Category: History

Let’s Talk 9/11, Then and Now

“Stop crying. I have to get these people out safely. If something happens to me, I want you to know I’ve never been happier. You made my life.” —Rick Rescorla, on the phone to his wife from the South Tower

September 11, 2001 was a day unlike any other.

You read that date right. After weeks of research done completely behind my girlfriend’s back, I pulled out my Visa and put the recommended two months’ salary into a diamond engagement ring. This being (barely) the 21st Century, and me being a technophile seemingly since birth, of course I did the whole thing online.

The ring would FedEx to me overnight from Seattle to Colorado Springs the next day, but I wasn’t really concerned about how long it would take. I had an engagement plan brewing that revolved around her birthday in November, so there was plenty of time. Melissa honestly had no idea about any of it, but that’s a story for another day.

I stayed up well past my customary midnight bedtime. Because, yes, I was more than a little excited to get the tracking number that would make everything seem that much more real. That’s why I was still dead asleep when the phone rang at the most uncivilized time of 7:45 a.m.

There was probably as much irritation as sleep in my voice when I said, “Hello?”

“Turn on the TV,” my mom said without any introduction.

“Which channel?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“Oh, s***,” I may or may not have said out loud, before leaping out of bed, running down to the ground floor of my little townhouse, and turning on the TV. And there they were, the Twin Towers, burning and spitting out incomprehensible plumes of smoke.

Mom filled me in quickly on what little she knew, but it was clear that barbarians had attacked us in the most dastardly way — and at the heart of the world’s greatest city.

Too little sleep and too much coffee and far too much shock don’t exactly add up to perfect memories, but one moment still stands out clearly these 25 years later.

“Where’s the tower?” I asked Mom, and it must have been right around 8 a.m. when the South Tower collapsed. We tried to puzzle it out, even with all that smoke — dear God, there was so much, and what we couldn’t know was how much of it was dust from the collapsed building — we should have been able to see a freaking skyscraper on TV.

But it was gone. Half an hour later, the North Tower gave up its struggle to remain standing and joined its twin.

Later we would learn of the heroes who rose to the occasion of 9/11. The New York City firefighters who gave all. The prescient Morgan Stanley vice president of security, Rick Rescorla, who spent years training the employees under his care for such an event — and who then died trying to save just a few more when the South Tower fell. The civilians of Flight 93 who sacrificed themselves rather than allow their plane to be used in yet another attack. The rescue efforts at the struck Pentagon. And so many others.

There would be hell to pay after, and there was.

But first… trying to comprehend the incomprehensible.

It’s been a quarter of a century, but some scenes from that morning have lost none of their power. The jumpers still fill me with equal measures of sorrow, anger, shock, and even understanding.

Watch. I insist:

In all, around 200 people jumped or fell, or roughly one person either falling or jumping every 30 seconds for more than an hour and a half between the first hit and the second collapse. The narrator in this clip called them “the only visible fatalities in a day that claimed thousands.”

The World Trade Center, particularly the Twin Towers, said something about New York City, about the United States of America, that no other country could match.

We built the world’s tallest building in the world’s greatest city — and we built another one just like it right next door.

Because we could.

The Towers defined the glorious New York City skyline from when I first really became aware of it at the ripe old age of seven during our nation’s Bicentennial celebration. They were as permanent as any other fixture you could imagine, except possibly the Moon.

Then somebody else decided to knock the Towers down because their god told them to. They couldn’t build, but they sure knew how to destroy. Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda had a 7th Century theocratic mindset with a postmodern sadist’s ability to imagine all-new ways to murder, using a superior civilization’s own tools against it.

If we’ve learned anything in the last quarter century, it’s that bin Laden’s vision is murderously and frustratingly common.

“No more forever wars.”

I wish.

Tell that to countless imams in the so-called Dar al-Salam (House of Peace) and their followers. But they won’t listen because to them, we live in the Dar al-Harb (House of War).

Sorry, but those are the facts. Islam has “bloody borders,” as historian Samuel Huntington warned us in 1993 — the year of the first Muslim attack on the World Trade Center — and you can’t build a wall against airliners, drones, or nuclear-tipped missiles.

The best we can hope for is a deadly game of whack-a-mole. The worst? My hope in 2001 was that we could subdue the worst elements of Dar al-Salam without resorting to nuclear weapons — mostly because I don’t want us becoming them. That’s still my hope.

Hope is not a plan, nor is it a prediction.

We’ve gone 25 years without another 9/11. No matter what mistakes we made in Afghanistan, Iraq, or perhaps even now in Iran (the jury is still out), that one simple fact stands as a testament that we’ve sure as hell gotten an awful lot right since approximately 9/12/2001.

Let us speak now of New York City on 9/11/2026.

There’s a new tower near enough where the Twin Towers once stood, and I suppose it’s technically more attractive than they ever were. But what One World Trade Center adds in grace and sparkle, it lacks in sheer impressive authority. For that, you must visit the 9/11 memorial that leaves in place the footprints of the original towers, gone 25 years now.

Also, I hate the name. The dreamy “One World” haze of the post-Cold War collapsed with the towers on 9/11, and I’d banish that phrase from the English language if I could.

But those are mere nits compared to the city’s current mayor, Zohran Mamdani, the previously ne’er-do-well son of prosperous “migrants” from India via Uganda. Mamdani is both Muslim and socialist, representing the two most powerful and anti-American theologies to be found anywhere in the world today — and now even in Gracie Mansion.

“We noticed the smirk as Mayor Mamdani made sure that a pen used to sign a commemoration for the 9/11 victims’ families was publicly handed, not to a family member, but to a man who acted as an attorney for a terrorist,” PJ Media’s own Victoria Taft wrote earlier this week, and if she were writing fiction, a sharp editor would dismiss it as too wildly unbelievable.

But that’s not all.

Mamdani’s socialist policies will likely burn themselves out, as these things do. But his attempts at rewriting history — at recasting Muslims as the real victims of 9/11 — could prove to have real staying power, as my PJ colleagues have reported for more than a year.

Now, Mamdani chose this of all weeks to release 170,000 pages of internal reports “that show officials misled people about the safety of the air around Ground Zero after the September 11 terror attacks,” as The Independent put it.

Of course the air was poisoned. Anyone with eyes knew that. Our first responders went in anyway, and we owe them whatever they require. Nobody disputes any of that. That the city kept quiet all these years is hardly a point of pride, and I wouldn’t make such a fuss were it not for Mamdani’s timing.

When Mamdani said, “People got sick because the leaders they trusted lied and told them they were safe to breathe in toxic air,” it was his way of making things right. It’s his way of diminishing the heroic efforts of the city’s leadership in the hours and weeks after 9/11 — a virtual tearing down of statues, if you will.

“Every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right,” George Orwell wrote in 1984.

These are the actions of a Bolshevik seizing power, or an occupying army. Or, you know, the Mayor of New York City on the 25th anniversary of the city’s most horrific day.

Mamdani is, however, what a plurality of the people who bothered to vote chose, so what are you going to do? Apparently the city not only recovered from the shock of 9/11, but got a bad case of amnesia, too.

The enemy isn’t just inside the gates; he’s taken up residence in the halls of power.

But back to 9/11/2001.

At some point during that terrible day, it finally dawned on me that the air travel halt included the FedEx plane that might or might not already have my bride-to-be’s engagement ring loaded up — my entire future wrapped up in a tiny box that was grounded at some airport a thousand miles away.

A week later, the flights resumed and the ring arrived.

Imagine that your country is at war, you’re sitting on the sofa at the end of the day with the love of your life, and there’s an engagement ring stashed in the gun safe. You have one of those perfect moments together, and all you want to do is go get the ring and pop the question.

But you have a plan, so you let the moment pass. And in the next moment you’re back to dreading the next 9/11.

Her birthday arrives exactly on schedule, the plan comes together, and in that perfect moment she says yes.

9/11 couldn’t derail my proposal, but it was the start of a new career.

I checked out Andrew Sullivan’s blog that day — I’d read him since his days at The New Republic — and Sully led readers to a brand-new site called Instapundit.

Glenn Reynolds instantly became a regular read, and after a few weeks, I decided I’d launch a blog of my own just as soon as the engagement surprise/birthday/Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year’s madness was over.

“In January,” I told my fiancée around Christmas, “I’m going to start a blog.”

“A what?” she replied.

Yeah, it was that long ago.

And yet writing these words, watching those videos, it still feels like yesterday.

We mustn’t forget, but we also shouldn’t wallow. So that’s enough of 9/11 for now, and maybe enough for the next 25 years.

One last thing.

I was young when I started this, and I’ll be old before I stop — if then. All of us will continue looking back at that day, from time to time, but perhaps what’s most remarkable is how much we still look forward. Islamic terrorists were able to alter New York City’s skyline, but they couldn’t put so much as a dent in this American’s hopes.

1945 –
Even after the Commander of the First Imperial Guards Division, Lieutenant General Takeshi Mori, is killed for refusing to join the conspirators, who then issue false orders in his name, an attempted coup d’état against the Japanese government fails by early morning, when the vast majority of the Imperial Guards remain loyal to Emperor Hirohito.
The leaders of the failed coup commit suicide.
After signing the surrender document the previous night, the Imperial War Minister, General Korechika Anami commits suicide by seppuku.
The recording of Hirohito’s surrender announcement –The Jewel Voice Broadcast– is aired as scheduled.

The English translation of The Jewel Voice Broadcast, the surrender of Japan by Hirohito, the Showa emperor

July 16, 1945, 5:29 a.m. Mountain War Time

As part of the Manhattan Project, the test of an implosion design plutonium bomb -the same design as the Fat Man bomb later detonated over Nagasaki, Japan, on August 9, 1945  -was successful.

July 14, 1881…Fort Sumner, New Mexico Territory…

Sheriff Pat Garrett shot and killed Henry McCarty (Billy the Kid) escaped murderer…

Henry McCarty died and the legend of Billy the Kid was born

— Jim Wilson (@SheriffJim4445) July 14, 2026

Calvin Coolidge, Address at the Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Declaration of Independence in Philadelphia on July 5, 1926.

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

We meet to celebrate the birthday of America. The coming of a new life always excites our interest. Although we know in the case of the individual that it has been an infinite repetition reaching back beyond our vision, that only makes it the more wonderful. But how our interest and wonder increase when we behold the miracle of the birth of a new nation. It is to pay our tribute of reverence and respect to those who participated in such a mighty event that we annually observe the fourth day of July. Whatever may have been the impression created by the news which went out from this city on that summer day in 1776, there can be no doubt as to the estimate which is now placed upon it. At the end of 150 years the four corners of the earth unite in coming to Philadelphia as to a holy shrine in grateful acknowledgement of a service so great, which a few inspired men here rendered to humanity, that it is still the preeminent support of free government throughout the world.

Although a century and a half measured in comparison with the length of human experience is but a short time, yet measured in the life of governments and nations it ranks as a very respectable period. Certainly enough time has elapsed to demonstrate with a great deal of thoroughness the value of our institutions and their dependability as rules for the regulation of human conduct and the advancement of civilization. They have been in existence long enough to become very well seasoned. They have met, and met successfully, the test of experience.

It is not so much, then, for the purpose of undertaking to proclaim new theories and principles that this annual celebration is maintained, but rather to reaffirm and reestablish those old theories and principles which time and the unerring logic of events have demonstrated to be sound. Amid all the clash of conflicting interests, amid all the welter of partisan politics, every American can turn for solace and consolation to the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States with the assurance and confidence that those two great charters of freedom and justice remain firm and unshaken. Whatever perils appear, whatever dangers threaten, the Nation remains secure in the knowledge that the ultimate application of the law of the land will provide an adequate defense and protection.

It is little wonder that people at home and abroad consider Independence Hall as hallowed ground and revere the Liberty Bell as a sacred relic. That pile of bricks and mortar, that mass of metal, might appear to the uninstructed as only the outgrown meeting place and the shattered bell of a former time, useless now because of more modern conveniences, but to those who know they have become consecrated by the use which men have made of them. They have long been identified with a great cause. They are the framework of a spiritual event. The world looks upon them, because of their associations of one hundred and fifty years ago, as it looks upon the Holy Land because of what took place there nineteen hundred years ago. Through use for a righteous purpose they have become sanctified.

It is not here necessary to examine in detail the causes which led to the American Revolution. In their immediate occasion they were largely economic. The colonists objected to the navigation laws which interfered with their trade, they denied the power of Parliament to impose taxes which they were obliged to pay, and they therefore resisted the royal governors and the royal forces which were sent to secure obedience to these laws. But the conviction is inescapable that a new civilization had come, a new spirit had arisen on this side of the Atlantic more advanced and more developed in its regard for the rights of the individual than that which characterized the Old World. Life in a new and open country had aspirations which could not be realized in any subordinate position. A separate establishment was ultimately inevitable. It had been decreed by the very laws of human nature. Man everywhere has an unconquerable desire to be the master of his own destiny.

We are obliged to conclude that the Declaration of Independence represented the movement of a people. It was not, of course, a movement from the top. Revolutions do not come from that direction. It was not without the support of many of the most respectable people in the Colonies, who were entitled to all the consideration that is given to breeding, education, and possessions. It had the support of another element of great significance and importance to which I shall later refer. But the preponderance of all those who occupied a position which took on the aspect of aristocracy did not approve of the Revolution and held toward it an attitude either of neutrality or open hostility. It was in no sense a rising of the oppressed and downtrodden. It brought no scum to the surface, for the reason that colonial society had developed no scum. The great body of the people were accustomed to privations, but they were free from depravity. If they had poverty, it was not of the hopeless kind that afflicts great cities, but the inspiring kind that marks the spirit of the pioneer. The American Revolution represented the informed and mature convictions of a great mass of independent, liberty-loving, God-fearing people who knew their rights, and possessed the courage to dare to maintain them.

The Continental Congress was not only composed of great men, but it represented a great people. While its Members did not fail to exercise a remarkable leadership, they were equally observant of their representative capacity. They were industrious in encouraging their constituents to instruct them to support independence. But until such instructions were given they were inclined to withhold action.

While North Carolina has the honor of first authorizing its delegates to concur with other Colonies in declaring independence, it was quickly followed by South Carolina and Georgia, which also gave general instructions broad enough to include such action. But the first instructions which unconditionally directed its delegates to declare for independence came from the great Commonwealth of Virginia. These were immediately followed by Rhode Island and Massachusetts, while the other Colonies, with the exception of New York, soon adopted a like course.

This obedience of the delegates to the wishes of their constituents, which in some cases caused them to modify their previous positions, is a matter of great significance. It reveals an orderly process of government in the first place; but more than that, it demonstrates that the Declaration of Independence was the result of the seasoned and deliberate thought of the dominant portion of the people of the Colonies. Adopted after long discussion and as the result of the duly authorized expression of the preponderance of public opinion, it did not partake of dark intrigue or hidden conspiracy. It was well advised. It had about it nothing of the lawless and disordered nature of a riotous insurrection. It was maintained on a plane which rises above the ordinary conception of rebellion. It was in no sense a radical movement but took on the dignity of a resistance to illegal usurpations. It was conservative and represented the action of the colonists to maintain their constitutional rights which from time immemorial had been guaranteed to them under the law of the land.

When we come to examine the action of the Continental Congress in adopting the Declaration of Independence in the light of what was set out in that great document and in the light of succeeding events, we can not escape the conclusion that it had a much broader and deeper significance than a mere secession of territory and the establishment of a new nation. Events of that nature have been taking place since the dawn of history. One empire after another has arisen, only to crumble away as its constituent parts separated from each other and set up independent governments of their own. Such actions long ago became commonplace. They have occurred too often to hold the attention of the world and command the admiration and reverence of humanity. There is something beyond the establishment of a new nation, great as that event would be, in the Declaration of Independence which has ever since caused it to be regarded as one of the great charters that not only was to liberate America but was everywhere to ennoble humanity.

It was not because it was proposed to establish a new nation, but because it was proposed to establish a nation on new principles, that July 4, 1776, has come to be regarded as one of the greatest days in history. Great ideas do not burst upon the world unannounced. They are reached by a gradual development over a length of time usually proportionate to their importance. This is especially true of the principles laid down in the Declaration of Independence. Three very definite propositions were set out in its preamble regarding the nature of mankind and therefore of government. These were the doctrine that all men are created equal, that they are endowed with certain inalienable rights, and that therefore the source of the just powers of government must be derived from the consent of the governed.

If no one is to be accounted as born into a superior station, if there is to be no ruling class, and if all possess rights which can neither be bartered away nor taken from them by any earthly power, it follows as a matter of course that the practical authority of the Government has to rest on the consent of the governed. While these principles were not altogether new in political action, and were very far from new in political speculation, they had never been assembled before and declared in such a combination. But remarkable as this may be, it is not the chief distinction of the Declaration of Independence. The importance of political speculation is not to be underestimated, as I shall presently disclose. Until the idea is developed and the plan made there can be no action.

It was the fact that our Declaration of Independence containing these immortal truths was the political action of a duly authorized and constituted representative public body in its sovereign capacity, supported by the force of general opinion and by the armies of Washington already in the field, which makes it the most important civil document in the world. It was not only the principles declared, but the fact that therewith a new nation was born which was to be founded upon those principles and which from that time forth in its development has actually maintained those principles, that makes this pronouncement an incomparable event in the history of government. It was an assertion that a people had arisen determined to make every necessary sacrifice for the support of these truths and by their practical application bring the War of Independence to a successful conclusion and adopt the Constitution of the United States with all that it has meant to civilization.

The idea that the people have a right to choose their own rulers was not new in political history. It was the foundation of every popular attempt to depose an undesirable king. This right was set out with a good deal of detail by the Dutch when as early as July 26, 1581, they declared their independence of Philip of Spain. In their long struggle with the Stuarts the British people asserted the same principles, which finally culminated in the Bill of Rights deposing the last of that house and placing William and Mary on the throne. In each of these cases sovereignty through divine right was displaced by sovereignty through the consent of the people. Running through the same documents, though expressed in different terms, is the clear inference of inalienable rights. But we should search these charters in vain for an assertion of the doctrine of equality. This principle had not before appeared as an official political declaration of any nation. It was profoundly revolutionary. It is one of the corner stones of American institutions.

But if these truths to which the Declaration refers have not before been adopted in their combined entirety by national authority, it is a fact that they had been long pondered and often expressed in political speculation. It is generally assumed that French thought had some effect upon our public mind during Revolutionary days. This may have been true. But the principles of our Declaration had been under discussion in the Colonies for nearly two generations before the advent of the French political philosophy that characterized the middle of the eighteenth century. In fact, they come from an earlier date. A very positive echo of what the Dutch had done in 1581, and what the English were preparing to do, appears in the assertion of the Rev. Thomas Hooker, of Connecticut, as early as 1638, when he said in a sermon before the General Court that—

“The foundation of authority is laid in the free consent of the people.”

“The choice of public magistrates belongs unto the people by God’s own allowance.”

This doctrine found wide acceptance among the nonconformist clergy who later made up the Congregational Church. The great apostle of this movement was the Rev. John Wise, of Massachusetts. He was one of the leaders of the revolt against the royal governor Andros in 1687, for which he suffered imprisonment. He was a liberal in ecclesiastical controversies. He appears to have been familiar with the writings of the political scientist, Samuel Pufendorf, who was born in Saxony in 1632. Wise published a treatise, entitled “The Church’s Quarrel Espoused,” in 1710, which was amplified in another publication in 1717. In it he dealt with the principles of civil government. His works were reprinted in 1772 and have been declared to have been nothing less than a textbook of liberty for our Revolutionary fathers.

While the written word was the foundation, it is apparent that the spoken word was the vehicle for convincing the people. This came with great force and wide range from the successors of Hooker and Wise. It was carried on with a missionary spirit which did not fail to reach the Scotch-Irish of North Carolina, showing its influence by significantly making that Colony the first to give instructions to its delegates looking to independence. This preaching reached the neighborhood of Thomas Jefferson, who acknowledged that his “best ideas of democracy” had been secured at church meetings.

That these ideas were prevalent in Virginia is further revealed by the Declaration of Rights, which was prepared by George Mason and presented to the general assembly on May 27, 1776. This document asserted popular sovereignty and inherent natural rights, but confined the doctrine of equality to the assertion that “All men are created equally free and independent.” It can scarcely be imagined that Jefferson was unacquainted with what had been done in his own Commonwealth of Virginia when he took up the task of drafting the Declaration of Independence. But these thoughts can very largely be traced back to what John Wise was writing in 1710. He said, “Every man must be acknowledged equal to every man.” Again, “The end of all good government is to cultivate humanity and promote the happiness of all and the good of every man in all his rights, his life, liberty, estate, honor, and so forth. …” And again, “For as they have a power every man in his natural state, so upon combination they can and do bequeath this power to others and settle it according as their united discretion shall determine.” And still again, “Democracy is Christ’s government in church and state.” Here was the doctrine of equality, popular sovereignty, and the substance of the theory of inalienable rights clearly asserted by Wise at the opening of the eighteenth century, just as we have the principle of the consent of the governed stated by Hooker as early as 1638.

When we take all these circumstances into consideration, it is but natural that the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence should open with a reference to Nature’s God and should close in the final paragraphs with an appeal to the Supreme Judge of the world and an assertion of a firm reliance on Divine Providence. Coming from these sources, having as it did this background, it is no wonder that Samuel Adams could say “The people seem to recognize this resolution as though it were a decree promulgated from heaven.”

No one can examine this record and escape the conclusion that in the great outline of its principles the Declaration was the result of the religious teachings of the preceding period. The profound philosophy which Jonathan Edwards applied to theology, the popular preaching of George Whitefield, had aroused the thought and stirred the people of the Colonies in preparation for this great event. No doubt the speculations which had been going on in England, and especially on the Continent, lent their influence to the general sentiment of the times. Of course, the world is always influenced by all the experience and all the thought of the past. But when we come to a contemplation of the immediate conception of the principles of human relationship which went into the Declaration of Independence we are not required to extend our search beyond our own shores. They are found in the texts, the sermons, and the writings of the early colonial clergy who were earnestly undertaking to instruct their congregations in the great mystery of how to live. They preached equality because they believed in the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. They justified freedom by the text that we are all created in the divine image, all partakers of the divine spirit.

Placing every man on a plane where he acknowledged no superiors, where no one possessed any right to rule over him, he must inevitably choose his own rulers through a system of self-government. This was their theory of democracy. In those days such doctrines would scarcely have been permitted to flourish and spread in any other country. This was the purpose which the fathers cherished. In order that they might have freedom to express these thoughts and opportunity to put them into action, whole congregations with their pastors had migrated to the Colonies. These great truths were in the air that our people breathed. Whatever else we may say of it, the Declaration of Independence was profoundly American.

If this apprehension of the facts be correct, and the documentary evidence would appear to verify it, then certain conclusions are bound to follow. A spring will cease to flow if its source be dried up; a tree will wither if its roots be destroyed. In its main features the Declaration of Independence is a great spiritual document. It is a declaration not of material but of spiritual conceptions. Equality, liberty, popular sovereignty, the rights of man — these are not elements which we can see and touch. They are ideals. They have their source and their roots in the religious convictions. They belong to the unseen world. Unless the faith of the American people in these religious convictions is to endure, the principles of our Declaration will perish. We can not continue to enjoy the result if we neglect and abandon the cause.

We are too prone to overlook another conclusion. Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful. It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern. But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter. If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final. No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions. If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress. They are reactionary. Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

In the development of its institutions America can fairly claim that it has remained true to the principles which were declared 150 years ago. In all the essentials we have achieved an equality which was never possessed by any other people. Even in the less important matter of material possessions we have secured a wider and wider distribution of wealth. The rights of the individual are held sacred and protected by constitutional guaranties, which even the Government itself is bound not to violate. If there is any one thing among us that is established beyond question, it is self-government — the right of the people to rule. If there is any failure in respect to any of these principles, it is because there is a failure on the part of individuals to observe them. We hold that the duly authorized expression of the will of the people has a divine sanction. But even in that we come back to the theory of John Wise that “Democracy is Christ’s government.” The ultimate sanction of law rests on the righteous authority of the Almighty.

On an occasion like this a great temptation exists to present evidence of the practical success of our form of democratic republic at home and the ever-broadening acceptance it is securing abroad. Although these things are well known, their frequent consideration is an encouragement and an inspiration. But it is not results and effects so much as sources and causes that I believe it is even more necessary constantly to contemplate. Ours is a government of the people. It represents their will. Its officers may sometimes go astray, but that is not a reason for criticizing the principles of our institutions. The real heart of the American Government depends upon the heart of the people. It is from that source that we must look for all genuine reform. It is to that cause that we must ascribe all our results.

It was in the contemplation of these truths that the fathers made their declaration and adopted their Constitution. It was to establish a free government, which must not be permitted to degenerate into the unrestrained authority of a mere majority or the unbridled weight of a mere influential few. They undertook the balance these interests against each other and provide the three separate independent branches, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial departments of the Government, with checks against each other in order that neither one might encroach upon the other. These are our guaranties of liberty. As a result of these methods enterprise has been duly protected from confiscation, the people have been free from oppression, and there has been an ever-broadening and deepening of the humanities of life.

Under a system of popular government there will always be those who will seek for political preferment by clamoring for reform. While there is very little of this which is not sincere, there is a large portion that is not well informed. In my opinion very little of just criticism can attach to the theories and principles of our institutions. There is far more danger of harm than there is hope of good in any radical changes. We do need a better understanding and comprehension of them and a better knowledge of the foundations of government in general. Our forefathers came to certain conclusions and decided upon certain courses of action which have been a great blessing to the world. Before we can understand their conclusions we must go back and review the course which they followed. We must think the thoughts which they thought. Their intellectual life centered around the meeting-house. They were intent upon religious worship. While there were always among them men of deep learning, and later those who had comparatively large possessions, the mind of the people was not so much engrossed in how much they knew, or how much they had, as in how they were going to live. While scantily provided with other literature, there was a wide acquaintance with the Scriptures. Over a period as great as that which measures the existence of our independence they were subject to this discipline not only in their religious life and educational training, but also in their political thought. They were a people who came under the influence of a great spiritual development and acquired a great moral power.

No other theory is adequate to explain or comprehend the Declaration of Independence. It is the product of the spiritual insight of the people. We live in an age of science and of abounding accumulation of material things. These did not create our Declaration. Our Declaration created them. The things of the spirit come first. Unless we cling to that, all our material prosperity, overwhelming though it may appear, will turn to a barren sceptre in our grasp. If we are to maintain the great heritage which has been bequeathed to us, we must be like-minded as the fathers who created it. We must not sink into a pagan materialism. We must cultivate the reverence which they had for the things that are holy. We must follow the spiritual and moral leadership which they showed. We must keep replenished, that they may glow with a more compelling flame, the altar fires before which they worshiped.

The Declaration of Independence, What It Said and Meant

The Declaration of Independence