For most Americans, Independence Day is a holiday away from work. Sure, there are those who continue their normal duties; having a child in the hospital is a reminder for me that some industries don’t have the luxury of taking a day completely off. A majority of businesses are closed. One in particular is not.
The Federalist Party, to which I am committed wholeheartedly, is not taking the 4th of July off. In fact, many of us are going to be working harder today than other days for two reasons. First, since we’re made up completely of volunteers, there are many who are taking the opportunity away from work to apply more effort to the party. Second, the spirit of the holiday itself is one that has deep ties to our own goals. Just as the Declaration of Independence was intended to let Americans and our British overlords know we were done with oppression, so too do Federalists want to break away from the two-party system that has yielded big-government-loving politicians for decades.
We expect this from the Democrats. In recent years, we’ve learned to accept it from most Republican politicians as well.
This particular Independence Day is special to me because it marks the first one for as long as I can remember when I’m not part of the GOP. Before I really understood politics, I had a fondness for the words of Ronald Reagan. Though he wasn’t the best champion for small government Federalism that he could have been, his words and intentions were definitely aligned with reining in federal overreach and returning power to both the states as well as to individual citizens. He and others convinced me at an early age that the GOP would fight to shrink government.
The reality, as I learned later in life, is that Reagan and the GOP that followed his legacy didn’t really reduce government. They simply slowed down its growth… for a while. Today’s variation of the party doesn’t even do that. They’ve become almost indistinguishable from the Democrats they allegedly oppose. We see every day as concepts get rebranded rather than eliminated. The most glaring recent example is Trumpcare versus Obamacare. While the two parties fight over the details, the reality of the situation is that both are pushing for different versions of the same big government concept. Both parties want DC to mandate health coverage. Both parties want the federal government to have way too much say about how, where, and when we get health insurance.
This isn’t the only example, but I’m not going to start off my (or your) Independence Day by talking about policies. This is about a celebration of something special and a hope that we return to the fundamentals that made this nation special. We’re not here to discuss “making America great again” because we’re not interested in slogans with no teeth. Instead, let’s talk about why we declared independence from England in the first place. The founders realized that they were being oppressed by a distant government and that the oppression was growing. They felt they had no representation yet the taxes kept growing. Prosperity was fading. Freedoms were minimal.
Today, we’re faced with a similar trend. DC doesn’t rule over us like the British did, but their overreach is clear and growing. We have more freedoms than our forefathers had, but those freedoms are under attack. There’s a potential that taxes could be reduced if the GOP is able to keep its agenda intact before being forced out of office, but the cuts they’re proposing are minuscule compared to where they should be. With all this, there’s very little talk about cutting budgets or tackling the national debt.
The battle we fight today is different from what they had to fight in the 18th century, but the parallels are striking. We aren’t fighting with guns or cannons but with words and passion. We’re not fighting for freedoms we don’t have. We’re fighting for freedoms that are being taken away. We’re not faced with an oppressive government across the sea, but we’re faced with an expanding government that in many ways is more ideologically divergent from the American people than what our forefathers had to face with England. The founders had to declare their independence. Today, we have to remind the people of the independence so many seem willing to forego.
It’s a day off for many. It’s not a day off for me. I encourage anyone who’s sick of what’s happening in America to take a close look at the Federalist Party. We need all the help we can get.
Image credit: Etsy
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