Professor Toto - Why TRUE PATRIOTS do NOT celebrate July 4th

Why TRUE PATRIOTS do NOT celebrate July 4th. - YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VDRtMyy9hd8 Transcript: (00:00) Every year around this time, I go on a mission. And I want to talk to you about that mission tonight. A little bit of a crusade, if you will. Uh my grandmother would call it a soap box. You could say it's a one-man revolution against amnesia. Because just like clockwork, my friends, my neighbors, and even the local news anchors start chirping and talking about the Fourth of July. I hear it everywhere. (00:42) Everybody's planning their parties. We're planning one here. We're having a homemade ice cream social and fireworks. We're doing it all. Everybody's talking about fireworks, hoping for good weather. But I've got to tell you what grinds my gears tonight. Nobody says Merry December 25th. Nobody says happy January the 1st. (01:19) So why on earth do we say happy 4th of July instead of what it actually is independence day? Yeah, that grinds my gears. It irks my nerves when I hear someone say happy 4th of July. Let's talk about Independence Day. It's the day July the 4th when liberty was born. It's the day that tyranny lost. It was the day that the greatest experiment in human government declared its audacity to exist. (02:08) It had been long dreamed of by every man that ever lived. But no one could ever make it work. You see, the 4th of July is a date on a calendar, but Independence Day is a declaration of identity. And when you reduce a revolution to a date, you turn a sacred day into just a holiday. Because I believe July the 4th, that day when we found our independence, is a sacred day. (02:56) I believe America is a sacred place. I believe that God crowned her good with brotherhood. So for me, the celebration of Independence Day is a sacred celebration, not just a national one. And that, my fellow Americans, when you reduce that declaration to a date on a calendar, that's how you lose a nation. Let's go back for a moment. (03:31) Go back to that hot, sticky summer in 1776. That hot, hot, sticky summer in 1776. Go back there with me tonight. Thomas Jefferson was 33 years old. A young man with a quill in his hand and a cause in his heart. And what did he pin? A declaration of independence. It's not just a dusty old document. It is the creed of America. (04:14) It is the why behind the what. You see, America is the what. The United States of America, our land, our mountains, our rivers, our that's the what. But the Declaration of Independence is the why of the what. It was our breakup letter from tyranny. It was a poetic slap in the face to the king of England. (04:49) And more than that, it was a moral manifesto that changed the trajectory of all of human history. these words. Listen carefully. I want to show you the power of these first words. We hold these truths to be self-evident. Stop right there. I'm going to repeat them. We hold these truths to be self-evident. That phrase alone is a line of fire. (05:32) It's a direct challenge to every throne, every crown, and every chain on our planet. Those words meant something huge. They declared in bold letters that truth exists and that it does not come from kings or popes or parliaments. But truth comes from nature and nature's God. We hold these truths of our freedom to be self-evident. (06:18) In other words, nature declares it. and the God of nature. They said in that one line that what we believe about ourselves is a self-evident truth witnessed in nature with the freedom of the buck and the deer. the freedom of the little rabbit to go out and find its berries for the day and live its life without interruption. We believe that there are truths in nature that no one can defy. (07:07) Let me help you understand where that 33-year-old man Jefferson got these ideas from. He was reading a book that I have on my bookshelf there. The uh title just slipped my brain. I'm looking through my book. See if I can see the title. the uh the law of the the law of nations. I believe that's the name of it. (07:40) And all of history had searched for the perfect government. Also Thomas Jefferson read a man by the name of Thomas Hobbes and he said that the state of nature where life was nasty, brutish and short. Francis Bacon said that we could understand the world through reason and observation. You can understand the world. (08:16) These are truths that are self-evident. and Thomas Jefferson were reading these men's writings. Isaac Newton proved that the universe was discovered by or was governed by discoverable laws self-evident. John Lockach declared that reason could discover moral laws too. From that furnace of ideas came four pillars that still uphold our republic today. (08:51) Freedom, rights, consent, and revolution. Let me say that again for the people in the back. Freedom, rights, consent, revolution. You were born free, my fellow Americans, not because a government gave it to you, but because your creator did. He gave you freedom just like he did the wild horse running through the Wyoming landscape. (09:32) You have rights to life and liberty, the pursuit of happiness that no king can take, no bureaucrat can regulate, and no mob can ever vote away in a democracy. Governments exist to protect those rights, not to grant them. And when that government becomes abusive, you don't need permission to resist. You have a duty to alter that government or abolish it. That's not radical. (10:07) That's American. But let's not kid ourselves. Those self-evident truths that Jefferson wrote about, they were not always applied. You see, when Jefferson wrote those words, slavery was still staining the land. When Jefferson wrote those immortal words, he knew it. George Washington knew it. Madison knew it. (10:40) They were not blind to the contradiction of what they were saying. They were bound by that contradiction because of the world they lived in. But they wrote those words under the divine inspiration of the Lord because for a thing to happen, a thing must be said, an idea must be pinned, words must be spoken to give life to a dead situation. (11:16) And the first moment that Jefferson wrote these self-evident truths, slavery was already over with. No, not in the course of time, but in the course of the mind. Because when an idea that's true takes over a mind, it'll soon take over a people. And so he said these words and when they wrote them they were not even living up to them at that moment. (11:52) But you see true leaders they cast a vision of what not yet is. And that's what God used Jefferson to do. To declare what they knew was self-evident truth. He wrote them to declare what is right until it gets right. He wrote them to say what is right even when it's not right. That's prophetic vision is what the Declaration of Independence was. (12:30) That's why the Declaration of Independence is not a relic. It was a revelation. But let me ask you something sobering tonight. What happens when a nation forgets what made it great? When a generation trades liberty for leisure and philosophy for fireworks. What happens when people, even members of Congress, start calling the Declaration of Independence a document of hypocrisy? That's what they say about it. (13:08) Because of slavery, what happens when schools no longer teach Jefferson's truth, but instead smear them as lies? Here's what happens. Let me tell you what happens when that mindset begins to take over. We stop celebrating Independence Day and we start celebrating the Fourth of July. A barbecue, a beach trip, a sale at the mall, we go backwards. (13:47) People that despise the Declaration of Independence, they mock its claims. And my fellow American, you do too when you don't celebrate Independence Day. Have you bought into the memerization of the media of a happy 4th of July? I don't know what a happy 4th of July is, but I know what a happy Independence Day is. (14:19) So to the NPR, the National Public Radio, uh you can act shocked when you discover that 18th century men failed to live up to 21st century standards. But without the vision of those 18th century men and them declaring it and writing it down, there would be no 21st century standard. The real tragedy is this. Those people misunderstand the very nature of progress. (14:53) America was not born perfect. She was born aspiring to perfection. She was born reaching reaching beyond monarchy, reaching beyond tribalism, reaching beyond the cast system. It was the idea, the radical, dangerous, divine idea that all men are created equal, even when all men were not equal. I beg you, my fellow American, don't degrade Independence Day by celebrating July the 4th. (15:39) No, I won't call it the 4th of July. No more than I would say Mary December the 25th. No more than I would say happy January the 1st. No, no, no. I don't celebrate dates on calendars. I celebrate revolutions. I celebrate ideas, concepts. I will not reduce a revolution to a date. I will not swap sacred fire for sparkler smoke. (16:15) I will call it what it is, Independence Day. Because words matter, principles matter, and so does the price that was paid for them. So this year, my fellow Americans, before the fireworks fly, and it's okay, shoot your fireworks. But before you do, when you're looking up at the night sky to this, whenever you go to see them, as you look at, don't see fireworks. (16:48) See Lexington and Concord. See Valley Valley Forge. see Yorktown and remember that 56 men, rich men, educated men risk everything they owned to sign a document that called their own king a tyrant. When you hear the boom in the air, hear the boom of their voices and remember what they pledged at the bottom of that parchment. (17:26) our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor. That wasn't a slogan. That was a covenant. So, join me in a little rebellion, if you will. Correct your friends this week. Teach your children. Post it online. refuse to say happy 4th and say happy independence day and mean it because America is not a date. America is a declaration, a decision, a destiny and as long as we remember that the revolution will never end. (18:08) I'll be back for Afterglow. Good night, America. We trust you God over this nation. We trust you. It is God who appoints, God who anoints, God who will make a way. In his wisdom and might, he rules and decides. He has the final say. He has the final say. Come on, sing it. In God. In God alone we trust. as Lord, as King as his kingdom come, his will be done. His (19:18) name be lifted up in God. In God we trust. Oh, from the heart of DC, we lift it up to you tonight. It is God we enthrone. God we adore. God who forever reigns. Yet his ear is inclined to affairs of mankind. Who could stand in his way? [Music] Who could stand in his way? Come on, lift it up in God. In God alone we trust. (20:23) as king as his kingdom. His will be done. His name is God. God. [Music] Come on. The lion and the lamb. [Applause] [Music] The lion and the lamb, the rock on which we stand are constant in our cornerstone. His word shall never fail. His purpose shall prevail. Our hope forever more. God the lion. The lion. [Music] (21:38) Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] as his kingdom. His will be done. [Music] as his kingdom. His will be done. His name is (22:45) God. In God we trust in God. in God. We trust [Music] [Applause] in God alone. We trust as Lord, as King, as judge. His kingdom come, his will be done. His name be lifted up in God.