If Virginia Is for Lovers, There Is No Place for Tyrants |
Editor's Note: This column was co-authored by Ann H. McLean.
Americans have been slow to grasp that the enemies of freedom have massive operations within our borders. You might say that the barbarians are not at the gates, but rather that they are inside the gates. Virginia, the cradle of American liberty, easily recognized by its place and role in American history, also has more historic sites (130 in all) than any other state. This historic prominence is why this “founding” state is targeted for total transformation. This appears to be the mission of the newly elected Virginia governor, Abigail Spanberger, who campaigned as a moderate but revealed within 24 hours of being inaugurated that she is a radical wolf in sheep’s clothing.
In the 5,500-odd years of recorded human history, there was never true freedom in any nation-state until the United States was founded. The great Virginian Patrick Henry, known for his proclamation, “Give me liberty or give me death,” was extraordinarily sanguine about what it takes to maintain a free nation. In 1788, after the Constitution was drafted but not yet ratified by the 13 states, Patrick Henry said, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty [and] suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up force, you are inevitably ruined.”
Four of the first five U.S. presidents came from Virginia. George Washington, who led the Continental Army to victory in the War of Independence, would become the first president. At the outset of that war, Thomas Jefferson, who drafted the Declaration of Independence, became the third president. James Madison, who drafted the Constitution, was elected the fourth president. James Monroe, the fifth and last president among the Founding Fathers, was the brave 18-year-old volunteer soldier holding the American flag behind Washington in Emanuel Leutze’s famous 1850 painting, “Washington Crossing the Delaware.” James Monroe is remembered for the Monroe Doctrine, a policy that established the United States with a unique position of warding off meddlesome interference in the Western Hemisphere—a foreign policy position Trump has resurrected as the basis of taking back control of the Panama Canal from communist China (CCP), and also driving the CCP out of Cuba and........