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 Venezuela.
There is a tendency for free things to be taken for granted. Liberty—an unalienable right from God first realized politically by Americans—is too easily assumed to be an entitlement and subsequently taken for granted and lost. And so it may be that God wanted to reveal His presence and blessing on the first country in human history founded on His ideals by way of miracles associated with the sacred idea of freedom and the constitution designed to codify and protect freedom that came from the founders who made it all happen.
Not only were four of the first five U.S. presidents from the state of Virginia, but two presidents, Jefferson and Adams, died on July 4, 1826, the day of the 50th anniversary of the United States, a happenstance with odds of one in 133,000. And consider a third president from Virginia, James Monroe, who also died on July 4, five years later in 1831. The odds of three of our first five U.S. presidents all dying on July 4, Independence Day, are impossibly low. With odds of one in 4.87 million, it must be a miraculous arrangement by God.
The first U.S. president, a Virginian — George Washington, was extraordinarily prescient when he warned in his Farewell Address that factionalism would divide the nation, provoke riots, and invite foreign influence, and even destroy the republic by fostering a "spirit of revenge," enabling "cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men" to seize power. All of which is an apt description of the current political dysfunction on display in our government because of hyper-partisanship and extreme division between the Republican and Democratic parties.
Heightened division and factionalism in the U.S. became more pronounced in the 1960s, coming after prayer, Bible, and devotional reading were taken out of schools (in the 1962 Supreme Court decision Engel v. Vitale and the 1963 Supreme Court decision Abington School District v. Schempp). Then there were Supreme Court rulings (the 1971 decision of Lemon v. Kurtzman and the 1980 decision of Stone v. Graham) that ended public funding for religious education and banned the display of the Ten Commandments in public schools.
In the 1980s, during the surge of Central American refugees into the U.S., the American Marxist Left implemented a new strategic plan, the “sanctuary city and sanctuary state movement.” The sanctuary movement was a long-term strategy, obfuscating the radical nature of the changes that would ensue. The sanctuary movement was also calculated to get the support and cover from Americans predisposed to help the poor, while the sanctuary organizers knew it would facilitate illegal immigration while also radicalizing state and local government, even leading to defunding the police and blocking the enforcement of federal immigration laws. More frightening is that sanctuary states and cities would provide protection for sleeper cells and hardened terrorists—all part of the plan to take down America from within.
Spanberger’s anti-American radicalism has been clearly revealed in her de facto actions to make Virginia a sanctuary state by signing an executive order on her first day in office to prevent law enforcement from cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE). Now, when liberal judges turn loose criminals who are also illegal aliens in Virginia, they will be released onto the streets instead of being returned to their home countries through the Department of Homeland Security.
In fact, within weeks of taking office, Spanberger got her first test on this matter of non-cooperation with federal DHS law enforcement. Illegal immigrant Abdul Jalloh, who had a rap sheet of more than 30 prior arrests, murdered Stephanie Minter in Fairfax, Virginia, on February 23. Spanberger showed more concern about protecting a repeat violent criminal than she did about her own constituents. Her response was not to turn over Jalloh to ICE, but to require ICE to obtain an unnecessary and time-consuming judicial warrant to make the transfer of the murderer to DHS for adjudication and deportation.
Since inauguration, Spanberger has shown derision for the customs, culture, and ideas cherished by Virginians. She supports transgenders in female sports and made hyper-partisan attacks on Virginia’s educational institutions, notably the storied 187-year-old Virginia Military Institute (VMI) —considered the West Point of the South—with an attempt to eliminate the autonomy of VMI by putting it under the control of Virginia State University—a move that would demoralize students and undermine the integrity of VMI.
With assurance of Spanberger’s support, Virginia Democrats have rolled out a dizzying array of some 50 bills that penalize Virginia residents for everyday activities in the form of sales taxes and levies on Amazon deliveries, Uber Eats, storage facilities, gas-powered leaf-blowers, concert tickets and hotels, fairs, sports events, festivals, home improvements, house painting, gun ownership, and gymnasium memberships. Spanberger has proposed taxes on dog walking and grooming, dry cleaning, barber shops, package deliveries, and electric landscaping equipment. She even proposed a per-mile driving tax.
Despite the strong leadership of the Trump presidency, it’s the observation of many that a sweeping, red-green color revolution continues apace in many states and cities. What stands in the way of the completion of this domestic revolution are the Biblical truths and Judeo-Christian values that still reside in our culture, as well as the written word of documents conceived by Virginians: the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, and the Bill of Rights.
America’s enemies know they cannot win on the battlefield of ideas because truth triumphs over falsehood. The subversives’ method of operation is to use deception, elite capture, and take power in select cities and states, and then transform America piecemeal, through a largely dumbed-down culture, using Marxist tools of demoralization and division. Historic Virginia needs to be protected and preserved lest it become the kingpin of the strike that can take down other states and the country.
“Virginia is for Lovers” has been an iconic and endearing tourism slogan for the last 50 years, but it is time for Virginians to rediscover their original state motto, conceived in 1776, “Sic Semper Tyrannis,” a Latin phrase meaning “Thus Always to Tyrants.”
Scott S. Powell is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of "Rediscovering America," a #1 Amazon New Release in the history genre for eight weeks. Ann H. McLean, a UVA Ph.D., serves on the Jefferson Council, the Virginia Council, and the Republic of Virginia preservation groups.