silence and unresponsiveness from too many Conservative political leaders, at least that is the case for Cincinnati versus Nashville, where the Governor of Tennessee and Nashville's Mayor condemned Neo Nazis with a resolution that publicly repudiated and admonished what happened. I am convinced that the racial hatred by racial hate groups along with moral impotence by political leaders will NOT Make America Great Again because both failings are a fundamental rejection of what the founders believed and their courage to confront evil with moral truth, moral suasion, adherence to Natural Law, and deference to divine authority.

One of the best articles I've seen on the Founders and freedom does an excellent job of explaining this and what it all means. Without Virtue There Can Be No Liberty by David Gowdy is rich with historical quotes and analyses that for me convincingly makes the case that Republican leaders at all levels need to reconnect the legalisms of our freedom governing documents with the Founding Fathers' essential requirements of character, integrity, and virtue that must necessarily be coupled with our beloved freedoms in order for governance and citizenship to work in America's best interest. Gowdy makes this perfectly clear with the following quotes:

John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.

George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,”[6] and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”

Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.”

Samuel Adams said: “Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt.  He therefore is the truest friend of the liberty of his country who tries most to promote its virtue.”

Gowdy concludes with the following profound and highly relevant statement that reaffirms my blog title and, more importantly, my expectation for Republican leaders today.

Virtue ennobles individual character and lifts society as a whole. Virtuous principles eschew prejudice and discrimination, confirming that “all men are created equal.” Virtue encompasses characteristics of goodwill, patience, tolerance, kindness, respect, humility, gratitude, courage, honor, industry, honesty, chastity and fidelity. These precepts serve as the cornerstones for both individual happiness and societal governance.

Given Kamala's egregious freedom fallacy and the Republicans' failure to fully honor and apply the fundamentals of the Founders comprehensive understanding of freedom as both Constitutional and character requirements, the time is now for a freedom refresh to make freedom work the way the Founders intended. If we truly want to "Make America Great Again", then we must make moral dignity the moral expectation for all and thereby promote a renewed emphasis on character, integrity, and virtue to create a thriving and morally decent culture that values humanity and the Constitutional freedoms as the Founders understood and believed. Given the current paradigm, the soul of America is dangerously at risk, and selective outrage combined with silence and moral and political impotence is not in America's best interest, especially when racial hate groups like Neo Nazis increase their racial antagonisms in and around African American communities.

In order to rescue American greatness from moral decay and leadership ineptitude, we must have a freedom refresh through a revival of conscience, responsible political leadership and community engagement, and principled community cohesion paved by leadership that thoroughly understands and embraces the fullness of what the Founding Fathers stood for when they made freedom coupled with character central to America's identity. In closing, I offer this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr's timeless work Where Do We Go from Here: Chaos or Community? as a cautionary tale that ought not be ignored. This was his challenge to America then that needs to be rekindled today in order to avoid cultural and political ruin.

We are confronted with the fierce urgency of now. In this unfolding conundrum of life and history there is such a thing as being too late...We still have a choice today: nonviolent coexistence or violent coannihilation. This may well be mankind's last chance to choose between chaos or community.

Kamala's Freedom Fallacy

Since Kamala's entrance into the 2024 presidential race, she has frequently referenced the importance of "freedom" in her attempt to elevate herself as the self-proclaimed freedom fighter. From the title, you already know that I profoundly disagree with Kamala's false bravado when it comes to the way she flirts with and flaunts her version of "freedom". Nevertheless, there's no denying that her campaign platform centers around freedom and civil liberties, and she believes that she is the answer to restoring freedom to the masses.

In the release of Kamala's initial campaign ad, Beyonce's Grammy nominated song Freedom was featured and became the official song for her 2024 presidential campaign. The ad itself reads as follows:

"I'm Kamala Harris, and I'm running for President of the United States. In this election, we each face a question: What kind of country do we want to live in? There are some people who think we should be a country of chaos, of fear, of hate. But us, we choose something different. We choose freedom."

Ok, I get it...the song, the campaign theme: the connection is obvious in that two high-profile women are celebrating America's foremost value that has influenced American history from the Revolutionary War, to slavery and the Civil War, to today. Freedom in America has been a battleground for centuries with countless lives lost only to result in the triumphant restoration of human dignity and the fulfillment of our premier guiding documents, the Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights, and the U.S. Constitution. In the immortal words of the late, great Martin Luther King Jr., Let Freedom Ring, and yes indeed, American freedom is truly the prize and envy of the world.

Interestingly, however, when you listen to Freedom by Beyonce, which again is Kamala's official presidential campaign song, the following lyrics are ironic and jaw-dropping, I'MA RIOT, I'MA RIOT, THROUGH YOUR BORDERS. In today's vernacular, we call this Foot in Mouth Disease and rightly so due to our current catastrophic situation at our southern border, especially given Kamala's status as the presiding "Border Czar". That said, do these lyrics serve as code for Kamala by signifying "freedom" for illegal immigrants crossing over to the U.S.? After all, she is on record for being a staunch advocate for the decriminalization of illegal immigration(1). Similarly, do these lyrics become marching orders for illegal border crossers, and if so, is she responsible for any rioting or violence that occurs hereafter along the U.S.-Mexico border? Time will tell as we watch and wait with these lyrics ringing loudly in our ears like a bad case of tinnitus.

In all seriousness, with all the celebratory freedom talk by "team Kamala", I find her approach flippant, misguided, and egregious. The freedom flaws are evident to the naked eye and detrimental to a proper and historically accurate understanding as formulated and treasured by America's founding fathers.

Joseph Loconte's timeless article Faith and Freedom: The Missing Link, written in 2000, exposes Kamala's flawed handling of the essence of America's founding and greatness. In the follow-up to his unpacking of the importance of faith and political liberty to a post-Revolutionary War America, Loconte brilliantly makes the following deduction:

The reason goes back to the Founders' view of democracy. Freedom depends on citizens who can govern themselves, which means freedom requires virtue. But it takes more than laws to sustain morality. It requires religion - not the enfeebled variety of an established church, but the muscular faith of individual believers and congregations exercised in the public square.

John Witherspoon, one of America's most inspiring and influential founding fathers, also a signatory to the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776, gives historical context and meaning to Loconte's claim in this pithy but remarkable quote, "God grant in America true religion and civil liberty may be inseparable and the unjust attempts to destroy the one, may in the issue tend to the support and establishment of both." This from a man who carried the tiles of statesman, minister, and president of the College of New Jersey, which later became Princeton University. He was so honored and respected that John Adams once said that John Witherspoon was "as high a son of liberty as any man in America." (2)

Lastly, David J. Gowdy's excellent article reinforces what I have expressed thus far, but he goes one step further. Gowdy provides a historical backdrop that captures the prevailing faith-freedom sentiment of the early colonist.

John Adams stated it this way, “Public virtue cannot exist in a Nation without private Virtue, and public Virtue is the only Foundation of Republics.” In this regard, the revolutionary war was as much a battle against “the corruption of 18th century British high society,” as it was against financial oppression.  While the Founders and American colonists were very concerned with their civil liberty and economic freedom, demanding “no taxation without representation,” they were equally concerned with their religious liberty, particularly in preserving their rights of individual conscience and public morality.  With respect to the vital need for virtue in order to establish and maintain a republic, the Founders were in complete harmony:

George Washington said: “Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government,” and “Human rights can only be assured among a virtuous people.”

Benjamin Franklin said: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom.” 

James Madison stated: “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical [imaginary] idea.”

For brevity's sake, I only provided three quotes from Gowdy's list, but you can go to the link below to read the full article and see all thirteen names and quotes, which is an impressive and compelling list. His Compilation successfully defends his argument and the crux of my position which is that freedom is not reducible to some flimsy, shallow, political talking point driven by electoral popularity or political posturing. This is the case with the Harris-Walz freedom fallacy and is why Gowdy's argument from history is still applicable and highly relevant to today's body politic. Theirs is a flagrant hijacking and misuse of freedom by liberal ideologues and a shameful ignoring of the historical foundation and all-important intersect between the indispensable ideals of faith and virtue as necessary conditions for the proper use of freedom so that our democratic republic endures "forever". From her official campaign ad to her campaign speeches, Harris fails to capture any of this and thus poses a serious risk to effectively promoting freedom in America in the spirit and intent of the founders. We can only hope that well-informed and well-intended citizens challenge her conceptualization as a corrective to Kamala's Freedom Fallacy for the common good and the preservation of American exceptionalism so as to honor freedom's heritage and Christian foundation without compromise.

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1. https://politics.stackexchange.com/questions/88623/what-is-kamala-harris-position-on- decriminalizing-illegal-entry

2. Minister to Freedom, Loconte, J. Ph.D., 2001

The Racial Equity Fallacy (part 3): A Douglassonian Critique

Frederick Douglass has had a noticeable presence in a number of my commentaries since I started this blog a few years ago. He truly is one of my favorite historical figures. This is probably so because of his oratory eloquence, historical impact, and his intellectual ferocity when it came to the abolition of slavery and advocating for the interests of Blacks, intellectually, politically, spiritually, and economically.

In the Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass, one passage stands out as one of the more memorable and defining statements for who he was and what he represented.

The work of instructing my dear fellow-slaves was the sweetest engagement with which I was ever blessed. We loved each other, and to leave them at the close of the Sabbath was a severe cross indeed. When I think that these precious souls are to-day shut up in the prison-house of slavery, my feelings overcome me, and I am almost ready to ask, "Does a righteous God govern the universe? and for what does he hold the thunders in his right hand, if not to smite the oppressor, and deliver the spoiled out of the hand of the spoiler?" These dear souls came not to Sabbath school because it was popular to do so, nor did I teach them because it was reputable to be thus engaged. Every moment they spent in that school, they were liable to be taken up and given thirty-nine lashes. They came because they wished to learn. Their minds had been starved by their cruel masters. They had been shut up in mental darkness. I taught them, because it was the delight of my soul to be doing something that looked like the bettering the condition of my race.

These words demonstrate a Douglass who was fully in touch with and convicted about the enormity of chattel slavery and what was needed to overcome the hellish conditions that plundered life, liberty, and happiness for slaves in America desperate for freedom and basic human dignity.

Douglass hammered home the issue of freedom throughout his life and in many of his speeches. This only makes sense, for he bore witness to some of the most depraved and despicable atrocities in human history, horrors that violated humanity's most fundamental God given right, human freedom. This compromise was indefensible to its core because in Douglass' worldview, humanity was created for every individual to freely pursue their chosen purpose free from oppression, injustice, and human atrocity.

In parts one and two of this series, I highlighted a wide range of conceptual, practical, and Constitutional problems associated with Critical Race Theory (CRT) and its related movements (Social Justice, Racial Equity, and Systemic Racism). Core to this community is the shared belief that a robust emphasis on equity over equality is the pathway to true racial justice. It is well established, however, that in order to achieve equity, inequality is a natural and accepted outcome wherein Whites, it is believed, must surrender their privilege, entitlements, and the benefits that accrue from whiteness. The CRT community does not regard this as problematic but rather vindication and justification for historical disparities. In the end, the move of equity over equality is necessary in order to achieve the greater goal of equitable outcomes and the redistribution of social benefits and burdens. In short, not only is this moral compromise, but it is Unconstitutional at its core because CRT is both hostile to and incompatible with the very virtues and values of freedom and fairness safeguarded by our Constitution.

While today's racial challenges are a far cry from those of Douglass's day, his thoughts from well over a century ago offer prescient words of wisdom that should not be ignored nor confined to the past. Like all historical figures, Douglass, in particular, embraced the challenges of his day with extraordinary passion, relentless conviction, and purpose-driven principles to accomplish great things for humanity. HIs life is relatable to contemporary America through his courage and inspiration which should motivate us to remain resilient amid crisis and conflict. From the thoughts and words of Douglass, we can be inspired to overcome the flaws and failures of what we are witnessing today in this moment of rising radical racial antipathy.

Douglass's speech in 1890 titled The Race Problem confronted the efforts of southern Resurrectionists to deny African Americans their newly won civil rights that became legally protected by the federal government. This address took place in Washington, DC at Metropolitan A.M.E. Church, and his goal was to educate the public and advocate for the continued protection of African American civil rights as authorized by federal law. Throughout his lecture, he referred to the frequently cited "Race Problem" with suspicion and annoyance seemingly to suggest there is something wrongheaded about this expression, language that to Douglass deserved outright condemnation and rejection.

In the opening, Douglass shares his objection to how the problem is viewed and defined exclusively as "The Negro Problem", a term that had taken root in the South post Civil War. Douglass states the following:

For this reason, and for my own self-respect, I shall endeavor to say only what I believe to be the truth upon what is popularly called "The Negro Problem...."

. . . It has been well said that in an important sense words are things. They are especially such when they are employed to express the popular sentiment concerning the Negro: to couple his name with anything in this world seems to damage it and damage him likewise. Hence I object to characterizing the relation subsisting between the white and colored people of this country as the Negro problem, as if the Negro had precipitated that problem, and as if he were in any way responsible for the problem....

Clearly, Douglass seeks to challenge myth and inflammatory rhetoric with truth and sociological facts. The same applies today with respect to CRT and how they deconstruct race and history through the lens of equity and the use of social disparities and dogma at the expense of established norms and principles that are grounded in the Constitution, namely equality, due process, and equal protection.

Douglass continues his brilliant treatment of the so-called Negro Problem with the following:

With their usual cunning, these enemies of the negro have made the North partly believe that they are now contending with a vast and mysterious problem, the mere contemplation of which should cause the whole North to shudder and come to the rescue. The trick is worthy of its inventors, and has been played for all that it is worth. The orators of the South have gone North and have eloquently described this terrible problem, and the press of the South has flamed with it, and grave Senators from that section have painted it in most distressing colors. Problem, problem, race problem, negro problem, has, as Junius says, fitted through their sentences in all the mazes of metaphorical confusion.

. . . The true problem is not the negro, but the nation. Not the law-abiding blacks of the South, but the white men of that section, who by fraud, violence, and persecution, are breaking the law, trampling on the Constitution, corrupting the ballot-box, and defeating the ends of justice. The true problem is whether these white ruffians shall be allowed by the nation to go on in their lawless and nefarious career, dishonoring the Government and making its very name a mockery. It is whether this nation has in itself sufficient moral stamina to maintain its own honor and integrity by vindicating its own Constitution and fulfilling its own pledges, or whether it has already touched that dry rot of moral depravity by which nations decline and fall, and governments fade and vanish.

Douglass shows how the deceptive tactics of southern "Resurrectionists" agitated the North through exaggerated rhetoric by using race to portray and define the problem as Black and extreme. While race continues to be a problem in America today, one that is present in a number of different manifestations, Critical Race Theorists exploit narratives, history, stories, current events, data, and anecdotes to create an ominous portrayal of systemic racism as a ubiquitous yet flawed threat to American society writ large. But notice Douglass's charge: to preserve and defend the integrity of the Constitution with truth, fidelity, and moral courage! By making this a Constitutional issue, Douglass has expanded the scope of the problem from a regional North-South dynamic to a national one vis-à-vis the Constitution, civil rights, and the federal government. Douglass makes this explicitly clear in the next section, as he presses the matter further with his own brand of today's intersectionality. In the following, he directly appeals to the cause of women's suffrage to make the case that equality, under the banner of civil rights, is federally protected and, therefore, morally defensible.

Our American women are asking for a sixteenth amendment to the Constitution, whereby they may vote. They ought to have it. If the American people shall adopt such an amendment, the women problem will cease to exist.

In like manner, when the negro was declared free by the highest authority in the land, when the whole system of his bondage was broken up, when he was invested by the organic law of the land with the title, dignity and immunity of an American citizen, and when it was declared that any discrimination made by any State against him on account of race or color was unlawful, I hold that his race condition could no longer be consider a problem. The thing was done: it was finished. The nation had taken its position and all the parts of the nation must ultimately adjust themselves to the whole. The individual States may be great, but the United States is greater. The mountain will not and cannot go to Mahomet, so Mahomet must and will in the end go to the mountain. Herein is the ground of my hope.

....The time may never come this side the millennium when men will not ask "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" But what business has government, State or National, with these prejudice? Why should grave statesmen concern themselves with them? The business of government is to hold its broad shield over all and to see that every American citizen is alike and equally protected in his civil and personal rights. My confidence is strong and high in the nation as a whole. I believe in its justice and in its power. I believe that it means to keep its word with its colored citizens. I believe in its progress, in its moral as well as its material civilization. Its trend is in the right direction. Its fundamental principles are sound. Its conception of humanity and of human rights is clear and comprehensive. Its progress is fettered by no State religion tending to repress liberal thought: by no order of nobility tending to keep down the toiling masses: by no divine right theory tending to national stagnation under the idea of stability. It stands out free and clear with nothing to obstruct its view of the lessons of reason and experience.

The Race Problem by Frederick Douglass is refreshing because it reinforces core American principles and ideals and offers the kind of timeless and transcendent thinking that is desperately needed today to restore the efficacy of equality and the Constitution. As Douglass battled southern racists and the Democratic Party, he was clear-eyed and unapologetic in his fidelity to and support for the Republican Party who paved the way for emancipation and civil rights for African Americans nationally.

I affirm that while the National Government shall remain in the hands of the Republican party and under the principles of that party, no State will or can permanently disfranchise any of its citizens because of race or color or previous condition. Attempts may be made to do this, but the race problem in that respect is solved, and the case cannot be permanently reopened.

For Douglass, this was a monumental triumph by the federal government and The United States over the tyranny of individual states, for these states alone did the unthinkable by seceding from the Union to form a Confederacy that trampled over the authority of the Constitution and basic human rights to uphold and prosper from an evil and unjust system we know as chattel slavery, a system that indelibly harmed America and African Americans to this day. Through Douglass, however, we can unite as Americans by fiercely defending the sanctity of equality as protected by our Constitution and thereby use Douglass to champion equality over the hazards of equity and all that it seeks to undo through Critical Race Theory.