Day One: A Declaration Re-Examined
What to do "when a long train of abuses" returns?
By Mark Whitney1
On July 4, 1776, fifty-six people did something audacious. They put ink to animal skin and told the most powerful monarch in the world that he was a tyrant—and that they were done.
They pledged their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to the proposition that governments derive their legitimacy from the consent of the governed, and that when such governments become destructive of the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, the people not only have the right but the duty to throw them off.
Today—249 years later—the question is whether we still believe in the ideas they risked everything for.
Do we still understand the American creed—and whether we have the moral courage to defend it from those who would usurp it, especially when the tyrant speaks American English and occupies the Oval Office.
As constitutional scholar Akhil Reed Amar reminds us, the Declaration was not merely the work of Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder and poet. It was the product of a generation-wide conversation. It was crowdsourced from grand juries, town halls, and state assemblies. It was curated by Franklin and Adams and Jefferson, yes—but it distilled the hopes and grievances of an entire continent into 1,320 words. It was, as Amar says, the “creed” upon which a new people staked their claim to moral and political legitimacy.
That creed was always aspirational. “All men are created equal” was not a statement of fact—it was a statement of intention. And intention, as any lawyer will tell you, matters. It’s why abolition societies sprouted immediately after the Declaration—in Philadelphia of all places, with Franklin at their head. It’s why the words of 1776 inspired Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Luther King Jr. It is why we recite them still.
But that creed is under threat. Not from King George III, but from a new king—King Donald I, self-proclaimed savior of the Republic, architect of the best executive orders ever, and wielder of a power the Founders feared most: unilateralism.
The Trump administration has not merely flirted with despotism. It has studied the Declaration of Independence like a playbook—not to emulate the revolutionaries who wrote it, but the monarch they overthrew. As I riffed yesterday on America’s Coach Live!
“The current administration looked at the complaints filed against King George III in the Declaration of Independence and said, ‘Let’s do that shit!’”
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The grievances the Founders leveled against George III read today like a MAGA policy checklist:
“He has obstructed the administration of justice.”
“He has made judges dependent on his will alone.”
“He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people.”
“He has kept among us, in times of peace, standing armies without the consent of our legislatures.”
Sound familiar?
Today, ICE agents urinate on playgrounds and disappear immigrants without due process.
The National Guard is deployed to U.S. cities not to protect liberty, but to suppress it. Military independence has been replaced by presidential obedience. Trial by jury is increasingly waived in favor of private arbitration, signed away in employment contracts and digital user agreements. And with the CASA decision, the Supreme Court has ruled that if the President breaks the law, it’s up to each individual citizen to challenge him—alone, without nationwide protection.
This is not how the rule of law works. It is how monarchy works.
The brilliance of Amar’s scholarship lies in his insistence that the United States is not a place. It is a project. It is not a bloodline. It is a belief. And it only survives if each generation chooses to renew it.
The Founders ideas didn’t ultimately prevail because they signers perfect. They won because they acted on imperfect principles. Jefferson, a slaveholder, could still articulate the truth of universal equality. Franklin, the illegitimate son of a candle-maker, helped create a meme—JOIN, OR DIE—that unified the colonies before hashtags were even a thing. These men lived in contradiction. But they believed in something larger than themselves. And they built institutions to outlive their flaws.
Which brings us to our present failures.
Congress has abdicated and delegated its powers to tariff, to declare war, and to legislate. It prefers reelection to resolution. The Supreme Court has neutered the power of citizens to enjoin unconstitutional acts.
And the Executive now rules by proclamation—boasting of his immunity and heckling judges, knowing they can’t stop him.
This is the moment the Founders warned us about.
“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes… But when a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government.”
We need not throw off our Constitution. But, we must reclaim it.
Amar reminds us that what makes America exceptional is not that we had slavery—every civilization did. What made us exceptional is that we ended it.2
We amended our Constitution. We fought a war. We passed the 13th, 14th, 15th, and 19th Amendments. We made good on a promise written in Philadelphia in 1776.
Now we must do it again.
We must recognize that “We the People” is not a slogan—it’s a responsibility. We must demand that our representatives legislate, not delegate. We must stop waiting for our preferred king and start insisting on a functioning republic.
Donald Trump is not the problem. He is the stress test.
Our system is faltering, but it is not beyond repair. As Amar says, the Constitution is amendable. The American story is unfinished. The Declaration is not scripture. It is a prompt.
So on this 249th birthday, let us renew our understanding of the 1,320 words—not as ritual, but as call to action.
Free people do not have rulers.
Liberty is not inherited—it is chosen.
Today is Day One of Year 250.
Time to take the field.
Mark Whitney is a civil libertarian, entrepreneur, and host of America’s Coach Live!. From January 10, 1992 - April 12, 1993, Mark spent 452 unconstitutional days in four federal prisons in four states. Armed only with a high school education and a prison typewriter, Mark eventually earned an order for his immediate release from retired Supreme Court Justice Stephen G. Breyer. Over the Government’s strenuous objection, Breyer (then Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit) found Whitney’s sentencing proceeding to be so constitutionally infirm that it was wiped from the books.
Juneteenth Is A Lie. Hear Me Out. Mark Whitney, America’s Coach, June 19, 2025