Ed Claughton
President, PRI
July 2020

The current disruption and turmoil of our great country calls for remembrance of the principles on which it was founded; principles which are unknown by so many today. One of my life lessons that continues to be so applicable is that radicalism, in any form, isn’t good. Whether eating too much chocolate or too much kelp, too much liberalism or too much conservatism, the extreme of either simply isn’t good. Nor is nothing good about abolishing law enforcement, or about racism.

Yet, in the calls for justice so much has been lost.

Over 200 years ago, a resolution was passed by the Second Continental Congress approving independence from Great Britain rule, forming our 13 original colonies as a new country, the United States of America. Drafted by the Committee of Five, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, Roger Sherman, and Robert Livingston, the Declaration of Independence was drafted and first published with the moniker, the Dunlop Broadsides, named after John Dunlap, the official printer for the Continental Congress.

In a letter to his wife, Abigail, John Adams writes about the Declaration:

“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.

You will think me transported with Enthusiasm but I am not. — 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.”

Knowing what was to come, John Adams described the toil and bloodshed of defending these new united states. What followed is the long, storied history of a country that has survived at every turn.

Through civil war, world war, economic collapse, the trampling of civil rights, terror attacks, civil unrest and social divide, the United States of America has been, and will continue to be, the strongest and most defensible. Created by some of the wisest men God created who foresaw the need for a system of checks and balances, our great Constitution created the foundation upon which America endures. It
begins with:

“We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice,
insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and
secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this
Constitution for the United States of America.”

Despite the efforts that continue to this day to divide the nation, to bastardize the original intent of the rule of law and constitutional freedoms, to create hatred and assault of our government leaders, and the creation of hatred and assault by some leaders of radicalism, America will continue to survive. It has endured so much more and will continue to endure the trivial efforts of pundits, naysayers and self-proclaimed false messengers of resistance.
Indeed, the hijacking of valid concerns in attempt to overthrow the institutions of governance, family values and the prosperity of all, shall not endure.

Nothing shall compare to the wisdom of those who created the United States of America, save for that of the creator himself, God almighty.