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Tuesday, July 4, 2023
How The Declaration Of Independence Inspired George Washington’s Underdog Army To Win
Most Americans celebrating the July 4 holiday today don’t fully realize that the power of ideas in the Declaration of Independence was the critical enabling factor for the Americans to win the War of Independence. Compared to the British professional military, the American colonial army was simply no match—it was undermanned, underfunded, underequipped, inexperienced, and undertrained. At the outset of the war, the British Royal Navy had 270 warships deployed in American waters, while the Continental Navy had seven ships.
On July 4, 1776, in what is now Manhattan, New York, Gen. George Washington was preparing for battle. He had no idea that a Declaration of Independence was being released in Philadelphia that day, as he pondered the sobering stream of British ships coming through the Narrows and anchoring off Staten Island in New York Harbor.
A month before, Washington had written a letter to his brother, saying: “We expect a very bloody summer of it in New York… If our cause is just, as I do most religiously believe it to be, the same Providence which in many instances appeared for us, will still go on to afford its aid.”
On July 4, 1776, in Philadelphia, it was also a somber day when those 56 members of the Continental Congress committed to signing the Declaration of Independence. Each knew that becoming a signatory put a death warrant on their heads for being a traitor to Great Britain.
Thus, the first Declaration of Independence that was signed on July 4 did not have signatures identifying the committed delegates. Rather, there were two signatures on that first document: John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, and Charles Thomson, secretary of the Continental Congress.
It took more than two weeks for the Declaration to be “engrossed”—that is, written on parchment in a clear hand. Many of the 56 delegates to the Continental Congress who had agreed to sign the document did so on August 2, but new delegates replaced some six of the original delegates and an additional seven delegates could not sign until many weeks later. Recognizing the long odds against the small and underequipped American colonial army defeating the British army and navy—the most formidable military force in the world—the Continental Congress decided to hold the 56-signatory Declaration for release at a later time.
Washington’s First Read of the Declaration
Washington was in New York preparing its defense when on July 6, 1776, a courier arrived to deliver a copy of the two-signature Declaration of Independence that had been released in Philadelphia several days before. Deeply moved by the power of the Declaration’s words, Washington ordered copies sent to all generals in the Continental Army and that chaplains be hired for every regiment to assure that, “every officer and man, will endeavor so to live and act, as becomes a Christian Soldier, defending the dearest Rights and Liberties of his country.”
Like the Mayflower Compact, the Declaration was a true covenant with God of absolute commitment, with its last sentence invoking: “with a firm reliance on the Protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”
Washington read the Declaration repeatedly and became so moved that, on July 9, he called a halt to his troops’ battle preparations and announced a respite and gathering to read the Declaration to his soldiers and the townspeople. The crowd hustled down to lower Manhattan, where they gazed out at a forest of masts of the British ships at anchor in New York harbor. After the reading, when a few of the rowdies in the group spotted a...
The 90 Miles Mystery Video: Nyctophilia Edition #1435 - Love For America Edition
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The 90 Miles Mystery Box: Episode #2131 - July 4th Independence Day!
You have come across a mystery box. But what is inside?
It could be literally anything from the serene to the horrific,
from the beautiful to the repugnant,
from the mysterious to the familiar.
If you decide to open it, you could be disappointed,
you could be inspired, you could be appalled.
This is not for the faint of heart or the easily offended.
You have been warned.
Monday, July 3, 2023
Supreme Court Ends the Last Vestige of ‘Systemic Racism’ in America
Oh, that wasn’t the way Thursday’s huge news was framed by MSNBC talking heads and New York Times editorialists? Curious, that.
It is true that the corporate media headlines emanating from Thursday’s consolidated opinion in this term’s twin affirmative action cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, would have you believe that the Court did something closely approximating the opposite of ending so-called “systemic racism” in America. Those wokesters, “identity politics” enthusiasts, Ibram X. Kendi-esque “anti-racism” proponents, Al Sharpton-style race hustlers, and the addlebrained president of the United States himself would all instead have us believe that a far-right, reactionary cabal of jurisprudential troglodytes on the High Court “set us back” on the issue of race. According to this popular narrative, the SFFA opinion is positively nightmarish; John Roberts might as well be a reincarnation of Roger Taney.
The fact that such a narrative exists – indeed, that it is so popular – says a great deal about the woeful state of intellectual honesty, and indeed basic ethical decency, on the American Left. (That very much includes the two vociferous dissenters in SFFA, Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson).
The outcome of SFFA, which mercifully overturns the Court’s muddled mess of affirmative action precedents going back four and a half decades, is every bit as much a vindication of the U.S. Constitution’s colorblindness as was last century’s epochal desegregation ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. The “sordid business” of race-conscious admissions decisions in American universities, to borrow from one of Roberts’ earliest notable writings during his Court tenure (League of United Latin American Citizens v. Perry, in 2006), has been vanquished in the name of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Even preceding the Constitution, the very equality principle – “We hold these truths to be self-evident …” – of Jefferson’s Declaration itself has been vindicated, as well.
In what world is that a fundamentally just result not worth celebrating?
Admissions officers at both public and private universities shall never again be legally permitted to explicitly take race into account when they make admissions decisions. If they do so anyway, they will now face personal liability and be subject to monetary damages. Sure, some officers will try to get creative and toe a very careful line, but how far can they really go when it is their own personal savings on the line? And as the chief justice himself clarified, in a delectable shot across the bow fired at Sotomayor and Jackson: “(D)espite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today. (A dissenting opinion is generally not the best source of legal advice on how to comply with the majority opinion.)”
SFFA is also a vindication of Justice Clarence Thomas, the greatest living American, who has been sounding the alarm on the perils of affirmative action for decades. As Thomas has repeatedly pointed out, and which he reiterated in his magisterial SFFA concurrence, the liberals and progressives who seek to “help” black and Hispanic applicants via affirmative action policies oftentimes do the precise opposite of...
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