Why I Post On Liberty, On Freedom, On Constitutional Government

Sometimes I feel like I'm spitting into the wind, and then I read a piece like this and my revolutionary fervor is rekindled.  It's akin to reading the Constitution every year, something I used to do and now may have to start doing again:

I sometimes fear I am coming of age in a dying republic. Everywhere I turn the foundational values of America — open discourse, constitutional integrity, restricted government — seem to be eroding...

What's a young constitutionalist to do? I study ancient history, so I know nothing lasts forever: Republics have fallen before. But when they do, republicans like me have to fight back. That fight matters even if it's destined to fail. I know that too, because when the ancient Roman Republic was dying, one man's doomed defense of it transformed history. His name was Marcus Cicero, and he helped build America...

Alone and defeated, Cicero retreated from politics “to literary pursuits.” He wrote his treatise “On the Republic” to defend his ideal of an elected government in three branches. He tried to fight for that government again, but in 43 BC, Antony and Octavian had Cicero beheaded for defying their new regime. With that, the lights went out on the Roman Republic.

As everyone knows, the lights came up on a new republic centuries later, in Philadelphia. What's less well known is that decades before that, a Massachusetts schoolboy picked up a book that, according to David McCullough's biography, “became one of his earliest, proudest possessions.” The book was Cicero's “Orations.” The boy was John Adams...

In July 1776, Adams rose to what may have been the occasion he was born for. After prolonged deliberation, the 13 colonies had to decide whether to declare independence. With British forces descending on New York, Adams delivered a two-hour tour de force proclamation declaring that Britain's encroachment on God-given freedoms could not stand...

The story of freedom is long; it's written by an author who plans millenniums in advance. Even if my worst fears are true and our chapter is over, republicans like me have a responsibility to the unborn generations that will open the next one. We owe it to them to leave a record of thinkers and statesmen who beat back against the tide of history to keep the idea of liberty alive. We have to be the Ciceros because someday, there's going to be another Adams. And he's going to need us.

I hope I haven't done harm to this column with my cut/paste job; you should go read the whole thing.