April 18 was the 250th anniversary of that day, when, in the literary imagination of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) Paul Revere “spread the alarm.”
He said to his friend, “If the British march
By land or sea from the town to-night,
Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
Of the North Church tower as a signal light, —
One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
And I on the opposite shore will be,
Ready to ride and spread the alarm
Through every Middlesex village and farm,
For the country folk to be up and to arm.”
Prolegomenon to War
DOGE’s Terror
The colonies had chafed for years under the boot of the Crown. They had expressed their anger on December 16, 1773, dumping 340 chests of tea into Boston Harbor. Britain responded to the Tea Party with the “Coercive Acts,” known to Americans as the “Intolerable Acts.”
I get a whiff of Trump’s Executive Orders as I write this.
On April 19, 1775, the Minutemen enjoined battle at Lexington and Concord, and drove the British troops all the way back to Boston. The War of Independence would end the tyranny of monarchy and make Americans a self-governing people.
The Second Continental Congress
In May 1776, delegates from all Thirteen Colonies convened at the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia. They created an army and elected George Washington Commander-in-Chief. Still they hoped peaceful resolution could be achieved; sending to King George III the “Olive Branch Petition.” The king wanted no part of it.
Trump’s “Art of the Deal” is likewise a “Demand for Absolute Capitulation.”
The Declaration of Independence
On July 4, fifty-six of those delegates put their signatures to the Declaration of Independence. If the monarch would not respect the rights of his subjects, then his subjects would be subjects no longer.
That document said much, but most of all it said this:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it…
“Liberty” is the first of these “unalienable Rights” being hacked away today.
250 Years Later
The Constitution of the United States of America
Two hundred and fifty years later, this democratic Republic has put itself back under the boot of a tyrant. Having been elected by a slim popular margin and the distorted, wider margin of the Electoral College, the 47th President of the United States has trampled on the checks and balances built into the three Branches of Government. He has assigned powers to an unelected oligarch, who has not been submitted to background checks and security clearances required of even the least powerful civil servants. He has summarily arrested legal residents of the country—and some citizens. His minions have transported individuals denied any sort of due process to prisons in the US and El Salvador.
Trump demands slavish obeisance from members of his party—nominally the Republican Party but in fact the MAGA cult—threatening them with excommunication and shunning. His “executive orders” are dismantling the government that is the core of American greatness. His zig-zags on economic policy and tariffs have thrown global markets into chaos and eroded some Since Trump took office, about $9.6 trillion dollars has been wiped from the markets—and from investors’ retirement funds, college funds, savings intended for purchasing homes, and every other plan.
We the People still have the right to alter or abolish what Trump and his MAGA minions are doing.
A City on a Hill
The intent to dismantle of our system of laws and the protection of our liberties is the goal. The Heritage Foundation that engineered Trump’s election and shaped GOP appointments to the Supreme Court would reinvent our democratic Republic as a kind of medieval theocracy.
That was never, however, the vision, either in Mathew 5: 14-16 or John Winthrop’s A Model of Christian Charity penned in 1630. Although Ronald Reagan made a a “shining city on a hill” the image of American exceptionalism in 1980, President-Elect John F. Kennedy asked us to focus on the phrase’s full meaning.
“… I have been guided by the standard John Winthrop set before his shipmates on the flagship Arabella three hundred and thirty-one years ago, as they, too, faced the task of building a new government on a perilous frontier. “We must always consider”, he said, “that we shall be as a city upon a hill—the eyes of all people are upon us”. Today the eyes of all people are truly upon us—and our governments, in every branch, at every level, national, state and local, must be as a city upon a hill—constructed and inhabited by men aware of their great trust and their great responsibilities.. History will not judge our endeavors—and a government cannot be selected—merely on the basis of color or creed or even party affiliation. Neither will competence and loyalty and stature, while essential to the utmost, suffice in times such as these. For of those to whom much is given, much is required…”
Meanwhile, Trump, his oligarchs, and his brainwashed Congressional majority concentrate on how resources intended for the poor, the disabled, and the elderly can be used to fund tax breaks for the rich and powerful.
Our Democratic Republic
The “shot heard round the world” was fired almost exactly two hundred and fifty years ago. The result of that War for Independence was the creation of a democratic Republic, not a monarchy. Or, as Benjamin Franklin said in 1787 to Elizabeth Willing Powel’s inquiry, “A republic, if you can keep it.”
It has not been a perfect system of government, nor have to values of equality and liberty been made accessible to all. We have been, however, a nation that has progressed toward the fulfillment of the ideals on which it was founded.
Until, that is, the rise of Donald Trump and MAGA.
Our Hour of Darkness and Peril and Need
But Longfellow saw something similar in 1861, when he penned the closing lines of The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere. The United States seemed about to wrench itself apart as the South would deny both equality and liberty to the enslaved Americans they enumerated as as three-fifths of a person. It was an alarm he knew had to be raised.
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.
This is our hour of darkness and peril and need. If we are to keep our Republic.
an alarm for today