By John & Nisha Whitehead
“What
country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not
warned from time to time that their people preserve the
spirit of resistance?”—Thomas
Jefferson
What exactly are Americans
celebrating this Fourth of July?
Two
hundred and fifty years after the Declaration of
Independence proclaimed that all people possess inalienable
rights, we now live under a government that increasingly
behaves as though rights belong to the government to
distribute, restrict and revoke as it sees
fit.
Freedom has become conditional.
Equal
justice under law has become selective.
Constitutional
rights have become political bargaining
chips.
Government now claims the authority to decide
which religious beliefs deserve accommodation and
which may be excluded—a clear violation of the First
Amendment’s warning against both establishing a religion
and favoring or disfavoring one religion over
another.
It insists that some speakers deserve
constitutional protection while
others may be censored, surveilled or punished—a
violation of the right to free speech.
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It proclaims
itself the defender
of unborn life while dismantling
programs that protect the health and welfare of children
already born.
It welcomes
some immigrants with extraordinary speed while denying
others the full measure of due process promised by the
Constitution.
It pays
lip service to equality under law while dismantling
programs designed to ensure equal opportunity and root out
discrimination.
It invokes the sanctity of children
while narrowing which children may claim the birthright
citizenship guaranteed
by the Fourteenth Amendment.
It insists that no
one is above the law while expanding
presidential immunity and removing many of the
traditional checks on executive power.
None of these
contradictions exists in isolation.
Together they
reveal a dangerous shift in the relationship between the
citizen and the state.
Rights that the Declaration of
Independence described as inalienable are increasingly
treated as permissions—granted when convenient, withheld
when inconvenient, and interpreted according to political
priorities rather than constitutional principle.
That
is not merely bad policy.
It is a repudiation of the
American Revolution, because the Revolution began with one
radical claim: freedom is our birthright.
To listen to
those in power, however, freedom is a privilege reserved for
a select few: the politically favored, the ideologically
acceptable, the obedient, the compliant, the
useful.
The Declaration of Independence advanced a
very different idea: that all people are endowed by their
Creator with certain unalienable rights.
That was the
real revolution.
America’s founders may have
disagreed—often grievously and hypocritically—about who
qualified as “the people,” but they were united in one
essential conviction: our rights do not come from
government.
The government exists to serve
us.
Government exists to safeguard and protect
our inalienable rights—not ration them, redefine them or
revoke them.
That distinction matters.
Once
government is allowed to decide whose rights count, rights
cease to be rights at all.
They become
privileges.
And privileges can always be
revoked.
For 250 years, Americans have treated the
Declaration of Independence as the nation’s birth
certificate, but the Declaration was never merely a birth
certificate—it was a warning label.
It was written
by people who understood that freedom is fragile, power is
relentless, and no generation remains free simply because an
earlier generation fought for liberty.
The Declaration
was not a celebration of government.
It was an
indictment of government.
It catalogued the abuses of
a ruler who had placed himself above the law, treated the
people as subjects rather than sovereigns, undermined
representative government, obstructed justice, maintained
standing armies, imposed surveillance, abused power and
waged war against the very people he claimed to
govern.
The names have changed. The machinery has
changed. The technology has changed.
The danger has
not.
That is why the Constitution matters.
The
Constitution translated the warnings of the Declaration into
law.
Through separated powers, checks and balances,
federalism, and a Bill of Rights, the founders sought to
bind government down with what Thomas Jefferson called “the chains of
the Constitution.”
James Madison understood that
the greatest threat to liberty would not come from a foreign
king but from our own government if left
unchecked.
“If
men were angels,” Madison famously observed, “no
government would be necessary.”
Because those
entrusted with power are not angels, the
Constitution—especially the Bill of Rights—was designed
to restrain it.
The Constitution assumes that power
will seek to expand. That is why it divides power. That is
why it checks power.
That is why it places certain
freedoms beyond the reach of government majorities,
executive decrees, judicial maneuvering and political
convenience.
Yet those constitutional restraints are
increasingly being loosened—not by formal amendment, but
by precedent, emergency powers, executive practice,
bureaucratic discretion and public indifference.
The
warnings are no longer theoretical.
Even the judiciary
has increasingly become part of that
transformation.
Rather than serving as a reliable
constitutional brake on concentrated power, the U.S. Supreme
Court has repeatedly removed barriers that once restrained
the executive branch: presidential
immunity, limits
on nationwide injunctions, and expanded
presidential power to fire independent agency
officials.
Each decision may be explained on its own
legal reasoning. Together they tell a larger constitutional
story: the presidency grows stronger, while the people’s
ability to restrain it grows weaker.
In Trump
v. United States, the Court declared that presidents
enjoy sweeping immunity from criminal prosecution for
official acts, placing many exercises of executive power
beyond the reach of laws that govern every other
citizen.
In Trump
v. CASA, the Court curtailed
the power of lower federal courts to issue nationwide
injunctions, making it more difficult to halt
unconstitutional executive actions before they take effect
across the country.
In Trump
v. Slaughter, the Court expanded presidential
control over supposedly independent agencies by
strengthening the president’s power to remove agency
officials.
Even where the Court has reaffirmed
constitutional protections—as it did in rejecting
the Trump administration’s attempt to undermine birthright
citizenship—it has still left intact a dangerous
constitutional reality: executive overreach can move faster
than meaningful accountability.
The founders would
have recognized this danger immediately. They had just
fought a revolution against concentrated executive
power.
Tyranny today may no longer look like King
George III, but it is no less dangerous when it arrives
wrapped in the language of national security, public safety,
emergency management, border control, religious liberty, law
and order, governmental efficiency and executive
necessity.
It promises protection while steadily
expanding surveillance, policing, executive discretion and
bureaucratic control. It wraps itself in flags. It quotes
Scripture. It invokes patriotism. It salutes the
troops.
It speaks the language of freedom while making
freedom conditional on obedience.
Thomas Jefferson
would have recognized the pattern.
If Jefferson were
drafting the Declaration of Independence today, the list of
grievances would look strikingly familiar.
Instead of
protesting quartered soldiers, he would likely protest
militarized police forces equipped like occupying
armies.
Instead of denouncing general warrants, he
would condemn dragnet surveillance, geofence searches,
facial recognition technology and warrantless tracking
capable of monitoring millions of innocent
people.
Instead of objecting to arbitrary searches of
homes and papers, he would confront a government that can
peer into our phones, financial records, online
communications, travel histories and biometric data with
astonishing ease.
Instead of warning against standing
armies, he would question a permanent national security
apparatus that wages endless wars abroad while steadily
importing the tactics of war into policing at
home.
Instead of protesting taxation without
representation, he might challenge an administrative state
that increasingly governs through executive orders,
emergency declarations and unelected bureaucracies insulated
from meaningful public accountability.
Instead of
condemning the obstruction of justice, he would confront a
system in which courts too often defer to power, Congress
too often abdicates its authority, and presidents
increasingly insist they may act first and answer later—if
they answer at all.
Instead of accusing a distant
monarch of placing himself above the law, he would confront
a constitutional system in which the presidency has become
imperial, the bureaucracy has become unaccountable, the
surveillance state has become omnipresent, and the citizen
has been reduced to a suspect, a data point, a taxpayer, a
voter, a consumer and, too often, a pawn.
The
machinery of power has grown unimaginably more
sophisticated, but the central question remains exactly the
same: who governs—the people or the government
itself?
This is why the Fourth of July
matters.
It was never intended as a celebration of
government power. It is a celebration of liberty and
self-government—the moment ordinary people declared that
no ruler, no legislature, no court and no army should ever
become too powerful to challenge.
That is precisely
the principle now being tested.
Nowhere has this
inversion of constitutional government been more visible
than under the Trump administration, where rights
increasingly appear to depend not on constitutional
principle but on political identity, ideological conformity
and executive preference.
The danger is not simply
that government power is expanding. It is that government is
claiming the authority to decide who possesses
constitutional rights and who does not.
Freedom of
speech, but only for those whose speech government approves.
Religious liberty, but only for the beliefs those in power
favor. Due process, but only for the people government
considers worthy. Equal protection, but only for the
politically acceptable. Citizenship, but only for the babies
government chooses to recognize. Accountability, but only
for ordinary citizens and not for presidents cloaked in
immunity.
This is how constitutional government is
hollowed out.
Not all at once.
Not always with
tanks in the streets.
Not always with a formal
suspension of the Constitution.
Liberty rarely
vanishes in one dramatic act. It recedes
gradually—emergency by emergency, exception by exception,
court ruling by court ruling, executive order by executive
order, crisis by crisis.
It disappears when due
process becomes optional, habeas corpus is treated as
expendable, speech is chilled, surveillance becomes routine,
government secrecy expands, religious freedom becomes
selective, citizenship becomes negotiable, oversight bodies
can be fired at will, and executive power grows while
meaningful accountability contracts.
It disappears
when “we the people” grow so accustomed to fusion
centers, surveillance cameras, geofence warrants,
AI-assisted policing, militarized SWAT raids, civil asset
forfeiture, government watchlists, facial recognition
systems, warrantless tracking, endless wars, executive
decrees and perpetual states of emergency that
constitutional government becomes little more than a
ceremonial ideal.
The most dangerous lie of the modern
police state is not that government possesses extraordinary
powers—it is that those powers are necessary, permanent
and beyond question.
Every emergency becomes
justification for another exception. Every crisis becomes an
opportunity to normalize another expansion of authority.
Temporary measures become permanent
institutions.
Extraordinary powers become ordinary
tools of government. And while the machinery of control
expands, the machinery of distraction conspires to keep us
from focusing on the government’s self-serving corruption,
power grabs and abuses.
Authoritarian regimes require
a populace that is too distracted—by spectacle, by
outrage, by entertainment, by partisan tribalism, by endless
political theater, by what the Romans called bread and
circuses, by what we might call militainment—to get
outraged enough to do something about the theft of their
liberties.
When so-called representatives of the
people celebrate
power more than liberty, spectacle more than substance,
and obedience more than accountability, that is not
patriotism. It is conditioning.
The founders
understood the danger of that conditioning. They distrusted
concentrated power, feared standing armies, insisted on
constitutional restraint and placed sovereignty not in
rulers but in the people.
They pledged allegiance not
to personalities, parties or power, but to enduring ideals
and principles.
The founders did not create
freedom.
What they created was a constitutional
framework designed to preserve it.
Whether that
framework survives depends upon whether the American people
continue using it.
As America approaches its 250th
anniversary, the most important question is not whether the
nation survived.
The real question is whether the
principles that inspired the Revolution have survived as
well.
Have we preserved the belief that government
derives its just powers from the consent of the governed?
Have we preserved the conviction that no one is above the
law? Have we preserved the understanding that liberty
requires eternal vigilance?
Or have we quietly
accepted the idea that rights exist only at the pleasure of
those in power?
If we truly wish to honor the spirit
of 1776, we must restore the constitutional restraints that
made liberty possible in the first place.
Bind the
government, including the president, down with the chains of
the Constitution.
James Madison understood that
written constitutions alone cannot preserve
liberty.
Rights written on paper become little more
than “parchment barriers” unless the people insist that
those limits be honored.
The Constitution cannot
defend itself. Neither can freedom.
That was the
lesson of independence.
It remains the warning of our
time.
The unfinished work of the American Revolution
was never about building a stronger government. It was about
preserving a free people capable of restraining their
government.
Two hundred and fifty years ago, Jefferson
wrote that governments derive “their just powers from the
consent of the governed.”
He did not write that
governments derive their powers from fear. Or emergency. Or
efficiency. Or surveillance. Or military strength. Or
presidential immunity. Or partisan loyalty.
He wrote
that governments exist to secure rights that already belong
to the people.
The generation of 1776 pledged “their
Lives, their Fortunes and their sacred Honor” because they
understood that liberty would never preserve
itself.
Our generation is unlikely to be asked to sign
another Declaration of Independence.
But we are being
asked something just as consequential: whether we will
preserve the constitutional safeguards entrusted to us or
quietly surrender them for the promise of security,
efficiency and political victory.
Every generation
inherits the Revolution unfinished.
Every generation
must decide whether to continue its work—or abandon
it.
As I make clear in Battlefield
America: The War on the American People and its
fictional counterpart The
Erik Blair Diaries, freedom does not defend
itself.
Thus, the question before us is no longer
whether America has reached its 250th birthday. The question
is whether Americans still believe what made that birthday
worth celebrating in the first place.
Preserving that
birthright is our responsibility.
The Constitution is
not self-enforcing.
Courts will not always protect
liberty. Congress will not always defend its authority.
Presidents will rarely surrender power
voluntarily.
Which leaves only one remaining guardian
of constitutional government: We the people.
WC:
2378
Constitutional attorney and author John W.
Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford
Institute. His latest books The
Erik Blair Diaries and Battlefield
America: The War on the American People are
available at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at
johnw@rutherford.org. Nisha Whitehead is the Executive
Director of The Rutherford Institute. Information about The
Rutherford Institute is available at www.rutherford.org.
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