Published on American Thinker
There is an eighty-five minute documentary that you should watch. It is called The Thread of Liberty: Keeping Our Republic. It comes from Ned Ryun, the author and American Majority CEO who wrote a very good book called American Leviathan two years ago, a work that was subsequently turned into an excellent documentary about our country’s oppressive administrative state. Ryun directed and produced this new film to celebrate America’s two-hundred-fiftieth birthday. While working on the project, he served on President Trump’s 1776 Commission.
I really appreciate what Ryun accomplishes with his books and documentaries. In effect, he reminds Americans of their birthright, while giving them a refresher course on the historical and intellectual struggles that have brought us to this point in time.
Mixing arguments from history, philosophy, political science, and Christianity in an effort to encourage freedom-loving Americans to protect and preserve their country is not easy. Ryun wants conservatives to get out and vote during an era when a lot of people have begun to see elections as useless exercises in performative theater. He wants Christians to take their civic duties seriously during a century when corporate officers and government officials regularly demonize Christians. He wants people to understand why they should continue fighting for the principles underlying American Exceptionalism during an amoral, nihilistic, anti-American age when cultural and political leaders often detest and publicly denounce the United States. These are difficult tasks.
In my own writing, I do my best to remind readers why they should be proud of their country. Sometimes people are quick to express in the comments that there is little to celebrate because the country is all but lost. Other times, commenters will point out that the time for history lessons and philosophical arguments has already come and gone. A lot of people rightly worry that America is headed for civil war, and many feel that rational debate is futile when bloodshed may well lie just beyond the horizon.
I have always been of the opinion that whatever happens down the road, those of us who wish to defend America from her enemies must have a firm grasp of and appreciation for America’s founding principles. In this regard, the more success that outright communists have in taking over the Democrat Party as part of their institutional conquest of the United States, the more committed patriotic Americans must become to the cause of defending our God-given rights and liberties. As our enemies become more emboldened in their campaign to destroy America, we must find within ourselves the confidence to resist and persevere.
This is why Ryun’s Thread of Liberty is so timely. It tells the story of America exceedingly well. Whereas Barack Obama’s presidency rejected American Exceptionalism, introduced a cancerous self-hatred within the body politic, and provided cover for Islamic supremacists, Antifa domestic terrorists, and anti-American communists to run for political office on platforms openly calling for the destruction of our constitutional form of government, Ryun’s documentary shows just how remarkable America’s founding principles have always been. Whereas race hucksters, such as Al Sharpton and Eric Holder, and instigators of racial hate hoaxes, such as the Ku Klux Klan-supporting Southern Poverty Law Center, pit Americans of different races against each other, encourage Americans to topple over statues of the Founding Fathers (because some might have owned slaves), and push for special preferences in college admissions and hiring decisions depending upon an applicant’s skin color, Ryun explains how the Civil War continued the American Revolution’s fight for human liberty, inalienable rights, and equality under the law. Whereas leaders of the Democrat Party openly conspire to aid and abet illegal aliens in defiance of federal law, permit non-citizens to vote in elections, pack the Supreme Court with dyed-in-the-wool Marxist-socialists, and empower government bureaucrats to micromanage every detail of our lives, Ryun’s film shows how a century of regressive “progressivism” has instituted the “soft despotism” of “experts” who rule as cubicle kings and queens.