"DRAWING A LINE IN THE SAND" A Four Part Essay
A continuing essay series examining the conflation of politics and religion.
“OP-ED: Praise Be to Politicians Who Swear on the Constitution—Not the Bible” by Brian Addison, July 17, 2014. LONG BEACH POST NEWS
“there was one common factor between almost all of the oaths of office taken that night. All of them were taken while the oath-taker placed their left hand on a Bible—except one.
Newly minted 3rd District Council member Suzie Price was the only elected official that night who swore on the document she was promising to uphold—the Constitution.”
For this essay I would like to draw your attention to a commentary penned by Kevin D. Roberts Ph.D. the president of the Heritage Foundation. The title of his piece is: America Must Reclaim What the Left Has Attempted to Destroy1 which was published this past July 25, 2023 at the think tank’s website.
Roberts, in my opinion, is arguably the premier thought leader of today’s movement-conservatism, especially in light of his position as it directly relates to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 and its steadily numerically increasing advisory board members.
It is a fairly long commentary at just over 2,800 words. It originally first appeared in the Heritage Foundation’s publication The Daily Signal (a Heritage Foundation multimedia news platform.)2
I for my part will be focusing on what I have determined to be the core claim that has Roberts up in arms and propagandistically-proselytizing his readers with a genuinely specious collection of arguments while at the same time hardening their minds against his avowed enemy—the Left; asserting to his audience that-
“Today, Americans are rising up; drawing a line in the sand; and telling those who every day expect to impose their will on us, on our families, on our children, that never—never—will they succeed.”
In lieu of critiquing the writing as a whole, mainly because I am not interested in validating what I already know to be a work steeped in sophism, I will simply focus on the commentary’s three stated “key takeaways” and each one’s immediate contexts. The first part of this essay will look at takeaway 1, after which the remaining two takeaways will follow in parts 2 and 3 with part 4 weaving together the sophistry and focusing on what it is that “the left has” allegedly “attempted to destroy.”
Key takeaway number 1.
Today, the nation is increasingly misgoverned, misled, and outright attacked by a ruling elite that does not want us to “keep” our republic.3
In the opening preceding context of this first quote Roberts begins setting the tone for his piece by referring to Independence Hall in Philadelphia. With his opening lines focused on three select abbreviated quotes of which the first two come from the first sentence of the second paragraph of the American Declaration of Independence, while his third choice is the opening words to the preamble of the Constitution of the United State of America.
History remembers Independence Hall for the grave, soul-stirring words written there:
“All men are created equal …”
“Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness …”
“We the people …”4
He then invokes a brief historical narrative that is well established in American history, but to be sure he presents his readers only with what will fit his sophistic goals,
But it is a pithier, sharper sentence spoken there that distills the challenge before America today. You’ve probably heard the story.
At the end of the Constitutional Convention, as delegates emerged from their secret deliberations, a Philadelphia woman—one “Mrs. Powell”—asked Pennsylvania delegate Benjamin Franklin what kind of government the convention had given them.
Franklin answered her: “A republic … if you can keep it.”
Franklin’s challenge feels so bracing still, two centuries later. Today, the nation is increasingly misgoverned, misled, and outright attacked by a ruling elite that does not want us to “keep” our republic.5
Right from the start of his commentary he has engaged in a distorting convolution of words. While it is true that Independence Hall was the location where two of America’s most important founding documents were signed the actual work of writing the Declaration started “On June 11, 1776,” where “[Thomas] Jefferson holed up in his Philadelphia boarding house…began to write”6 after he finished writing the document it was later adopted on July 4, 1776, while the Constitution itself was signed at Independence Hall on September 17, 1787, eleven years after the Declaration. The story of the Constitution’s birth especially in the light of its “secret deliberations” is actually quite interesting:
The Constitutional Convention assembled in Philadelphia in May of 1787. The delegates shuttered the windows of the State House and swore secrecy so they could speak freely. Although they had gathered to revise the Articles of Confederation, by mid-June they had decided to completely redesign the government. There was little agreement about what form it would take…
After three hot summer months of equally heated debate, the delegates appointed a Committee of Detail to put its decisions in writing. Near the end of the convention, a Committee of Style and Arrangement kneaded it into its final form, condensing 23 articles into seven in less than four days.
On September 17, 1787, 38 delegates signed the Constitution. George Reed signed for John Dickinson of Delaware, who was absent, bringing the total number of signatures to 39. It was an extraordinary achievement. Tasked with revising the existing government, the delegates came up with a completely new one. Wary about centralized power and loyal to their states, they created a powerful central government. Representing wildly different interests and views, they crafted compromises. It stands today as one of the longest-lived and most emulated constitutions in the world.7
So as can be seen Roberts is intertwining the histories of both the documents and their words, and to make matters continue to fit his sophistic endeavor he retells the story of Mrs. Powel and Franklin minus an important detail, as can be seen from the following excerpt from the Library of Congress:
In the aftermath of the violent events at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, one year ago today, Senator Amy Klobuchar [D, Minnesota] and other federal legislators reminded us that we have “a republic,” but only “if you can keep it.”8
The source of this quotation is a journal kept by James McHenry (1753-1816) while he was a Maryland delegate to the Constitutional Convention. On the page where McHenry records the events of the last day of the convention, September 18, 1787, he wrote: “A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.” Then McHenry added: “The Lady here alluded to was Mrs. Powel of Philada.” The journal is at the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress.9
For reasons unknown Roberts neglected to supply the whole exchange, perhaps he did not want to confuse his readers with the facts, namely that the Constitutional Convention chose a Republic over a Monarchy.
Here after telling the story is his first key takeaway, “the nation10 is increasingly misgoverned, misled, and outright attacked by a ruling elite that does not want us to “keep” our republic.” This then is how he follows up on the Franklin-Powel story by making baseless charges and then focusing on the idea of the American Republic.
To begin with Roberts provides no evidence or proof for his charges; he simply wants his readers to go along with him and agree that the current administration is in his opinion acting with intentional malice towards Americans, he wants his readers to think of left of center politicians as a “ruling elite” thereby conjuring an image of a monarchical government, and the reason that these so-called ruling elites are treating their constituents so poorly is because they apparently want to do away with the republic, notice the lack of capitalization. From my perspective it seems to me that Roberts is writing with the assumption that the majority of his audience will not focus on the minor details, probably because he knows that his status as a highly educated leader of a non-profit think tank will be viewed as meaning that he knows what he is talking about and should not be questioned.
This approach of creating the idea of an oppressed citizenry and the use of distortion represents a significant part of the far-right messaging apparatus that is filling the minds of MAGA minded citizens all over the country, and it is a serious problem. Roberts knows that in order for Republican candidates to win enough votes to implement their plans they will need as many votes as possible, even if it means manipulating average citizens with misinformation and writings and speeches that arouses their emotions and shuts down their thinking.
To wit by making his audience feel as though Democratic politicians are attempting to take away their voice by way of denying them a Republic (a country) that is governed by their chosen elected representatives and their chosen elected leader they will respond by fighting back with their votes against all things liberal.
What then is the American Republic as it is and was intended to be when the Founders crafted the Constitution? This will be the first thing discussed in part two of this essay where we will segue into our focus on key takeaway number two:
Human equality. God-given rights. These, America owes to the God of Abraham; the holy, heroic people of Israel; and the city of Jerusalem.11
Robert J. Rei, November 25, 2023
"There's only one corner of the universe you can be certain of improving, and that's your own self." -Aldous Huxley
"America Must Reclaim What the Left Has Attempted to Destroy” (COMMENTARY American History) Kevin D. Roberts, Ph.D. (President, Heritage Trustee since 2023), July 25, 2023, The Heritage Foundation, https://www.heritage.org/american-founders/commentary/america-must-reclaim-what-the-left-has-attempted-destroy,(This piece originally appeared in The Daily Signal, https://www.dailysignal.com/2023/07/20/reclaiming-our-inheritance-1776-fighting-liberty-truth-2020s)
See note 1; Also The Daily Signal as a Heritage Foundation multimedia news platform most definitely serves as a topic of interest when it comes to developing an understanding of far-right conservative messaging efforts and the online echo chambers that are created and sustained for the objectives and purposes of movement-conservatism’s cold civil war agendas, goals, and plans.
See note 1
Ibidem
Ibidem
“The Declaration of Independence: How Did it Happen?” National Archives, America's Founding Documents, (page was last reviewed on October 7, 2021), The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration/how-did-it-happen
“The Constitution: How Did it Happen?” National Archives, America's Founding Documents, (page was last reviewed on October 7, 2021), The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/constitution/how-did-it-happen
“Klobuchar Leads Debate on Senate Floor to Respond to Baseless Objections to Certified Electoral Votes” (Speech given January 6, 2021 in the Senate shortly before protestors overran the Capital) United States Senator Amy Klobuchar “Working for the People of Minnesota”, January 7, 2021, https://www.klobuchar.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2021/1/klobuchar-leads-debate-on-senate-floor-to-respond-to-baseless-objections-to-certified-electoral-votes. This speech truly qualifies as an important historic “defense of Arizona’s election results following an objection signed by Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Representative Paul Gosar (R-AZ) and their colleagues.” I strongly recommend taking the time to read it, especially in hindsight of the insurrection that was underway just outside the Capital Building.
““A republic if you can keep it”: Elizabeth Willing Powel, Benjamin Franklin, and the James McHenry Journal” Julie Miller (Julie Miller is the curator of early American manuscripts in the Manuscript Division at the Library of Congress.), January 6, 2022, Library of Congress Blogs, Library of Congress, https://blogs.loc.gov/manuscripts/2022/01/a-republic-if-you-can-keep-it-elizabeth-willing-powel-benjamin-franklin-and-the-james-mchenry-journal/
I have previously discussed the use of the terms country as opposed to nation in the context of MAGA conceptual ideas of American polity. What follows is a note from my previous essay in which I discuss my reasons for making this observation:
I have intentionally opted to use the term “country” as opposed to the term “nation” specifically because a significant part of the underlying problems currently driving the obvious disunity in American views of polity reside in the conflicting uses of the two terms in question. MAGA conceptual ideas of American polity are driven by a near constant messaging emphasis on America as a “nation” that is/was culturally homogeneous by way of the erroneous, incorrect, and mistaken notion of the country as a Biblical Christian Society, whereas a modern liberal consensus understanding of America as a “country” rests firmly upon the founding of a new polity that elevated a multi-cultural democratic diversity of individuals who rejected British monarchical rule over the colonists of whom the then growing majority of the populace had been born and raised on the new continent; A new continent whose peoples had come to realize the grand ideals in the conception and implementation of the Magna Carta, during the course of the immediately preceding centuries, empowered them to reject the religiously supported practices of birth-right rulership that for centuries had disempowered them. Today’s MAGA rebellion movement is an attempt by extremely (obscenely) wealthy parties to maintain/regain unfettered control of the national economy in order to continue the spirit of greed in support of the ultimate bigotry of dominionist ideologically philosophized theologies; as represented by Christian nationalism.
See note 1
Terrific writing Robert. One of the greatest examples of revisionist history imaginable that has been foisted on us to date is that our ‘founding fathers’ were representative of the Christian nationalists sitting now in our bicameral congress as Donald Trump’s Republican MAGA fascist cult member minions. First, Roberts is now attempting to conjure a religious beginning to our founding documents, but nothing could be further from the truth. Religion does not appear in the Constitution. It is only there in Roberts’ imagination, yet he tries to convince the citizens of the United States that it’s just fine to intersperse religion into the Constitution. The Constitution of the United States of America, is not, and never was intended to be a document governed by any kind of religious dogma. Nearly every one of our founding fathers believed that a God ‘may’ have created the Earth but if so, the writers of our Declaration of Independence, Articles of Confederation, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights were left to manage it. Thomas Jefferson was the major writer of the Declaration of Independence and was on diplomatic duty in Europe when the Constitution was written. Nonetheless, he wrote many letters regarding his opinions that included the government could not even imply that “good citizens or patriotic citizens” were religious. The word ‘God’ is not in the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson was a deist who supported the Unitarian church — but never joined it — saying he thought it would become the general religion of the United States. Many of the other writers were atheists, deists and Unitarian, but not a single writer was a conservative evangelical Christian nationalist. Despite the fact that the framers of the Constitution were clear about the separation of religion from government, today we have politicians who practice an ultra-right, conservative Christian nationalist religion who want to establish the Kingdom of God by institutionalizing biblical principles as the law of the land. We have justices on the SCOTUS whose judicial thinking includes using their positions of power to impose opinions vis-à-vis overturning Roe, with a majority seeming to be comfortable with a future that includes laws that have stripped Americans of their rights. They are interested in white Christian nationalism becoming the ‘law of the land’ The laws of the land, according to the founding fathers, should not reference to ‘God’ nor imply having religion. Yet, Roberts is holed up at the Heritage Foundation, conjuring the Constitution having been written and signed with the framers referencing the Christian Bible. The Constitution does not mention God, so why are we allowing folks who are fundamentally evangelical Christian nationalists to make and interpret our laws based on their concept of religious freedom? They clearly want only a religion that considers white Christian nationalism, but they cannot co-opt our government and redefine our founding documents to make them fit ‘their’ creed. Second, there is a major flaw in Roberts’ premise: he claims the problem with our country is that a ‘ruling elite’ has taken over. I have news for him: when the founding fathers wrote “We The People” in the preamble to the constitution in 1787 (ratified 1788), they were the elite intelligentsia. The writers owned businesses, they were publishers, newspaper editors, journalists, lawyers, doctors, bankers; the government was operating at the time, and the group of people who wrote the Constitution were a group of people of substance, and they were running the government. Some of the original writers, including Thomas Jefferson, were working as diplomats in Europe, but they were still plenty involved in writing, negotiating, compromising and getting their ideas inserted into the finished document. When the framers of the Constitution wrote ‘We The People’ as the preamble, they formed a social contract with people who didn’t have the wherewithal to take time away from their labors to spend months writing and negotiating (and compromising) to form the documents that became our founding documents. They did this in service to the people who could not contribute to the writing, but needed the protection of these documents. It was an unselfish work, and resulted in a social contract that has stood until today. Jefferson was concerned with the citizenry being educated to be able to govern. He was also concerned with the importance of a free press to keep government in check. He believed only educated citizens could make the American experiment in self-government succeed, thus established the University of Virginia. If our citizenry is unfit to govern according to the fundamental law of the Constitution, we need look no farther than Republican George W. Bush’s No Child Left Behind (2002), the main law for US kids in grades Kindergarten through 12th grade until 2015 (civics courses were erased and history was revised during those years). If Trump is elected in 2024, there will be no checks on the Executive Branch. He will fulfill his threat to incarcerate those who have opposed him, including journalists and members of the media, fulfilling Jefferson’s greatest worry. I understand there has been no historical analysis that would give us a research database of who and whom the writers of the founding documents entailed. But there’s enough to know that they were an elite governing body of that period. The founding fathers were not interested in having an elite status that removed government ‘from the people.’ Today, in a poignant example of how effective this social contract has been, the over-whelming majority of American citizens believe the Constitution and ‘We The People’ was written by folks ‘just like them.’ It was not. It was written by the same kind of ‘elite’ public servants who are running our government in today’s Democratic administration. They are educated, as Jefferson wanted. The Supreme Court extremist challenges to the Constitution, and ultra-right wing conservative, evangelical Republicans attempting to hijack Congress are following Trump’s bidding to expand the window of ideas that are politically acceptable, even when they are unacceptable to the majority of Americans. Indeed, a line needs drawn in the sand and the revisionist history nonsense proposed by Roberts at the Heritage Foundation needs confronted. Begin with explaining to Roberts that we cannot find ‘God’ in the Constitution because the Founding Fathers didn’t want God in there. And we don’t want religion inserted now.
Thank you for the scholarly elucidations. Please keep up the good work.
I have a feeling that few Americans have had an actual opportunity to study the underlying forces at work when the Constitution was created. Regurgitation of selected “salient facts” was more important as I recall. Thoughtful discussions were absent, or buried in dense required reading tomes with little or no time to digest them in the course syllabus time frames, or ignored. As busy adults with families there’s limited time to digest much more than skewed Cliff Notes versions, like those promulgated by the Heritage Foundation leadership under the color of “we’re in this together.” The people are uneducated, not dumb. Counterpoints and clarifications like you are creating is needed.
Self interested lawyers, and the courts and SCOTUS have perverted and obfuscated its roots with legal parsing and hair splitting arguments over decades to the point that it’s hard to recognize the original thrusts. Sadly, Leonard Leo and his FEDSOC minions are perverting it further with unchallenged “originalist interpretations” muddled with dominionism as if religion was and remains the driving force underlying American democracy, merely because they gerrymandered the electorate to the point that the electees no longer represent the majority.
Again, perhaps an outline can lead to a digestible elevator speech presentation. It’s necessary.