Coolidge's 150th July 4th Anniversary Speech Refutes Progressivism

History shows that three of our first five presidents died on the fourth of July - John Adams & Thomas Jefferson within hours of each other on July 4, 1826, fifty years to the day after July 4, 1776 & James Monroe on July 4, 1831.  

But only one president was born on July 4 - Calvin Coolidge on July 4, 1872.

Following all of the principles of supply-side economics President Coolidge presided over one of the strongest periods of economic growth, prosperity, & a rising standard of living in American history.  

The income tax, ratified by the 16th Amendment in 1913, was supposed to be a flat tax with a single rate of 4% but it quickly changed to a graduated tax of 1% to 7% with the income brackets determined by the ability to pay.  By 1921 Congress had raised the top marginal rate from 7% to 73%.   President Coolidge was the only president to follow all of the supply-side economic principles: 1) the reduction of the size of government & its claims on earned income, 2) a lower marginal tax rate for the highest income earners, & 3) sound-money policies – the gold standard.  Silent Cal reduced the top 73% income tax rate to 25% by 1925, reduced the national debt, & balanced the budget – a budget that actually was smaller when he left office than when he took office.  Federal spending was 3% of GDP in 1928 – it is 24.2% today.  

The Coolidge administration emphasized limited government, personal responsibility, & free enterprise & came to power soon after the anti-American progressive movement started to take shape under the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.  Wilson had nothing but disdain for the relevance of the Founders & our founding documents to his way of life - he promoted the progressive idea that human nature is changeable & that each generation should define liberty, rights, & equality for itself rather than refer to what the Founders thought of as universal, timeless, permanent, & immutable principles listed @ the beginning of the Declaration of Independence.  In short, Wilson wanted to move beyond the principles & practices of the American founding.

Below is an excerpt from President Coolidge's July 4, 1926 speech on the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence that debunks Wilson's progressive theories.  The points from the speech can still be used today to counter arguments to slow the speed of our ever increasing progressive world.

Excerpt from President Coolidge's 1926 Independence Day Speech: 

About the Declaration there is a finality that is exceedingly restful.  It is often asserted that the world has made a great deal of progress since 1776, that we have had new thoughts and new experiences which have given us a great advance over the people of that day, and that we may therefore very well discard their conclusions for something more modern.  But that reasoning can not be applied to this great charter.  If all men are created equal, that is final.  If they are endowed with inalienable rights, that is final.  If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, that is final.  No advance, no progress can be made beyond these propositions.  If anyone wishes to deny their truth or their soundness, the only direction in which he can proceed historically is not forward, but backward toward the time when there was no equality, no rights of the individual, no rule of the people. Those who wish to proceed in that direction can not lay claim to progress.  They are reactionary.  Their ideas are not more modern, but more ancient, than those of the Revolutionary fathers.

The Difference Between Trump's First Three Years & Last Year In Office

"The thing about this election cycle with these two candidates for president: They both have a record.  You don't have to listen to rhetoric or theory or talking points.  How were you doing in the first couple of years of the Trump administration?  How are you doing now?"  - House Speaker Mike Johnson

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In answering Speaker Johnson's question we don't have to ask much about the years under Biden because Biden's policies & practices have been a deliberate assault on America that favors every progressive plank that will fundamentally transform our country from one of prosperity & high achievement where everyone has the equal opportunity to succeed to one of a tilted playing field of mediocrity where social equity is achieved by giving everyone under whatever circumstance they find themselves whatever they need to reach an equal outcome with anyone else.  In short, Biden has provided or attempted to provide equality of outcome by redistributing wealth to ensure that economic & social equality are actually achieved.  Biden's administration has not only been anti-American, its performance has risen to the level of betrayal of America with every one of its harmful actions & failures documented on this blog since his inauguration.

It's interesting that in his query the Speaker breaks out "the first couple of years of the Trump administration" from the last year Trump was in office because there was a tremendous difference that should be focused upon.

In the first three years under Trump you would be hard pressed to find one RTE post that was not favorable toward Trump.  If you do please let me know.  After all, I was a supporter of Trump from the official presidential announcement after the golden escalator ride on June 16, 2015 when most current Trump die-hards in this readership were still supporting Ted Cruz.  Ask yourself if you are holding a memory of the first three years & ignoring the performance of the last year including the near constitutional crisis that followed the presidential election of 2020 with what Trump asked Pence to do on January 6.  With all the bluster it is easy to misjudge Trump's record especially since he never mentions the last year.  The fourth year was entirely different from the other three starting with Trump's very poor handling of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Trump began well enough on January 31, 2020 by banning travel to the United States by foreign nationals from places like Communist China, where the Wuhan coronavirus originated.  This travel ban was extended on March 11 to twenty six European countries - all in accordance with Congress extending its authority to regulate commerce to the Executive Branch "to prevent the introduction, transmission, or spread of communicable disease from foreign countries into the States or possessions."

But then Trump "got rolled by his bureaucrats, he caved in, & many of our most fundamental rights began to disappear practically overnight."1  

Although Trump complained about Dr. Fauci he approved his duplicitous method of "following the science" & let him run wild, unsupervised, for months, initially issuing social distancing guidelines telling Americans to stay more than six feet apart, refrain from nonessential travel in airplanes, stop going out to dinner in restaurants, & avoid gatherings of more than ten people – like @ NBA games or church services.  These initial federal guidelines were followed shortly by “Stay @ Home” orders from governors & mayors mandating the shutting down of schools & businesses these officials did not deem essential – like gun stores, but liquor & marijuana stores that bring in large amounts of revenue to states were deemed essential.  Businesses previously deemed non-essential had been allowed to operate between 5 AM & 8 PM in some states such as NJ. 

And right out of the box, from March 3 to March 27, Congress did what it does best – it produced a series of spending bills that Trump signed into law totaling $2.3 trillion the first 24 days that Covid was acknowledged as being in America - the total was $2.7 trillion by April & $3.6 trillion by December plus a $1.4 trillion omnibus spending bill.  Trump & Congress didn't take the time to find out what Covid was but their instincts were to throw money @ it including direct cash payments to households ($1,200 per adult plus $500 per qualifying child under 17), an additional $600 per week in unemployment compensation plus increases in food assistance, tax credits for employers who offered paid sick leave, bailouts & loans for airlines & other industries, & loans & grants for small businesses.

The federal guidelines & state orders described above are in violation of the Constitution of We the People of the United States as follows: 1) the prohibition of the free exercise of religion & assembly violates the First Amendment; 2) the picking of winners & losers, as in providing money to some industries, like the airlines, but not others in the rescue bills, violates the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment; 3) the impairing of the ability of people to fulfill contracts by forcing them to shelter in place is a violation of Article I, Section 10; 4) the threatening of seizure & jailing people, without a warrant or due process, for disregarding orders to not assemble is in violation of Amendments Four & Fourteen; 5) the deprivation of liberty & property without due process of law when ordered to shelter in place with no means of securing the necessities of life violates the Fifth & Fourteenth Amendments; 6) the shutting down of gun stores to prevent the sale of firearms or ammunition is a violation of the Second Amendment: & 7) none of the money spent was for any of the constituionally enumerated functions of Congress or the President.

 

Here’s what the above constitutional violations specifically meant to people all over the country: 1) members of a church in Greenville, MS sitting in their cars with windows closed in the church parking lot listening to a church service on the radio, were asked to leave by police, & those who didn’t were each served with $500 tickets; 2) a paddle boarder alone on the ocean in Malibu was arrested; 3) San Clemente officials ordered the filling in of a skateboarding park with 37 tons of sand; 4) a man in Brighton, CO was handcuffed for playing ball with his wife & six year old daughter in an empty field; 5) the mayor of Louisville, KY prohibited drive-thru church services in which people never left their cars but did not prohibit a multitude of other non-religious drive-ins & drive-thrus like drive-thru liquor stores; 6) the Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer micromanaged her constitutional violations by proclaiming which products stores could sell – people could stand ten feet away from cordoned off paint & vegetable seeds they could not buy after buying lottery tickets, liquor, & candy; 7) Whitmer also OKed boat rides for a man & his dog in the lake to go fishing as long as the boat did not have a motor; 8) the newly elected KY governor sent state police out to record license plates of people attending mass church services on Easter Sunday so the people could be contacted & forced to self quarantine for two weeks; 9) Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned people they will be locked up for going to local parks – later violating her own stay @ home orders when she was caught getting her hair done saying she is in the public light & needs to look good (much like NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio being driven to his gym, while other gyms were closed).

The above examples coupled with the unchecked BLM & Antifa violent crime spree (arson, assault, & damaging business owners' property & federal court buildings) during the "summer of love" in 2020 was America on Trump's watch in his final year in office.  Instead of demonstrating presidential leadership to ameliorate the hard Covid times by fulfilling his oath to "take Care that the laws be faithfully executed," Article II, Section 3, Trump regularly disrupted the daily Covid TV briefings-updates by getting into arguments with members of the Press over minutia while vulnerable senior citizens, who were interested in the updates as a matter of life & death, only saw non-productive sparring matches day after day. 

Since Trump's last year in office & continuing today he has not produced a record of freedom, & bad jokes about being a dictator for one day & the speech to the National Rifle Association regarding the concept of a three-term presidency should be taken seriously by the man whose primary requirement for selecting a vice presidential running mate is that he or she believes the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Trump.

If Trump is reelected, will his second term be more like his first three years in office or the last year including his despicable actions & false claims made after the 2020 presidential election that persist today?  I for one don't want to find out.

In short, in his last year in office "Trump presided over the greatest restriction of individual liberties this country has ever known.  He didn't stand up for the Constitution when it really mattered."2

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1.  RFK Jr. speaking @ the Libertarian National Convention on May 24, 2024.

2.  Ibid.