The Second Day of July 1776, will be the most memorable Epocha, in the History of America. I am apt to believe that it will be celebrated, by succeeding Generations, as the great anniversary Festival. It ought to be commemorated, as the Day of Deliverance by solemn Acts of Devotion to God Almighty. It ought to be solemnized with Pomp and Parade, with Shews, Games, Sports, Guns, Bells, Bonfires and Illuminations from one End of this Continent to the other from this Time forward forever more.

John Adams in a July 3, 1776, letter to his wife, Abigail Adams

Another Independence Day has arrived and, like most anniversaries, it is a natural time to take stock. The review is not good. The American experiment in self-government has largely disappeared. The America my children will inherit is bleak from a classical liberal perspective.

I fear my generation will be the last to enjoy the blessings of a free nation. Upon further consideration, though, that is not exactly accurate. The American experiment has been dying for decades. President Abraham Lincoln delivered the first blow followed by President Theodore Roosevelt and President Woodrow Wilson with President Franklin D. Roosevelt delivering the coup de grce. All under the false guise of progressivism, which is just a code word for authoritarian statism.

Despite Adams exuberance, Independence Day is no longer a day to be celebrated. It is just a sad reminder of what we as a people have so callously squandered.

The Founders gave us the greatest of gifts, an island of liberty in a world of monarchs. There were, of course, problems with the implementation slavery and other inequalities that seemed so normal in an 18th century world but the perfect framework was there.

A government was established that allowed the people to govern themselves while still protecting the rights of the individual. Americans understood that the proper role of government was to protect individual rights and nothing more.

But to the leftists that was not good enough. With visions of statism dancing in their misguided heads, they set about to destroy American and fundamentally transform it into a government paradise where the people do not govern themselves but are told by the elite what is best for them. Using bizarre interpretations of the Constitution they have essentially rendered our founding charter pointless.

In 1860, the Democratic Party was the party of slavery. That has not changed. They have merely expanded their scope from a race-based servitude to the enslavement of all people to the whims of the state. This is not hyperbole. Either you have a right to your own life, liberty and property or you are property.

Just look at the goals of the leftists. Everything they advocate for involves the use of government force.

Take health care for just one example.

Leftists think it is OK to take at the point of a government gun that for which one worked hard to earn and give it to someone else who did nothing to earn it.

Yes, I get it. They think they are doing good. They think they are helping people, but that belief demonstrates a profound lack of a fundamental understanding of many things, the least of which are basic economics and the concept of liberty.

Take that leftist idiot in Arkansas who destroyed a Ten Commandments monument Wednesday just hours after it was erected while shouting, Freedom.

The monument was paid for by private funds. All he did was destroy personal property. That is not freedom. You dont have a right to be free from someone elses public display of religion.

But the left has shown it has no tolerance for opposing viewpoints and things such as religious liberty. To your typical leftist, religious liberty means telling people of faith to shut up and keep it indoors.

Yet, they have no trouble FORCING the baker to make a cake for a same-sex couple or FORCING the doctor to provide health care or FORCING the hardworking middle class to pay for the looters and moochers or FORCING Christians to pay for abortions or FORCING others to pay for birth control and on and on and on.

The leftist story arc is one of forcing others to do their bidding.

That is not the promise of America. That is not why millions of Americans in the last two centuries have taken the oath to defend our borders and our way of life.

The Founders did not intend for us to supplant a tyrannical monarchy with the tyranny of the majority.

As Adams wrote later in the same letter quoted above, I am well aware of the Toil and Blood and Treasure, that it will cost Us to maintain this Declaration, and support and defend these States. Yet through all the Gloom I can see the Rays of ravishing Light and Glory. I can see that the End is more than worth all the Means. And that Posterity will tryumph in that Days Transaction, even altho We should rue it, which I trust in God We shall not.

How would this man and his colleagues judge us today?

Not very well, I daresay. Indeed, I am embarrassed for us and thankful there were no time machines in 1776.

As a people we should resolve to take a few moments and consider what we should value as a society and then strive to get the American freedom train back on track. Give it a hard thought this weekend as you enjoy your fireworks, barbecues and beer because our current course is a one-way ticket to totalitarianism.

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Thomas J. Lucente Jr. is an attorney with the Hearn Law Office in Wapakoneta (419-738-8171) and night editor of The Lima News. Reach him by telephone at 567-242-0398, by email at [emailprotected], or on Twitter @ThomasLucente.

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Thomas Lucente: Fourth of July holiday a reminder of liberty lost - Lima Ohio