If you still believe that American values are about freedom, equality, individualism, self-government, and patriotism, you are living in the past. Many of us trust in America’s founding principles. Every generation inevitably sacrifices some of its best and bravest to preserve and defend them, but these American values don’t exist any longer. They are historical relics that come and go with every election. Donald Trump just proved it by erasing the values imposed by Biden and radical progressive Democrats who have their own ideas on what America is all about.
American values reimagined: does democracy change what we believe?
America has a habit of reimagining our values every two, four, or eight years depending on who persuades voters that their vision is the right one.
Sometimes we vote to uphold the values that have sustained us since America’s founding.
Sometimes we reject them altogether, which raises the question of whether our democracy is a threat to the principles behind American greatness.
In 2020 voters handed good-natured, benign Uncle Joe Biden the keys to the Oval Office. With the first stroke of his order-writing pen the values we recognize as uniquely American vanished.
Ecstatic progressives nullified four years of America First. They damned Trump’s legacy as a neo-fascist, anti-democratic atrocity. New values typical of Banana Republics emerged. Uncle Joe’s not so benign Department of Justice and the left-wing elements in our judicial system launched an unprecedented attack on the former president in a historic effort to decide the outcome of the 2024 election before voters could interfere.
Armed FBI agents descended on Mar-a-Lago. For the first time in our history, our right to choose the presidential candidate of our choice was attacked by states determined to keep Trump off the ballot. Paradoxically, Democrats also denied the same right to their own voters when they deep-sixed Biden and tapped Kamala Harris for the 2024 presidential race even though she never received a single vote.
After the 2022 midterms, Biden and Harris stubbornly preached the primacy of the American values they methodically dismantled:
And that included young people, seniors, parents with children in tow, working people who all made their voices heard. And the people in this room and around our country made that possible by standing up for basic American values: freedom, liberty, and the rule of law. And I believe when you know what you stand for, you know what to fight for. (Applause.)1
What were these basic American values? Equity instead of equality. Patriotism and Christianity became nationalist dog whistles. The rule of law became weaponized lawfare. America shelled out tens of billions to protect Ukraine’s sovereignty while our own was denied as a threat to our legacy as a nation of immigrants.
Individualism jeopardizes the hive mentality that made these new American values essential to the radical left’s plans to reimagine what America stands for. First Amendment rights were reserved for those with politically acceptable beliefs. Dissent was censored. Conflicting ideas were a conspiratorial danger to democracy.
For four years America was a WOKE, genderless, anti-racist, equity, DEI, climate-driven, neo-socialist haven for progressives with the political power to enforce their extreme response to the first Trump administration that was a response to eight years of Obama. We had no border. Merit was as irrelevant as our genitalia. Even our freedom of movement and association was restricted in many blue states thanks to a virus from China government propaganda insisted came from an animal most Americans had never heard of.
Voters watched their American Dream of home ownership vanish as they struggled to put food on the table. The American values they voted for weren’t working out despite White House assurances that our lives were better than ever.
With America all but unrecognizable, Harris insisted:
We love our country. We love our country. We believe in our foundational principles. And it is incumbent on each one of us to do everything we can.2
On November 5, 2024 voters who do love America did exactly that. The Biden-Harris bad dream was over in an instant.
Biden’s American values were gone, obliterated the moment our new president set his hand on the Bible. Trump’s America First values were back, resurrected with a fierce, retaliatory pro-American vengeance we have never seen the likes of before.
The question isn’t why Biden and Harris did what they did. It’s like asking why tigers eat people. It’s what they do. The issue is whether Americans will again turn their backs on the values that make our nation the envy of the world in favor of a Democrat Party agenda that has strayed so far from the middle that violence is an acceptable path to political change.
Democrats make confrontation and violence essential American values
What comes next for banished progressives who refuse to get with the program we the people chose?
Instead of reimagining liberal politics to align with the values of main street America, Democrats stubbornly deny the will of the people with the arrogant “what we want comes first” insistence that voters wholeheartedly rejected last November.
After the left escaped accountability for the Summer of Love riots, confrontation, intimidation, and violence became as essential to political change as free and fair elections.
Despite the willingness of the left to loot, burn, and riot and two attempts to assassinate Trump during the 2024 campaign, last week House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries’ (D-NY) urged Americans to fight the new president’s policies “in the streets.”
That’s risky talk from the party that accuses Trump of hiding nationalist dog whistles in his remarks, but there is nothing new about the left’s incitement of violence and refusal to accept responsibility for the result. While cities burned and people were injured during the Floyd anarchy, Democrats babbled about peaceful protests while they fanned the flames of hate by declaring America murderously racist.
During the first Trump term, Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) encouraged risky public confrontations with administration officials and called for restricting their freedom:
If you see anybody from [President Trump’s cabinet] in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd and you push back on them! And you tell them that they are not welcome, anymore, anywhere.3
In March 2020 Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) introduced a resolution to censure Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for threatening Supreme Court Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh because they didn’t bow to his party’s abortion agenda:
The resolution condemns Sen. Schumer’s remarks at a pro-abortion rally on the front steps of the Supreme Court, noting that political violence has increased in the United States over the last decade, including the targeting and murder of federal judges and their family members.4
Like Donald Trump, Kavanaugh was targeted by a would-be assassin after Biden refused to protect justices’ homes from angry protesters whipped into a frenzy by furious Democrats in the wake of the Dobbs decision.
Now we have a threat from Jeffries that is characteristic of the Democrat Party’s refusal to honor the will of the people. He doubled down on the lunacy voters clearly reject:
Diversity, equity and inclusion are American values. Perhaps I can explain. The motto of the United States of America is e pluribus unum. Out of many, one. That’s diversity. The 14th Amendment to the United States Constitution—one of the most important amendments in our country—provides equal protection under the law. That’s equity.5
No, that’s utter nonsense. Progressive equity is the antithesis of America’s values of equality and equal protection. Like DEI, in Democrat hands it disregards merit and instead unfairly advantages groups favored by Jeffries’ party that, like our values, come and go as political power shifts hands.
America without our foundational American values is a dangerous playground for radicals
Last week, Chicago news outlets reported on two migrants arrested after the death of a 63-year-old man who was discovered bound with duct tape. Fox 32 reports that one of the men was in custody just weeks earlier and was promptly released.6
The Democrat Party’s promotion of open borders and illegal immigration may be the most flagrant, shocking denial of American values we will ever experience. Biden and Harris are gone, but blue state progressives like bloated, blowhard Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson keep their murderous values alive and well. They are more than willing to force the issue by allowing Americans to be raped, robbed, and killed until their party gets the massive grant of amnesty and citizenship they seek.
Our nation’s Declaration of Independence enshrined the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. These are simple, fundamental American values that are no more permanent than the terms of the politicians granted our trust. As Trump proved after four horrendous years of the Biden-Harris autocracy and the radical Democrats who enabled their abuses, American values don’t exist. They are political constructs that have less to do with the will of the people than the will of those who govern.
The left is determined to undermine Trump’s election mandate and America’s return to the foundational American values that get in the way of their agenda.
Considering the eagerness of America’s political left to take confrontation to the streets and its history of inciting violent protest even when it means supporting a racist terrorist group like Hamas, there is certainly a battle for American values that must be fought. The place to do it is the same ballot box Democrats no longer regard as legitimate unless they are on the winning ticket. Their next chance to put our American values on the chopping block is November 3, 2026.
Update: protecting life is a value most of us agree on, even if it means arresting illegals to keep Americans safe
There’s no reason why we should expect Democrat politicians who lose their minds when questioned about the ethics of abortion on demand at any time with no restrictions to make protecting life a priority. They are all about party orthodoxy and pushing their narrative no matter who gets hurt. Nowhere is this more obvious than America’s sanctuary paradises where criminal illegals know if they are arrested they will be protected from ICE.
Trump promised to put an end to this grotesque denial of the basic American value that our lives matter. Today, after this post was published the news broke that the Department of Justice under Attorney General Pam Bondi took a big step towards protecting Americans with a lawsuit filed against the State of Illinois, Pritzker, Johnson, and various Chicago and Cook County officials for willfully obstructing federal immigration enforcement efforts.
This is wonderful news after four years of weeping and moaning and flagellating about the plight of illegals while those hurt and killed by the foreign criminals welcomed by Biden were ignored as collateral damage necessary to serve the Democrat Party’s extreme immigration agenda. This seems like a test case that the administration hopes will eventually land in the laps of SCOTUS justices for a decision that will impact all blue sanctuaries. In the meantime, it’s nice to see that Pritzker, Johnson, et al. are finally facing some accountability for subverting the most basic America value of all: life matters.
Sources
1“Remarks by President Biden and Vice President Harris at a Democratic National Committee Event.” The White House. November 10, 2022. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/11/10/remarks-by-president-biden-and-vice-president-harris-at-a-democratic-national-committee-event/, retrieved February 4, 2025.
2“Remarks by Vice President Harris at a Campaign Reception | Los Gatos, CA.” The White House. January 30, 2024. https://bidenwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/01/30/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-at-a-campaign-reception-los-gatos-ca/, retrieved January 26, 2025.
3“H.Res.327 – Expel Maxine Waters Resolution for Incitement of Violence and Rioting against the United States.” Congress.gov. https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/327/text, retrieved February 2, 2025.
4“Sen. Cruz Co-Sponsors Resolution to Censure Sen. Schumer for Threatening Supreme Court Justices. Ted Cruz. March 5, 2020. https://www.cruz.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sen-cruz-co-sponsors-resolution-to-censure-sen-schumer-for-threatening-supreme-court-justices, retrieved February 3, 2025.
5“Leader Jeffries Statement on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” Hakeem Jeffries. Democratic Leader. January 23, 2025. https://democraticleader.house.gov/media/press-releases/leader-jeffries-statement-diversity-equity-and-inclusion, retrieved February 2, 2025.
6Finn, Matt. “2 migrants in custody after Chicago man found dead, reportedly tied up in home: sources.” Fox 32. January 31, 2025. https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/migrants-arrested-chicago-man-found-dead-norwood-park, retrieved February 3, 2025.
*Langley, Koby. “Honoring the Sacrifice of the Greatest Generation with the Service of Ours.” June 10, 2014. Aerial view of the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial in Colleville-sur-Mer, France. June 6, 2014. Official White House Photo by Pete Souza retrieved from https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/blog/2014/06/10/honoring-sacrifice-greatest-generation-service-ours on February 5, 2025.
**“White House Lit Up With Rainbow Colors in 2015.” National Park Service. White House Photo by Chuck Kennedy retrieved from https://www.nps.gov/places/white-house-lit-up-with-rainbow-colors.htm on February 5, 2025.
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