Rather, it’s an everyday plea that “if we don’t collectively jump into that ‘arena’ made famous by Teddy Roosevelt’s 1910 speech, the Republic envisioned and created by the blood, sweat, tears, courage, and supreme sacrifice of the 56 Signers of The Declaration of Independence will soon exist no more.”
On July 3, 2021, I had no thought nor any intention of writing “The 56.” On that day, I was more focused on where best to watch the Fourth of July fireworks.
Then, as the next day heralded the birthday of our nation, I took a tour through a few of the more liberal “news” websites. It was then that I witnessed far-left voices calling for the cancellation of not only the Fourth of July, but also the continued smearing and cancellation of our Founding Fathers.
As I looked, one overriding thought filled my mind: “What if they’re successful?”
Those who believe such totalitarian censorship could never come to be in the United States of America need only review how quickly and brutally many on the left were able to create the “woke cancel culture” to silence those they oppose.
Now they openly declare that they’re coming for Thomas Jefferson, Richard Henry Lee, Benjamin Franklin, and others who courageously signed The Declaration of Independence. Because of that, this book was born on that Fourth of July.
That Declaration and those men created our history—a history that should never be bent, twisted, censored, or banned to fit any ideological narrative. As I stress in “The 56,” if it’s bad, let us condemn it and learn from it. If it’s good, let us praise it and try to replicate the good. But let us never twist, censor, or cancel our shared U.S. history.
The question of our time then becomes, “Who is to stop them?”
Us.
As I also highlight, each of us can still instill the lessons of liberty handed down from those who put their very lives on the line to sign The Declaration of Independence. As the 56 signers knew, unless and until those who push tyranny imprison us or take our lives, they can’t silence our individual voices. They can’t stop us from passing along the truth from one American patriot to the next.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; ... and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
No one is coming to save us.
The far-left truly assumes that those who believe in the genius of our Founding Fathers, the Republic they created, the rule of law, and a God above will remain the “cold and timid souls” sitting high in the stands far away from the battle on the arena floor.
That assumption is fatally flawed.
With each passing day, more and more patriots do realize that we must save ourselves.
Again, the 56 led by example.
Each man understood that the second they signed The Declaration of Independence, they were also signing their own death warrants. And yet every single man went to stand on the floor of that arena so that a people being crushed under the boot of tyranny would know victory—and liberty.
They knew no one was coming to save them.
Before it became a cliché for the left to mock, Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, and Hancock knew: “If not us, who? If not now, when?”
The time to once again ask those two questions is upon us.
Within “The 56,” I draw the parallels between the tyranny of 1776 and today while pointing out that today’s tyranny is exponentially more dangerous.
But even given that ominous reality, we need only remember that the 56 left us the greatest example of all. They left us the very blueprint to protect our rights, our lives, and our futures—rights and freedoms that, as they rightfully stressed, were “bestowed upon each of us by God.”
At the close of “The 56,” I point out how we can become the 2022-and-beyond version of “The Sons and Daughters of Liberty.”
We can save ourselves. We can save the greatest nation the world has ever known.
Liberty. Add your voice to spread the word.