On Independence Day

Reclaiming America from Rage, Fear, and the Cheap Seats

Every Fourth of July, we return to the same rituals. We hear the music, see the fireworks, fire up the grill, and maybe toss out a quote about freedom. It’s tradition, and like all traditions, it’s comforting. But let’s not confuse comfort with clarity. Liberty didn’t arrive on July 4, 1776, just because a document was signed. It came through conflict, conviction, and risk. It came from people who were willing to say out loud that they didn’t just want to live peacefully, but that they wanted to live freely. And if they couldn’t have that, they were willing to die trying.

Patrick Henry didn’t show up to make a speech. He showed up to draw a line. Samuel Adams wasn’t interested in negotiations. He wanted to end the charade. And even centuries later, Ronald Reagan understood that the real danger to liberty wasn’t always foreign. Sometimes it was the slow corrosion of trust between citizens. If we’re honest, we’ve gotten sloppy with our freedom. We’ve confused the performance of patriotism with the practice of it. We’ve handed over huge parts of our civic life to rage machines, cable news hosts, and the worst people on social media. Then we wonder why everything feels so broken. It doesn’t have to stay that way.

Patrick Henry and the Light of Experience

In 1775, standing in the face of British aggression, Patrick Henry didn’t plead or posture. He got to the point. “I have but one lamp by which my feet are guided,” he said, “and that is the lamp of experience.” Henry wasn’t reading tea leaves. He was reading the past. For years, the colonies had tried petitions, protests, letters, and diplomacy. Britain answered with soldiers, taxes, and fleets. Henry saw it clearly and said so: the choice was freedom or slavery.

That clarity is harder to come by today. The threats we face are more subtle. There are no redcoats on the march. But there are still people working to limit what we say, where we gather, how we worship, and what we can question. They don’t always wear uniforms. Some wear suits. Some have media platforms. Many just parrot back what they've been fed by data-driven outrage machines. Henry’s lamp still works. And if we hold it up to our current political environment, what we see should make us uncomfortable.

Samuel Adams and the Courage to Break Away

A year later, in the summer of 1776, Samuel Adams stood in front of a crowd and pulled no punches. He wasn’t interested in reminding the audience what they were leaving behind. He wanted them to see what they were stepping into.

“If you love wealth better than liberty,” he said, “and the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go from us in peace.”

Adams understood how easy it was to settle. He knew that fear makes people crave comfort, and comfort makes people compromise. Not the good kind of compromise. The kind that slowly chips away at what matters, until there’s nothing left to fight for. We still face those temptations. We trade real community for curated content. We let political figures and media companies tell us who our enemies are, then act surprised when everything feels like a battlefield.

Adams wouldn’t have been impressed. He would’ve called us out. Don’t give in to cynicism. Don’t accept tribalism. Don’t let politics become a team sport where truth and honor are optional. Choose courage over comfort, and act like you know what’s at stake. He would’ve said, if liberty matters to you, then act like it.

Reagan and the Strength of Brotherhood

In 1986, Ronald Reagan stood aboard the USS John F. Kennedy and delivered a speech that felt more like reflection than politics. He spoke of liberty, of course, but he also spoke of friendship. Specifically, the long arc of reconciliation between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

They had fought side by side for independence, then turned on each other in the harsh early years of American politics. But later in life, they found their way back. Through letters, they wrote about everything: grief, gardening, politics, even sneezing as a cure for hiccups.

Reagan saw something deeper in that story. He called it their final gift to us: a reminder that the country was built not just on principles, but on relationships. That liberty means more when we fight for it together.

Adams and Jefferson didn’t just reconcile. They died on the same day: July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. Two old revolutionaries, whose ideas and arguments shaped the foundation of the country, passed into history on the very day they had helped create. It was almost as if they waited to make sure we remembered what they had done together.

We could use that gift again. The United States is not a divided country. Not yet. But we are being pulled in that direction, and not by accident. There are people who thrive on our conflict. They turn fear into fame. They wrap division in the language of loyalty and pretend that unity is weakness. And they are good at what they do.

But many Americans aren’t buying it. Not really. People are tired. Tired of the fighting. Tired of the finger-pointing. Tired of being told they’re either all in or all out. Most Americans still believe in liberty. And that belief, even if quiet, still matters. But without change, more will give in or give up.

The Federalists Still Speak

In The Federalists Reloaded, we’ve revisited the Constitution’s architects, Hamilton, Madison, and Jay. Not as mythic founders, but as political realists who understood how fragile unity would be. They didn’t count on uniformity. They built for disagreement. The entire system was designed to absorb tension without breaking apart.

Hamilton emphasized strong institutions. Madison warned that factions were inevitable but could be managed through scale and structure. And Jay made a more emotional plea: that we were already one people, bound by shared history and culture. He was stretching the truth, but he was also aiming for aspiration. That aspiration still matters.

Today, we don’t look alike, pray alike, or even talk alike, but we’re still bound by a set of civic commitments: liberty, self-government, and accountability. Not everyone lives up to them, but they’re still the expectations we must uphold. That’s a kind of unity. Not perfect, but real.

Liberty is still the language we speak, even when we disagree on what it means. And that shared grammar means the experiment is still alive.

The Federalists weren’t writing a conclusion. They were starting a conversation we’re still in. And whether we keep that conversation going or trade it for shouting is up to us.

America and the Idea of Goodness

You’ve probably heard the quote: "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." It’s often pinned on Alexis de Tocqueville, though historians agree he never actually said it. But let’s be honest: who cares? The quote still hits home.

It works because it asks something of us. It reminds us that greatness isn't about power or wealth. It’s about how we treat each other. You can argue over the words, but not the message.

Being good as a nation doesn’t mean being perfect. It means striving to live up to the things we say we believe in. It means honesty, fairness, generosity, and accountability. It means telling the truth when it’s easier to spin, doing the right thing when no one’s watching, and making sure our principles don’t get shoved aside by our politics.

No one needs to have actually said that quote for it to matter. The idea stands on its own. If we want America to be great, we have to be good. It’s that simple but also that hard.

The Four-Act Play and the Psychology of Outrage

Let me tell you what I learned in Washington. I was 24, new to the city, and eager to learn. I asked a direct mail consultant why his campaigns got such high response rates. He leaned in and gave me a blunt answer I’ve never forgotten: “Don’t get them to think. Get them to react.”

He laid out what I now call The Four-Act Play.

• Act One: Fear. Scare them to get their attention.

• Act Two: Anger. Stoke the fire, introduce the villain, and make it personal.

• Act Three: Solution. Now that they're hooked, give them a path forward. It’s either that or live with the hellscape you’ve just learned about.

• Act Four: Action. Ask for money, a petition signature, a vote, a share. Whatever. Something to get them in the funnel and emotionally invested.

I’ve watched this model evolve from printed letters to targeted email to algorithmically engineered media. Today, it's not just persuasive. It's addictive. You’re being profiled, segmented, and served content designed to trigger you and keep you engaged. It works. It isolates you. It turns perception into reality. And if you’re not careful, it turns neighbors into enemies.

As I said recently, “Whatever gets you going the most, that’s what they’ll feed you. It’s the loose tooth effect. You know you shouldn’t press on it, but you do. And the algorithm makes sure you keep pressing.” That’s not a civic ecosystem. It’s a dopamine trap. And if we want a republic worth keeping, we have to start opting out.

We’ve Got to Talk

Let’s be honest. We’re not great at talking to each other right now. Not listening. Not asking questions. Just talking. Most of what passes for conversation these days is really just performance. A flood of memes and hot takes.

Social media has turned disagreement into a sport. The louder and meaner you are, the more attention you get. But that noise doesn't build anything. It wears us down. We confuse exhaustion with division and think it’s a sign that we’re hopelessly split. We’re not.

Most people still want the same basic things: safety, opportunity, dignity, freedom. We just don’t know how to talk about them without picking a side first.

We can change that, but not by posting more opinions. It starts with real conversations. Sitting down, shutting up for a minute, and letting someone else finish a sentence.

We need to fix this by choosing to connect instead of react. If we lose that ability, we lose the one thing a democracy absolutely needs: the willingness to govern ourselves together.

And that’s the part the founders worried about most.

We Still Have a Shot

We’ve been through worse. Adams and Jefferson barely spoke to each other for years. Lincoln feared the Union might collapse under its own contradictions. Frederick Douglass stood before a crowd on the Fourth of July and asked what the celebration meant to people still in chains.

This country has always been messy. However, it has always had people willing to step forward and fix it. This Independence Day, declare your freedom from the Four-Act Play. Don’t just celebrate liberty. Practice it. Step outside the outrage machine. Post a photo of your dog instead of another headline. Share a laugh instead of a panic. Listen longer. Assume good intent. Rebuild the muscle of real dialogue.

As I said in that same podcast, “If you're waiting for someone else to solve your problem, I’ve got bad news for you. Sooner or later, you're going to look around the room and realize, it's you.”

Because liberty isn’t just about resisting kings. It’s about resisting manipulation. And knowing, as they say, is half the battle. The republic cannot and will not keep itself. It’s up to us to keep it going.