Thomas Jefferson wrote many letters to John Adams about government, liberty, and England’s corruption under King George III. Jefferson once put his disgust plainly: “It has been a strong reason with me for wishing there was an ocean of fire between that island and us.”
Earlier in their political careers, Adams had chosen Jefferson to write the Declaration of Independence. Jefferson then penned a sentence that became the greatest line of revolutionary fire ever written, separating freedom from tyranny as clearly as any ocean of fire could.
With one line, the tyranny present throughout human history was turned upside down. Humanity knew real liberty in a new and enduring way.
During the classical era, pharaohs claimed godhood and treated their people as lesser beings, fit only for slavery and submission. Godhood placed the pharaoh and his ministers above the humanity beneath them.
But in the land of Goshen lived the tribes of Israel. Freed by Moses, they came to camp in the shadow of Mount Sinai, where they received the Ten Commandments — the law of God on earth, demanding obedience from kings, priests, and commoners alike.
Centuries later, democracies emerged along the Hellenic coasts of Greece, while the Roman Republic arose on the Italian peninsula. These societies were imperfect but freer than the empires around them.
In Greece, that freedom lasted until Philip II of Macedon devoured the city-states and left an empire to his son Alexander. After conquering Egypt, Alexander demanded to be known as the “son of Amon,” claiming the aura of godhood and exerting a tyranny like that of the pharaohs.
In Rome, the republic endured for nearly 500 years before falling to imperial rule. The Julio-Claudian line eventually produced Caligula, who demanded to be adored as a god in the Temple of Solomon itself. Thus came the tyranny of the Caesars.
In medieval Europe, kings could not claim to be gods. But they could claim to be anointed by God, placing their crowns above ordinary men as surely as the stars appear above the sea.
King John of England ruled through vis et voluntas — force and will. The rapacity of his will and the weakness of his rule led to Magna Carta in 1215, the first great liberating document written in Europe since the Roman Republic.
A descendant of King John, Henry VIII, placed in his own person the powers of king and head of the church. He claimed to rule by divine right. The kings who followed asserted the same claim: that all beneath the sun was beneath them by God’s will.
So it is that the history of humanity is, in large part, the history of tyranny.
Then a descendant of that line, George III, inspired Jefferson’s line of revolutionary fire: “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 sentence means all of us possess the same rights, and no one has a superior right to take them away — no pharaoh, emperor, conqueror, king, queen, or dictator.
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If our rights are given to us equally by God, then none may rule over us by claiming we are unequal. Among those rights are faith, speech, assembly, and the right to remove from power those who misgovern us.
Thus, our government is our servant — never our master.
By that one line, the tyranny present throughout human history was turned upside down. Humanity knew real liberty in a new and enduring way.
The foremost lesson of history is that tyranny is always with us.
In recent history, the murderous Bolsheviks toppled the 300-year empire of the czars, looted and burned churches, and murdered priests. They knew God would never be a socialist Bolshevik, so they placed themselves above God.
When Hitler came to power, he sought to eradicate the Jewish people, murdering 6 million Jews. He knew that neither the Jews nor God would join the socialist Nazi Party, so he placed himself above God.
In China, Mao Zedong drove the moral center out of his nation through a murderous purge, killing tens of millions of his own people in the name of revolution. Confucius had no place in Mao’s socialist order, so Mao placed himself above God.
Such is tyranny in our own time.
In America today, democratic socialists attack the faith of our Jewish neighbors and fellow citizens. They seek the removal of the Ten Commandments from schools and public squares. They attack Christianity and Western civilization. They insist that our nation under God is evil and must be remade.
It is socialism in America that must be defeated.
As we celebrate the 250th anniversary of the greatest sentence ever written in the history of freedom, let us hold fast to God, the creator and guarantor of our rights.
Let us hold fast to that line of revolutionary fire with a will of steel — for the sake of all our liberties.
