As we celebrate our Declaration of Independence from England, have we lost the spirit that drove the revolt? Or do we still have that irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom that Samuel Adams spoke so thoughtfully of?
As we celebrate our Declaration of Independence from England, have we lost the spirit that drove the revolt? Or do we still have that irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom that Samuel Adams spoke so thoughtfully of?
As we celebrate our Declaration of Independence from England, have we lost the spirit that drove the revolt? Or do we still have that irate, tireless minority keen on setting brushfires of freedom that Samuel Adams spoke so thoughtfully of?
Hello, everybody, and thank you for tuning in to the Liberty Report.
With me today is Daniel McAdams.
Daniel, good to have you here today.
Thank you, sir.
Good to be with you.
This is 4th of July.
Oh, no, it's not 4th of July.
This is July 3rd.
But it looks like a lot of people are getting the day off, so a lot of people are going to have a long celebration, the 3rd, the 4th, the 5th, and who knows, somebody will probably want Monday off as well.
But anyway, we are going to talk about that because not only is it an important day in our history, it was an important day for all of history.
The shot that was heard around the world, and you know, it ushered in a special age, and we still celebrate this.
But, you know, I have a little problem.
I love the celebration of what our founders stood for and why they did not like the British rule.
But then again, I come across with a little bit of sadness because I'm looking at what's happening today, and things aren't going all that well.
There's a lot of problems.
It looks like we're undoing so much, you know, of what has gone on.
And I know you've looked at this a good bit about some of our problems, you know, both domestic and foreign.
But what kind of comparisons would you make today compared to what the founders and the colonists were fighting against in the British?
Well, you know, at its essence, really, the revolt against the British was a tax revolt, taxation without representation.
But, you know, we don't know if we had a graphic showing the levels of taxation, the types of taxation under King George, versus unfortunately what we have today.
And it's, you know, I think it's something like 1 to 2% on a certain couple of items.
And now we have this massive tax burden on us as individuals.
And so it seems like we've lost that essential spirit.
Yeah, and the spirit was alive and well.
And I've often mentioned that the spirit was strong because the settlements, you know, for a couple hundred years almost, almost a couple hundred years, was built by their hands.
They came without much and they didn't get government subsidies.
I mean, as time went on, it became more corrupt and the government got bigger and all.
But these settlers, they were independent, and they had their shortcomings on some of their religious ideas and how that should be handled.
But they were self-efficient, self-sufficient, and they took care of themselves.
So I could understand why that group of individuals would resent this over-intrusiveness of the federal government.
But you know, the original Tea Party occurred on December 16th, 1773.
And this was, of course, leading up to Concord in Lexington and the shot heard around the world.
But I don't know if you recall there was a campaign of recent age where there was a modern-day Tea Party movement going, started on December 16th, and it was like 2007.
Do you recall that?
I do remember that.
So, yeah, that happened in our presidential campaign.
But since that time, I think the Tea Party has actually morphed a bit.
It's interesting how there are parallels between these two.
Yeah, something else.
But anyway, the British didn't like that.
So they reacted with what they called the Coercive Acts.
And that was a year later in 1974, in March of 1977, 1774.
And they came in with some things.
And these are the things that were in it.
First, they said that they couldn't quarter their troops in the houses of the colonists.
That probably didn't go over too big.
They also said that the military now would be exempt from any prosecution.
They were immune.
And they closed the port, sanctions, punished the people of Boston for what they were doing.
And they denied them public meetings, their town hall meetings, which were crucial in those days.
They declined.
Challenging Ideological War00:08:37
So you can see the animosity building up.
So by the time of Lexington, which was in 1775, there was this major confrontation.
Of course, the governor, the British governor of Massachusetts, who had been around a good bit, and he was involved in charge of the troops when they were going to punish these rebellious colonists.
So when they were marching on there and it was recognized, General Gage had recognized that he had lost this, a movie was made of this called Johnny Trevain.
And it was a book written in 1943 and then a movie came out in 1957, shows how young people were involved.
They even had the story in there, I don't know how authentic this was, that it was the young people that the teenagers went in and threw all that tea off the boat.
And the older instigator and philosophers, you know, pushed him into doing this.
But nevertheless, they did this.
But in the movie, it's very interesting that General Gage, at the end, when he realized, you know, how poorly things had gone, they actually lost.
And I think he sensed the war was already over, and yet it was just beginning.
But I want to read a quote from the movie said by Gage, and let's hope these were his true sentiments, because it's a great quote.
And let me just read that.
Because it sort of sets the stage for that period of time.
He says, you see those campfires, gentlemen?
Yesterday we ruled over Boston.
Tonight, we are besieged in it.
And still they come from every village and farm.
Tonight, 10,000.
Tomorrow, perhaps twice 10,000.
We've experienced more than a defeat, more than a misfortune of war.
We have been vanquished by an idea, a belief in human rights.
So that, of course, is something that we have talked about for a long time.
And one of the reasons why these ideas are so important, you know, Samuel Johnson, I've used his quote quite frequently about Samuel Adams, that's obviously the case.
But he mentioned about it, don't worry too much about getting a majority.
You have to get majority support, but that's not where the fight is.
And Leonard Reed was very good at this, the founder of the FEF Foundation.
But he said, what you need is a tireless, irate minority keen on starting brushfire in the minds of men.
And I think that is just great.
So when we look at so often today, we look at it, well, why are these majorities electing these clowns?
You know, it's been going on for years and years, and they're doing nothing but harm, starting wars and wasting money, running up debt, and violating our civil liberties.
Why do we do this?
And just throw up their hands.
And I can understand why.
Yeah, I think the words of Samuel Adams should encourage us because it's easy to get discouraged.
And I was looking on InfoWars this morning website and they had a kind of a man in the street interview where they asked average Americans what was Independence Day about, what was what happened in 1776.
Most people couldn't get it right, couldn't get it straight.
They even cited a poll in 2011 that only 58% of residents knew the U.S. declared independence in 1976.
And a quarter of the U.S. citizens have no idea who we declared independence from.
So it's easy to get discouraged, but then you return to this minority, this dedicated minority.
And like I said, we shouldn't be discouraged by that.
We should be challenged by it because ideas are powerful.
And even back then, there's a lot of question about the popular vote during this period of time that we're talking about.
Because I think it went back and forth.
One day they were for the British and one day they were for the revolutionaries.
But eventually, of course, the ideas prevailed.
And the idea was that of liberty.
So what can we say about the ideas that drive us today?
Because ideas are very influential, both good and bad.
Ideology drove fascism and communism.
So where do you think we are today on our ideology that Washington seems to follow?
Well, I certainly think thanks to your campaigns and your tireless efforts all these years that there is that dedicated minority and certainly others have done quite a bit as well.
But, you know, looking around, it is discouraging.
You know, we have these revelations that the government, how they feel about us, they spy on us.
They tax us so much more than King George did.
The U.S. Empire is active overseas.
Even our own Fourth of July holiday, they try to ruin by telling us we have to be terrified that we're about to be attacked, and they're the only ones who can protect us.
So if you look at the majority and how they view the government, it is a little bit discouraging.
Well, if there's one word that sort of invites people to be patriotic and supportive, is that we have a moral obligation to spread our goodness, our exceptionalism.
And certainly the ideas of the founders did spread and other countries wanted to do it.
The French wanted to do it.
It didn't work out so well there.
But today, people endorse this movement, and it's not one party, although George W. really pushed this exceptionalism.
And we have to spread democracy and have constant war against terrorism.
And so this exceptionalism is equivalent to at times spreading democracy.
They say, we have to spread democracy, which contradicts what the founders were wanting.
It's almost viewed as unpatriotic if you oppose this twisted idea of exceptionalism.
When we were talking about the show before, you said something that really struck me, and I guess I hadn't thought of it this way.
You said our revolution in 1976, starting in 76, was unique because it was one of the very few in history that ushered in something better than it replaced.
And that really is very interesting.
Yeah, that is the case, but like I said, we should celebrate that.
And maybe we shouldn't be sad, but we should be energized.
We should recognize the truth and become energized and reassured that with ideas we can change this.
But we live in a country today where democracy is to be spread by force and we're to go around the world and start wars.
Preemptive war is part of the American spirit and nobody challenges it.
Well, where are the progressives?
Where are our progressive allies against these?
We have so few of them.
And right now, it's very difficult to find the champions of what Samuel Adams and others were really pushing back in those early years.
But I want to thank everybody for tuning in on this July 3rd, almost July 4th, to visit with us on the subject of our independence and stop and think and realize that it should be a time for us to reassert our determination to promote the real American Revolution and not the modern day revolution of exceptionalism and pure democracy and using force around the world.
And we live in an age today where we are told that we are going to be attacked any minute by a terrorist from who knows where.
And anything we see, we have to see it, we have to report it.
At the same time, from my viewpoint, the greatest threat to us comes from our own government.
Our own government spying on us, taxing us to death, regulating us, controlling our children, and on and on.
I believe the conditions are manyfold worse than they were when the American spirit of liberty challenged the British Empire.
But we don't have a British Empire to challenge.
We have ourselves to challenge, and that challenge has to be ideological.
The ideas of liberty are firm and the people understand it, and we have a tool to spread it.
So let us be thankful that we have this opportunity.
So far, they may spy on our meetings, but they haven't closed our meetings down yet.
So keep up the spirit of liberty, and I'm sure some good things can come from it.