In 1775 the shot heard round the world led to the birth of American liberty. This year the world has witnessed a presidential smirk that threatens to destroy it.
In the late eighteenth century American colonies were managed by an overbearing empire. They faced unprecedented taxes and regulations imposed without their consent by an authoritarian monarch.
The Crown’s contempt prompted the organisation a resistance movement known as the “Sons of Liberty.” On December 16, 1773 colonists protested a new tax by boarding British ships and dumping a cargo of tea into Boston Harbour. Imperial authorities regarded their actions as an insurrection.
The Crown punished its disobedient subjects. The port of Boston was closed. The Massachusetts Assembly was dissolved. Patriots were tried in biased royal courts and troops were quartered in colonial homes.
Tensions increased and Americans organised a continental congress. George III was asked to repeal his intolerable acts. But he did not respond.
On April 18, 1775, British troops marched out of Boston to confiscate arms being stockpiled by colonial militia in Concord, Massachusetts. Early the following morning they reached Lexington.
The imperial troops were confronted on the village green by American minute men. A shot was fired and a gun fight ensued. The British marched on to Concord where they encountered more resistance at the town’s North Bridge. Exchanging fire with militia along the way, they retreated back to Boston.
Decades later the clash at Lexington was memorialised by Ralph Waldo Emerson. The first stanza of his 1837 poem “Concord Hymn” reads:
By the rude bridge that arched the flood,Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,Here once the embattled farmers stoodAnd fired the shot heard round the world
The legendary musket discharge led to the birth of a free republic. The USA eventually emerged as the leading nation of the Western World--the best-ordered, most-tolerant, prosperous and strongest republic in modern world history.
For several decades America has been challenged by a new empire. The USA presently faces a self-serving cabal of dictators and ideologues whose ambitions go far beyond those of 18th century British mercantilists.
This hostile empire was conceived when Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published their blueprint for humanity known as The Communist Manifesto. Marxists launched a permanent war against human freedom and America now faces a clear and present danger.
In the 1980s President Ronald Reagan outwitted the USSR and demonstrated that a totalitarian regime can be overcome. But communism was not decisively defeated. The power of what Reagan described as an evil empire fell into the hands of the Chinese Communist Party and an international cabal of Marxist ideologues.
In 2016, a surprise American election outcome sent this self-serving global cabal into a frenzy. The world watched Donald Trump’s America First team perform like Sons of Liberty at an 18th century Tea Party.
President Trump threw piles of unwanted progressive cargo overboard. This included high taxes, stifling regulations, open borders, one-sided trade deals, job-killing green policies, endless involvement in foreign wars and corrupt ties to totalitarian regimes.
The sluggish economy produced by the uber-progressive and under-performing Obama–Biden administration was replaced by an economic renaissance and the rediscovery of the American dream.
The Left’s retaliation was swift and ferocious.
Trump was vilified by progressive academics, journalists, pundits and entertainers. He became the target of covert FBI investigators and a meritless impeachment.
Early in the next election year, Beijing unleashed a lab-developed viral pandemic that devastated America’s robust economy. At the same time, Democrats and their media allies encouraged scores of Black Lives Matter and Antifa militants to riot in American cities.
Longstanding election laws were altered to accommodate mail-in voting and ballot-harvesting. The ultra-left Time Magazine asserted that the electoral system had to be “fortified” to ensure the only acceptable outcome--a Biden presidency.
Joe Biden’s actions as President were as destructive as King George’s Intolerable Acts. He issued executive orders aimed at dismantling almost all of his predecessor’s successful policies.
The Biden administration halted construction of Trump’s wall and reopened the southern border to illegal migrants. They ended the former President’s travel ban on countries harbouring terrorists and initiated a policy of “strategic patience” with hostile dictatorships. The USA rejoined the World Health Organisation that had collaborated with Beijing to cover up the origins of the Covid pandemic.
President Biden rejected the idea of US energy independence. The Democrat Party recommitted to the costly Paris Climate Accords. The Keystone XL pipeline project with Canada was killed. Thousands of energy sector jobs were lost. Americans endured soaring costs for food, fuel and housing.
With Democrats at the helm the American ship of state headed for the rocks. The goal of making America great again was off the table. New York Post columnist Miranda Devine, described Joe Biden’s policies as a “spit in the eye” to ordinary citizens.
About ten years ago Diana West published “American Betrayal: The Secret Assault on Our Nation’s Character.” The American scholar contended that Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt’s 1933 decision to normalise relations with the murderous Bolshevik regime in Russia exposed the USA to an unprecedented influx of communist spies, revolutionary Marxists and fellow travellers.
From the era of the “New Deal” to the age of “Woke” progressives and neo-Marxist ideologues have acquired almost total control over America’s formative institutions. Even powerful business corporations are capitulating to the anti-American Left.
The nation’s legacy media is almost entirely in the hands of the Left. The republic’s electoral system has been corrupted, and Joe Biden’s Rainbow Reich is brazenly employing Soviet era lawfare tactics against anyone who objects.
The twenty-first century assault on American democracy has entered a critical stage. The President has warned the people they will need fighter jets if they wish to protest any more of his suspicious election result.
With the approval of Joe Biden and his Department of Justice, the leading Republican contender for the presidency was recently convicted on 34 counts of an incomprehensible business records crime.
The charges against Donald Trump were invented by an ideologically motivated prosecutor. The trial was presided over by a conflicted judge. The verdict was supplied by an anti-Trump jury in the overwhelmingly Democrat Borough of Manhattan, New York.
On Friday, May 31st, an NBC reporter shouted as Joe Biden was exiting a presidential briefing on the Middle East: "Mr. President, can you tell us, sir: Donald Trump refers to himself as a political prisoner and blames you directly. What's your response to that, sir?”
Joe Biden said nothing. He turned toward the press corps with a defiant grin on his face. The message was clear: I’ll do anything I want and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
In 1775 the shot heard round the world led to the birth of American liberty. This year the world has witnessed a presidential smirk that threatens to destroy it.
William Brooks is a Canadian writer and a Senior Fellow at The Frontier Centre for Public Policy
Read next: Stacy Abrams’ Cut Of Biden’s Slush Fund Exposed
Email Us | Reader Friendly | Comments
