I just learned something from historian Rick Atkinson as he was promoting a book trilogy, which called into question a letter to the editor on these pages a couple of weeks back.
The letter author made the observation that we should be called the Divided States of America, as in his long memory, we have never been less united.
Though we rightfully celebrated our rebel founders last weekend, I learned that we were not as united as I thought during the Revolutionary War, as the founders had to contend with a number of people in the country who thought we had no right to oppose who they perceived as the rightful and, for many, the divinely-installed king.
On that same day that the ABJ published that letter, they posted a letter where another author sought to convince us that the “No Kings” rally was about supporting illegal immigration, rather than to fulfill its stated motto, “In America, we don’t do Kings.” The “No Kings” protest was held on the president’s birthday, and the protesters were quite aligned with the mindset of our founders as they struggled against an uncaring would-be king.
The Declaration of Independence was a ground-breaking aspirational document, but we should also celebrate our Constitution that provides us the mechanisms over time to achieve the Declaration’s lofty goals. Today, many of the “unalienable rights” in the Declaration and Constitution are under attack by politicians who cynically swore allegiance to the Constitution and then break its laws on a daily basis.
The letter that misrepresented the “No Kings” protest also asserted that the protesters were un-American, since he saw an American flag flown upside down. The Flag Code allows this behavior in times of “distress or extreme danger,” and rebels of the left and the right have flown it that way in protest, in the best traditions of 1776.
We should keep in mind the words of Ben Franklin, who, when asked what the Constitution had provided, is reported to have said: “a Republic, if you can keep it.”
Bob Pelle, Copley
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: America was built on rebellion against a king. That continues today | Letter
Reporting by Bob Pelle / Akron Beacon Journal
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