Something’s gone wrong in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We can all feel it, but if we’re being honest, most of us don’t understand it. At the end of the day, we don’t have all the facts, and if you don’t know how something works, how do you fix it?
A Return to Common Sense is an “accessible and urgent” (Kirkus Reviews), dare we say fun, guide to how America works and a roadmap to reclaiming a government of, by, and for the people. We fought a revolutionary war for the idea of self-governance and pursuit of happiness—we can’t just give up on it now.
To address the crisis, Leigh McGowan offers Six American Principles, rooted in history, that we can all agree make America, America.
1. America is a land of freedom.
2. Everyone should have the opportunity to rise.
3. Every citizen should have a vote, and that vote should count.
4. Representatives should represent the people who elected them.
5. The law applies to all of us.
6. Government should be a force for good.
Using the Six Principles as guideposts, this book lays out suggestions for America, to not only find its way out of the mess it’s currently in, but to set a course for a future of which we can all be truly proud.
Something’s gone wrong in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We can all feel it, but if we’re being honest, most of us don’t understand it. At the end of the day, we don’t have all the facts, and if you don’t know how something works, how do you fix it?
A Return to Common Sense is an “accessible and urgent” (Kirkus Reviews), dare we say fun, guide to how America works and a roadmap to reclaiming a government of, by, and for the people. We fought a revolutionary war for the idea of self-governance and pursuit of happiness—we can’t just give up on it now.
To address the crisis, Leigh McGowan offers Six American Principles, rooted in history, that we can all agree make America, America.
1. America is a land of freedom.
2. Everyone should have the opportunity to rise.
3. Every citizen should have a vote, and that vote should count.
4. Representatives should represent the people who elected them.
5. The law applies to all of us.
6. Government should be a force for good.
Using the Six Principles as guideposts, this book lays out suggestions for America, to not only find its way out of the mess it’s currently in, but to set a course for a future of which we can all be truly proud.
A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It
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A Return to Common Sense: How to Fix America Before We Really Blow It
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Overview
Something’s gone wrong in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave. We can all feel it, but if we’re being honest, most of us don’t understand it. At the end of the day, we don’t have all the facts, and if you don’t know how something works, how do you fix it?
A Return to Common Sense is an “accessible and urgent” (Kirkus Reviews), dare we say fun, guide to how America works and a roadmap to reclaiming a government of, by, and for the people. We fought a revolutionary war for the idea of self-governance and pursuit of happiness—we can’t just give up on it now.
To address the crisis, Leigh McGowan offers Six American Principles, rooted in history, that we can all agree make America, America.
1. America is a land of freedom.
2. Everyone should have the opportunity to rise.
3. Every citizen should have a vote, and that vote should count.
4. Representatives should represent the people who elected them.
5. The law applies to all of us.
6. Government should be a force for good.
Using the Six Principles as guideposts, this book lays out suggestions for America, to not only find its way out of the mess it’s currently in, but to set a course for a future of which we can all be truly proud.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781668066447 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Atria/One Signal Publishers |
| Publication date: | 11/04/2025 |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.50(w) x 8.38(h) x 0.76(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Principle 1: America Is a Land of Freedom PRINCIPLE 1 AMERICA IS A LAND OF FREEDOM
Freedom is the fundamental principle on which America was built. The word freedom polls higher than any other word in this country. It even polls higher than the word America. It doesn’t matter your political persuasion, everything in the United States comes back to the central idea of freedom. Our anthem is about the land of the free. We have Lady Liberty on our shore, the shining beacon of freedom and opportunity. When Americans say “my rights” they mean “my freedom”—what we’re allowed to do, allowed to have, allowed to say. There is a popular meme Europeans like to share to tease Americans that’s just an extreme close-up of a serious-looking bald eagle that reads, “I’m sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my freedom.” This idea of freedom is integral to the American national identity, but I worry many of us have forgotten what it actually means.
America is not unique. There are lots of countries in the world with “freedom.” In fact on the 2023 Human Freedom Index, America doesn’t even crack the top 10, so we need to ask ourselves, when we say “freedom,” what are we actually talking about? What did freedom mean to the Founding Fathers of the Southern colonies? The men who wouldn’t sign the Constitution without the inclusion of chattel slavery. What was freedom to President Andrew Jackson, who ran the brutal Indian Removal Campaign so white settlers could continue their western expansion? What did freedom mean to the men who passed the Fifteenth Amendment after the Civil War, protecting the voting rights of every American citizen “no matter their party, faith, color, or district” but left out gender? Was freedom on the mind of those who opposed Reparations with Black Codes and white violence, or when Jim Crow laws took over the South and segregated everything from bathrooms to schools, adding endless obstacles to make sure the people who were now free to vote couldn’t?
America’s history is packed with oppression. Every step forward expanding our freedom has been hard-won, which is why it means so much to us, and why we shouldn’t be cavalier when people try to take it away. Early Americans gambled the future of our nation on the dream of liberty. They risked it all for the chance to make their own rules, establish their own government, and create a nation of the people, by the people, for the people. The Declaration of Independence, the document we sent to the King of England telling him we no longer wanted to be part of his empire, laid it out, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Or in common speak, we believe this to be true without question, that everyone is created equal. That we are born with certain rights that cannot be taken from us, and among those are our right to life, to freedom, and to the ability to seek that which makes us happy.
Now of course, we’d be fools to pretend this idea of liberty was originally offered to everyone. It would be a disservice to the history of our country, and to the memory of the people who fought for the expansion of rights, not to acknowledge that at our inception, liberty and justice were only for some. The only people who could vote in our original elections were white male landowners, over twenty-one, but over the centuries we have expanded the rights and freedoms of the American people with action and deliberation—with blood, sweat, and tears. Very little in this nation’s history was simply given to us. Every step forward has been a fight. From the day we declared our independence, to the day you are reading this book, we have been a nation of people asking for more. A nation of people looking around and saying, “Nope, we could do better.”
The Founding Fathers might have been a bunch of white guys who mostly owned slaves and didn’t think much about women, but they were forward thinkers. Enlightened men who knew they were creating the documents of a nation within the confines of their time. The Framers deliberately left things open so they’d be able to evolve. They understood the freedoms originally offered to a small group would eventually, over the course of time, be expanded. Which is why it matters that after two centuries of progress, our freedoms are once again under attack.
James Madison, who wrote so much of the Constitution he’s known as the “Father of the Constitution,” also wrote nineteen additions that would act as an addendum to the original Constitution and called them “the great rights of mankind.” Ten of the nineteen would end up being ratified as constitutional amendments and are now collectively known as the Bill of Rights. If the original Constitution is the country’s operating manual, the Bill of Rights, and the amendments that came after, are often what people think of when they talk about American “freedoms.”
Freedom of speech is in the First Amendment of the Constitution, and is the one Americans often base their national identity on. “I’m an American. I have freedom of speech.” The problem is, most people think freedom of speech means you’re allowed to say whatever you want to say, whenever you want to say it, and no one can do anything about it. What people forget is that the Constitution was written to shape the power of the government, not necessarily the behavior of the citizens. We built this country on the idea of independence—that we are our own nation, our own people—but we transposed that national identity onto the individual. The idea of freedom of speech is so integral to the American sense of self, but we’re often a little fuzzy on the details of the actual amendment.
In its entirety, the First Amendment says: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free speech thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.” So, let’s break down what that means.
Under the First Amendment, the government can’t tell you what to say. It can’t stop you from criticizing it. No one can lock you up for your political beliefs, your political speech, or your peaceful political actions. No one can drag you away, throw you in jail, or execute you for treason for criticizing the government like they do in other countries. You can even make a list of things you believe are wrong and publish them. This freedom to openly express your anger and disappointment with the very seat of power is a wonderful addition to the Constitution. The point of the amendment is that the weight of the federal government cannot, and will not, be used against its people for the things they say.
Americans take for granted how this isn’t the case everywhere else. We talk endlessly about the importance of freedom of speech, but I’m not sure we truly realize what an important freedom it is, because it’s how we make change. It’s how we’re able to stand up and say, “This isn’t right.” How we can get elected on our ideas. How we can speak our truth in government about government.
Freedom of speech is essential to everything we hold dear, but many have reduced it to the ability to act like a jerk without liability. Which is why when neo-Nazis were being de-platformed on the original Twitter people got upset. They argued that removing them was against freedom of speech. Except an agreement between a private company and its users has nothing to do with the government. The government gives you the constitutional right to say whatever hateful garbage you want—that’s why we have neo-Nazis marching in American cities without federal officers stepping in—freedom of speech protects you from the government, not the repercussions of your speech from private companies or public groups. You can’t just scream at a comedian in a comedy club or yell your opinions in a crowded lecture hall without being removed. Americans are offered freedom from tyranny, not freedom from accountability.
You can’t threaten to murder someone or deliberately incite a riot and call it free speech. To be clear, those are actually considered “true threats,” and the Supreme Court has ruled the government is allowed to prosecute someone who intentionally threatens another person with death or bodily harm. The Supreme Court has also ruled that the First Amendment doesn’t protect you from inciting violence or causing a harmful situation, like yelling “Fire!” in a crowded theater. Freedom of speech means the government can’t come after you for the things you say. It doesn’t shield you from slander, libel, false or misleading speech, or intellectual property violations, and it doesn’t mean you can’t be fired for using the N-word at work.
The First Amendment is such an essential addition to the Constitution that we should give props to those holdout delegates who refused to sign the document until a bill of rights was included. Just as we should feel concerned that current state leaders are now writing laws to roll those essential rights back—like making protesting illegal, allowing people to hit protestors with their car, or banning journalists they don’t like from press conferences. Many of us were concerned when President Donald Trump started talking about jailing his political opponents (“Lock her up!”), or when he asked General Mark Milley if they could “just shoot [the protesters]” in the summer of 2020. General Milley had to remind the president that the people had a constitutional right to peacefully gather and protest. It doesn’t matter how you feel about President Trump; any government official believing they have the authority to violate the people’s First Amendment right to peacefully protest, or who use their power in direct opposition to the people’s fundamental freedoms, should feel alarming.
Freedom of the press was included in the First Amendment for a reason. While the three branches of government are meant to act as a check on one another, the press keeps tabs on all three. That’s why it’s often called the Fourth Estate. This group can research what the government is doing and report back to the public. The public can then understand the positions, actions, and behaviors of their government, and vote or act accordingly. The United States is an enormous country. We couldn’t possibly keep up, or know if our representatives were corrupt or deceitful, without a dedicated group of people whose job it was to report on what was happening. I realize we might have forgotten this important fact in the golden age of infotainment, but the press has an obligation to hold those in power accountable. It’s an essential element of American freedom to expose those who are corrupt or lawless to public scrutiny.
It was freedom of the press that allowed Ida B. Wells to document the lynching and mistreatment of Black people in the South, that allowed Ida Tarbell to publish a nineteen-part series revealing oil tycoon and billionaire John D. Rockefeller’s illegal monopolistic practices, and the First Amendment was how journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein were able to break the Watergate scandal that would have led to Nixon’s impeachment had he not chosen to resign.
Ida Tarbell’s work on Rockefeller led to new antitrust laws that would help move the country out of the great wealth disparity of the Gilded Age, in the early part of the twentieth century, and change the course of the nation by stopping giant corporations from consolidating nearly unlimited power—laws that would be severely rolled back during the Reagan administration of the 1980s. Forty years ago there were fifty companies in charge of most American media. Today, 90 percent of the media in the United States is controlled by six corporations. Along with removing antitrust laws to encourage competition, the Reagan administration also got rid of the Fairness Doctrine, a policy created in 1949 requiring anyone who held a broadcast license “to present fair and balanced coverage of controversial issues to promote ‘a basic standard of fairness’ in broadcasting.” During this time, licensees were “obliged not only to cover fairly the views of others, but also to refrain from expressing their own views to ensure that broadcasters did not use their stations simply as advocates of a single perspective,” and without that regulation in place, the way our country took in information went completely off the rails.
There’s a popular saying about journalism that goes, “If someone says it’s raining and another person says it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. Your job is to look out the window and find out which one is true.” Unfortunately, without the Fairness Doctrine the truth part wasn’t as necessary anymore, and America became inundated with polarized media, particularly right-wing radio, with hosts like Rush Limbaugh, which laid the framework for future right-wing news channels like Fox News and Newsmax.
Almost overnight we created a media environment where people only had to hear one side of the story, and often that side was skewed to activate people to vote or behave in certain ways. Instead of giving people facts, it gave people spin, and within that spin our nation began to erode. I’m sure you’ve noticed how difficult it is to discuss or debate an issue if you come to the table from two completely different realities. Add to that the twenty-four-hour news cycle and the increasing reach of cable television—which doesn’t require the same broadcast license as network television, so it doesn’t have to follow the same rules—and we had a crisis waiting to happen.
There are differences between companies like NBC, who must apply for broadcasting licenses from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), and private cable companies like Fox News, who do not. You can see how the different sets of regulations affect broadcast vs. cable media in court. Years ago, Fox News’s Tucker Carlson was in a defamation trial at the same time NBC was in a defamation trial. Broadcast network NBC had to pay a huge settlement after it turned out something it reported wasn’t the full story. Fox News, on the other hand, won its case because the judge ruled “no reasonable person would think Tucker was telling the truth.” The problem is, many clearly do.
The loss of the Fairness Doctrine and rise of cable media and the internet, in combination with the shrinking number of companies who own all media, has made freedom of the press very muddy. Today, the American public is forced to walk a fine line between information and propaganda, and it’s far too easy to become confused. Which is why 30 percent of the electorate—the people who vote in America—still believe, despite all evidence and court cases to the contrary, that President Joe Biden did not legally win the 2020 election. This is categorically false, but if members of the media don’t have to say that, then where does that leave us?
Modern politicians are also taking major liberties with freedom of the press—passing laws to limit press access, blocking public disclosure, referring to them as the “enemy of the people” or discrediting them by calling them “fake news.” Much of this behavior is not only unconstitutional, but should place politicians engaging in it squarely in the spotlight. What is it they’re trying to hide?
We need freedom of the press to hold those in power accountable, and we should, at the very least, be requiring new legislation prohibiting the known dissemination of false or misleading information. Despite how people feel, truth still exists. We may not like it, but it’s real. If this country could pass an amendment making booze illegal (Eighteenth Amendment), surely we could pass an amendment that makes public deception illegal.
After the initial changes to the Constitution with the Bill of Rights, and the two amendments that came after, America went sixty-one years without any formal additions to the Constitution, but we also had a civil war, and coming out of that war it was obvious we needed new amendments to address some of the things we had missed the first time around. This is how we got the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth Amendments, and how American “freedom” took on a whole new meaning.
According to the National Museum of African American History & Culture in Washington, DC, although Abraham Lincoln had always been personally against slavery—believing it was unjust and placed too much power in the hands of wealthy men—he wasn’t sure if Black people should become American citizens. Lincoln began the Civil War believing former slaves should be sent out of the country after they were free, because how could they ever live alongside those who had enslaved them? Over time his views changed, in part credited to his relationship with Frederick Douglass, the escaped slave who became one of the most important leaders in the African American civil rights movement. By the end of his life Lincoln was speaking in favor not just of citizenship, but of African American voting rights. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth before the final ratification of his greatest legacy, the Thirteenth Amendment (1865)—the outlawing of chattel slavery and involuntary servitude in the United States.
AMERICA 101: JUNETEENTH
I think it’s important not to pass over this essential moment in the expansion of our nation’s freedom without mentioning June 19, or what’s called Juneteenth. Juneteenth marks the day in June 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in Galveston, Texas, to enforce the emancipation of the last slaves, because the white people there simply weren’t doing it. The fact is, not everyone in America celebrates Independence Day on the fourth of July, because on July 4, 1776, Black Americans were still enslaved. So modern-day Black Americans might enjoy a BBQ on July 4, but many of them will understandably never see that day as symbolizing their own independence or liberty. Juneteenth is therefore a commemorative holiday celebrating the day in 1865 when Union soldiers arrived in the last town in the South to tell them enslaved people were free. Over the years, Juneteenth has been called Freedom Day, Emancipation Day, Black Fourth of July, and the Second Independence Day, and despite the fact that Juneteenth has only been a national holiday in America since 2021, the day has been sacred to many Black communities for more than 150 years. And while slavery might have been abolished in 1865, the fight for civil rights in America continues to this day, so Juneteenth gives us the opportunity to reflect on our past and consider the true legacy of freedom in America.
While the Thirteenth Amendment did stop chattel slavery, and theoretically give Black Americans the right to freedom, it was the enforcement of those rights that was problematic. Reconstruction, the period after the Civil War when America tried to figure out how to integrate the newly freed African Americans into society, was a turbulent time in our nation’s history as Lincoln’s replacement, President Andrew Johnson, was a strong proponent of states’ rights and didn’t believe the federal government should have a say in how they were run. This left the Southern states largely in the hands of the ruling class—traditionally white plantation owners and former Confederates—and following the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, state legislatures in the South passed a whole series of restrictive rules called the Black Codes to control the behavior and freedoms of the formally enslaved. This effectively kept many newly freed African Americans dependent on their former owners, forced into specific trades, and fined or jailed for random infractions, all while limiting what they could do, what they could own, and where they could live. To add insult to injury, Black Codes were enforced by all-white police forces and state militia often made up of Confederate veterans, and President Johnson took the land that had been given to the freed slaves and returned it to their former owners.
AMERICA 101: JIM CROW LAWS
To be clear: When people talk about the Jim Crow South, they’re not talking about a person but referring to a persona. Jim Crow was a character created by a white actor, Thomas D. Rice, in 1830 for a popular theatrical form called minstrel shows that reached their peak popularity between 1850 and 1870. The character of Jim Crow was played by a white man in blackface mocking African Americans as basically slow-witted buffoons who were there to jump around and act a fool for a white audience. It was a demeaning caricature that helped white people rationalize the way Black people were treated, as it played into the idea that Black people were innately inferior, which helped justify any laws created to deliberately keep the African American population down. These laws were then referred to as “Jim Crow” laws.
Post-Restoration Black Codes made way for Jim Crow laws that continued to hold back Black Americans for generations. If you want to learn about Black American history and understand why people talk about things like reparations and systemic racism and teach courses like critical race theory in law school, you can’t stop at slavery. You have to recognize what came after and realize how slow the progress to “liberty and justice for all” has really been in this country. While slavery might have come to an end after the Civil War, there were still lots of people who fought tooth and nail against the freedom of African Americans. We see their legacy to this day in the sentiments of those people still arguing that America is a white nation. Despite the fact that every decade since the end of slavery has found Black Americans, on the whole, more educated, with more wealth, and more status, we’ve never properly dealt with racism, or the perpetuation of violence against Black people, in this country. America couldn’t even get a federal anti-lynching law passed until the Biden administration in 2022, and as everyone from Emmett Till to George Floyd shows us, we still have a long way to go if we want to truly call ourselves the land of the free.
AMERICA 101: THE EXCEPTION CLAUSE
While the Thirteenth Amendment ended chattel slavery by banning the exploitation of someone’s labor against their will, and theoretically giving Black Americans their right to freedom, it was also the beginning of using our prison population as near slave labor. The Thirteenth Amendment includes what’s called the Exception Clause, which allows workers in prisons to be exploited, underpaid, and excluded from workplace safety protections. The Exception Clause ended up encouraging the criminalization and re-enslavement of Black people after the Civil War to keep them working for free, and despite the fact all prisoners fall under the clause, over time it’s had a disproportionate effect on Black Americans.
When we brag about “American freedom,” we should probably keep in mind that America also has the highest prison population in the world, with just 4.23 percent of the world’s population but 20 percent of the world’s prisoners, and we use that population as a lucrative industry of cheap labor that often gets rented out. In fact, the University of Chicago reported that nearly two-thirds (65 percent) of incarcerated people working in America today—roughly 800,000 inmates—have no choice but to work for little to no pay. The same study informs us that incarcerated workers produce at least $2 billion in goods, and at least $9 billion in prison maintenance to subsidize the cost of the industry. It’s an incredibly lucrative business to own a prison in America, and the more prisoners you have, the more money you make. So, when we crow about American freedom, we might also want to consider getting serious about American prison reform.
The Fourteenth Amendment (1868) offered, among other things, birthright citizenship to everyone born in the United States, as well as due process under the law (the Constitution gave due process under federal law, but this was specifically for the states). It gave Black men the right to vote through their citizenship, punishing states with decreased representation in Congress should they not be allowed to vote, and it ended the Three-Fifths Compromise, with every Black American now being counted as a whole person to determine House representation. The Fourteenth Amendment did not, however, affect “non-taxed Native Americans” (which at the time were 92 percent of the Indigenous community), each of whom still counted as zero percent of a person. This would go on to affect Native Americans’ ability to become citizens, which wasn’t granted to them until the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924. So, while Indigenous people were 100 percent America’s First People, they were the last to gain American citizenship and share in our rights.
Unsurprisingly, the Fourteenth Amendment wasn’t a strong enough deterrent to those who wanted to disenfranchise Black voters, so Congress had to explicitly add the Fifteenth Amendment (1870) to stop citizens from being barred from voting because of their race, and we would still need the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to make it stick.
Reading American history, it’s difficult not to see how incredibly unjust many of America’s laws and societal behaviors have been over the years. It’s hard not to be discouraged at just how dead set certain groups of Americans have been about denying freedoms to those they deem lesser. Which, to be clear, wasn’t just Black Americans, but also immigrants, the working class, the LGBTQIA+ community, and women.
From the founding of the United States, women had been almost completely excluded from American politics. After the Civil War, however, women believed their time had come, but while the country seemed prepared to extend voting rights to Black men, it wasn’t ready to extend them to women. Many women abolitionists put their dream of universal suffrage (voting for everyone) aside to make sure newly freed Black men were given the same right to vote as white men, but other women in the movement were outraged.
A heated argument about whether it was the Black man’s or white woman’s turn to vote went back and forth until Black women stood up and expressed their unique perspective, which was that in neither of those scenarios were they included. The idea being, we keep talking about Black men getting the right to vote because of slavery, but if we don’t include women, then Black women will be left out, and how is that fair if the standard to meet is having been enslaved?
The debate ultimately split the women’s movement into two distinct groups. One group focused on a constitutional amendment for women’s suffrage, while also working on other political issues like divorce laws and temperance (moderation of, or abstinence from, alcohol), while the other worked primarily for women’s suffrage at the state level, but mostly stayed out of other political issues. Historians believe the split within the women’s movement was both inevitable and probably one of the reasons it took so long for women to finally get the vote. While the amendment to let women vote was introduced to Congress in 1878, and would be reintroduced every year after that, it wouldn’t pass until forty-one years later, in 1919, becoming the law of the land through ratification as the Nineteenth Amendment in 1920.
This dance between marginalized groups in America has been going on since the beginning. We founded America with rights and freedoms for one specific group, and somehow ended up pitting those left out against each other, instead of having them unite in their demands to be included. It’s a shame we were forced to choose between Black men’s and women’s votes. Why didn’t the Fifteenth Amendment just include universal suffrage? It’s because those in power are not always inclined to share that power unless their hand is forced. Which is why it should concern us that our modern-day Supreme Court is actively rolling back those enforcements—like gutting the Voting Rights Act to once again make it easier to suppress Black votes, or reversing Roe v. Wade to control women’s bodies, or passing laws to deny the LGBTQIA+ community equal protection under the law. People fought and died for equality and freedom in America—so watching our modern court system limit people’s rights is deeply distressing but should also be extraordinarily activating.
Along with freedom of speech, freedom to protest, and freedom of the press, the First Amendment is also the amendment that addressed religion. We take this right for granted, but it’s one we absolutely count on and cannot undersell. The original Constitution says “no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust,” and the Framers followed that up with the First Amendment, claiming there shall be “no law representing an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”
The first part, “no law representing an establishment of religion,” is called the Establishment Clause, and the second part, “no law prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” is called the Free Exercise Clause. The Establishment Clause prohibits the government from establishing an official religion, and the Free Exercise Clause protects a citizen’s right to practice religion as they please so long as it doesn’t interfere with “public morals,” infringe on a “compelling” government interest, or break the law. So, I’m sorry to say, no human sacrifices or public orgies. Whenever the Free Exercise Clause comes into question, it’s the courts that ultimately decide what does and doesn’t fit within the law.
AMERICA 101: SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE
To be clear, the Framers didn’t include the religious stipulations in the founding documents because they were a bunch of atheists, but because they were mostly men of faith. The Framers included the statements because they believed in what Thomas Jefferson referred to as the “separation between church and state.” This wasn’t so much to protect the state from the church—you’re free to speak your religious values from any place in government, and Congress has been opening each day’s proceedings with a prayer since 1789—but so the government couldn’t interfere in religion. The Founders were adamant that government and religion should not mix, which is one of the reasons the federal government has never taxed religious institutions. Today, “establishment of religion” is often determined under a three-part test laid out in the 1971 Supreme Court case Lemon v. Kurtzman. Under the “Lemon test” the government can assist religious institutions only if:
- The primary purpose of the assistance is secular;
- The assistance neither promotes, nor inhibits, religion; and
- There is no “excessive entanglement” between church and state.
So, you might ask, if our government was created to represent all the people of the United States, no matter their faith, or lack thereof, why then is “God” on our money? Good question—and I think a pretty striking error that should be addressed.
Putting “In God We Trust” on our money was originally proposed by a minister during the Civil War as something for people to hold on to in troubling times. The secretary of the treasury put the motto on the two-cent coin in 1864, Congress authorized it to be printed on all silver and gold coins in 1865, and it has appeared on all coins since 1938.
In 1954, during the height of the Cold War, “under God” was added to the Pledge of Allegiance—which had been used for fifty years without mention of a deity—as a way to place ourselves in opposition to the atheist Soviet Union. In 1956 America declared “In God We Trust” our new national motto for the same reason, and in 1957 the Treasury started printing the motto on our paper currency. “In God We Trust” is now on all US currency, along with many government buildings, and was adopted as the official motto of the state of Florida in 2006.
Theoretically, having “God” on American money breaches the Establishment Clause by specifically promoting one God (monotheism) over many Gods (polytheism), or no God (atheism), but more than that, it’s also far less unifying than our original motto, “E pluribus unum,” which means “out of many, one.” While most people polled say they don’t really care that “God” is on American money because they think it’s just patriotic or ceremonial, I think it’s important to acknowledge it’s not. Adding “God” to our money was suggested by a minister, extended in opposition to atheism, and is, in itself, the opposite of patriotic as the Constitution is very clear that the government should not endorse any religion or belief.
FUN FACT: Most presidents, while being given the oath of office—as laid out in the Constitution—have used the Bible. Not because the Constitution specifies that they use a Bible, but because our first president, George Washington, used a Bible and most of the other presidents just followed suit. However, John Quincy Adams used a book of law, and President Theodore Roosevelt didn’t use anything.
Having religious slogans on state-sponsored institutions like money, schools, courts, and government buildings is the opposite of separation. A religious person shouldn’t want the church and state combined any more than an atheist, because it blurs the lines. God is not supposed to have a part in our government, just as the government is not supposed to play a part in how you worship your god. There are many who argue we need religion back in our lives, but if you require the government to impose it, then it’s no longer about faith but control, which is, of course, the antithesis of freedom.
Which is why it should concern Americans that a particular sect of the Christian religion has turned into a radical ideology and appropriated one of our country’s major political parties. It should worry us that the speaker of the House refers to himself as the “new Moses,” chosen by God, and flies the flag of the far-right New Apostolic Reformation—a group dedicated to turning America into a religious state—outside his office. It should concern us that sitting representatives are not just talking about their faith, but claiming to speak on behalf of God and know what God wants for America. What God has anointed, and who God wants to be president.
Conservative think tanks like the Heritage Foundation, who have actively been advising Republican presidents since Ronald Reagan, are funded by some of the biggest right-wing billionaires, and are closely aligned with the religious Right and Evangelical movements, who have been the primary voting base for the Republican Party since the late 1970s. Now, the Heritage Foundation, in combination with the Federalist Society, the far-right legal group responsible for the conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, along with more than a hundred other far-right groups, have formed an organization called Project 2025, which revolves around a list of policy proposals titled Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise. Project 2025 lays out the plan for the next Republican president, which includes dismantling the federal government as we know it, and fundamentally demolishing the checks and balances of the coequal branches of government as laid out in the Constitution, to more effectively implement Christian biblical-based ideologies, reforming everything from education, to voting, to immigration.
Project 2025 includes consolidating the power of the federal government around the executive branch, replacing career civil servants with party loyalists, defunding the Department of Justice, and having the president assume control of our system of law. It plans to dismantle the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security, eliminate the Department of Education and Commerce, and drastically limit the Department of Health and Human Services. Project 2025, which is supported by every major conservative group in America from Moms for Liberty to Turning Point USA, also plans to roll back civil rights and freedom of the press, while providing extended protections for “traditional beliefs” about marriage, gender, and sexuality. The new Republican administration is also expected to enact policies that respect religious exercise in the workplace, provided that religion is “biblically based.” Project 2025 is the long-term plan for all major right-wing donors, politicians, and thought leaders for 2025 and beyond. The group has been clear they’re training an “army” for a long-term, far-right, Christian-based agenda.
So, if we don’t want to see a reimagining of the federal government using religious doctrine, antithetical to the founding principles of our nation, it shouldn’t matter our voting preference, religious affiliation, or personal beliefs. It’s essential we recognize Project 2025 for the threat it is. America was predicated on a Constitution, a secular body of laws that derives its power from the will of the people. If we pivot to reestablish our government based on religious doctrine, from a specific sect of Christianity, then we can kiss American freedoms goodbye.
The best way to think about what’s happening in America right now, and to unemotionally consider if something is in line with our Constitution, and therefore our fundamental American rights, is ask yourself if the actions being taken by the government are giving freedom, or taking it away. What rights the government has, or what values America is supposed to stand for, can become confusing when they align with what you personally want. For example, you might think the idea of a Christian nation sounds wonderful, but if you want to know if it’s in line with America’s founding principles, you need to flip what’s happening and see if you still agree. What if the American government told you the country would now be set up around the doctrine of the Quran and we would all be abiding by the tenets of Islam? My guess is many people who would feel incredibly comfortable setting up the government around the Christian faith would feel equally uncomfortable with the suggestion of using another religious doctrine.
Look at the entire “tradwife” (traditional wife) movement, or the “return to family values” resurgence that’s happening in America today. Now if it was just about freedom—freedom of religion, freedom of speech, freedom of expression—then anyone should be able to stay home or go to work as they choose, and their choice should be supported by both the government and society. However, if you find yourself wanting to tell women they have to stay home—like the country more or less did before the 1970s, when women had little to no access to their own money, couldn’t have bank accounts or credit cards, or apply for a mortgage without their husband’s permission—flip it. What if the government was telling women they had to go to work? That they couldn’t stay home with their children? I think people would immediately recognize that was wrong, a clearly anti-American infringement on women’s rights and freedoms. Which is how you know the government telling you what to do in your own home, with your own life, and with your own children, is not in line with American values, no matter how much the idea itself might appeal to you. At the end of the day just getting what you want does not equal “freedom.”
It’s the same with the abortion issue. You might have tremendously strong feelings about the medical procedure called abortion, and that’s your right. Say what you want to say about it, feel how you want to feel, sway people to your way of thinking and behaving with your passion and arguments, but in a land of freedom one of the most fundamental freedoms is the right to your own body. Your body belongs to you, and you alone. You can’t touch another person’s body without their permission. You can’t use another person’s body without their consent. All our laws are set up to acknowledge this fundamental truth. Despite the fact it happens so frequently, rape is illegal, assault is illegal, pedophilia is illegal. You can’t desecrate a corpse. A hospital can’t even take organs from a dead body to save someone else without the express consent from the deceased before they died. Everybody has bodily autonomy. So then why would our government make a different set of rules for people who are pregnant?
Forget everything you feel about the abortion issue. The question on the table is: Do you believe the American government has the authority to force a citizen to use an organ in their own body against their will? You might never need an abortion, but would you support the government forcing people to give up a kidney? Should the government be able to force citizens to give up a part of their liver, or donate blood? What if it was going to help someone live? No, right? That would be government overreach and against our personal freedom. Why then would we give our government the power to force women to use their uterus against their will? Even if you believe it would save a life?
I believe the problem is that this argument should never have been about abortion. It should always have been about autonomy. This is one of those places where I believe we require a new constitutional amendment. An amendment that formally establishes that your body belongs to you. That no one gets to decide what you do with it. If you want a tattoo, get one. If you want top surgery, that’s your choice. If you want a hysterectomy, have it. If you are dying of a terminal disease and want to end your life peacefully on your own terms, that is your decision. The American government has no right to tell you what you can and cannot do with your own body. And if you decide you want to have an abortion, that should also be your choice. We need to acknowledge the government has no place in any of those decisions. If you still feel conflicted, then let’s try that same thought experiment where you take the original premise and flip it.
If you feel confident the government has the right to tell someone they can’t have an abortion and they must have a baby, how would you feel if the government was telling people they had to have an abortion and they couldn’t have a baby? This isn’t unprecedented. The Chinese government told its people exactly that in 1980 when it implemented its one-child policy. Concerned with overpopulation, the Chinese government subjected millions of women to forced contraception, forced sterilization, and forced abortions for thirty-five years. This was a government-mandated law. Possible, of course, because China has a Communist government with top-down authoritarianism that dictates what its people can do, and shouldn’t be possible in a liberal democracy like ours, but if our government has decided it can tell us we must have children, then how different is it from telling us we can’t?
It never works out when governments intrude on human freedoms like reproduction. China’s one-child policy has caused it endless problems. It now has way too many adult men and not enough women. For years, the one-child policy, in combination with the Chinese culture of favoring a boy to carry on the family name, led to girl children being aborted or murdered after they were born. The adult men born at this time, particularly in small villages, now have no one to marry, no one to procreate with, and China is experiencing an epidemic of loneliness and low birth rates. The government came in, meddled with reproduction, and made an absolute mess of its culture.
How different is that from what’s occurring in America right now? Republican states are currently taking control of women’s reproductive rights for the flip side of the original Chinese problem—they feel we don’t have enough people. The American Right wants to control women’s reproduction because it’s concerned there won’t be enough workers, soldiers, and taxpayers in the next generation. Now, of course, there’s a solution to our declining population at our borders, but that same group believes that’s the wrong “type” of population growth. Which is why sitting Supreme Court justice Samuel Alito included a footnote in the 2022 Dobbs decision, the case that reversed Roe v. Wade and the federal right to a safe and legal abortion, that America’s “domestic supply of infants” has become virtually nonexistent, and Supreme Court justice Amy Coney Barrett suggested that “safe haven laws,” which allow women to drop off babies anonymously in certain places after birth, would take care of the problem of women being forced to be parents against their will. But what about being pregnant against your will? Because that feels like the first problem we have to solve.
We could talk about how forcing women to have babies pushes them back into the home, the place where the conservatives writing these laws would prefer they would stay. We could talk about the economic ramifications of forcing families to have children they can’t afford, how abortion is truly an economic issue. We could talk for days about how America’s adoption and foster care system is overcrowded and underfunded, which forces government agencies to leave children with people who aren’t appropriate guardians. I could cite the growing homeless population, and how many of them are young adults who simply aged out of foster care, and point out that this already broken system will only be exacerbated by adding more children who weren’t wanted to it. I could horrify you with the reality of not being able to cross state lines without being forced to take a pregnancy test, or rapists getting parental rights, literally getting to choose the mother of their children against the will of the woman, but the bottom line is, in a land of freedom, the government should not be able to force women to give birth. It’s antithetical to the founding principles of this nation.
It is also antithetical in a land that calls itself free to tell people who they can love, who they can sleep with, or who they can marry. Which is why we should be concerned that America is once again putting the rights and freedoms of the LGBTQIA+ community on the line. Rights that have been actively fought for since World War II. The LGBTQIA+ community—which includes lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, and asexual individuals, along with anyone who sees themselves reflected under this umbrella but doesn’t fit into any of the aforementioned categories—is a terrific example of that old expression about power that says, “Equal rights for others does not mean fewer rights for you. It’s not pie.” By expanding its group to include more, rather than narrowing its group to include fewer, the LGBTQIA+ community has expanded their collective power. It’s one of the reasons conservatives are targeting the transgender community. If you can break apart a coalition, you limit the power of the entire group. You only have to look at the women’s rights movement to see that internal struggle has always been an effective way to weaken the collective and limit its combined influence.
As I write this, the LGBTQIA+ community theoretically shares the same rights as every other citizen in America, its marriage rights are even federally protected by both the 2015 Supreme Court decision in Obergefell v. Hodges and President Joe Biden’s 2022 Respect for Marriage Act, but now state governments and federal courts are calling those rights into question. Conservative states have also begun to pass an increasing number of “religious liberty” laws allowing businesses to deny services to the LGBTQIA+ community due to its “religious beliefs,” as well as limiting access to things like gender-affirming care, passing bathroom laws, and writing what feels like endless legislation targeting transgender youth and, in some states, their parents.
We have to understand that giving the government the authority to limit certain people’s rights is a threat to everybody’s rights. If you’re confused about a certain law, ask yourself, Does this government action expand on an established right or freedom, or does it limit it? If it’s taking freedom away, then you should see it in opposition to the fundamental identity of this country and the foundational rights of our Constitution.
The thing about American freedoms, as they’re laid out in the Constitution, is that they aren’t based on our personal desires, but established on the rights the Framers believed were bestowed on us by the very nature of our existence. I could argue that the Second Amendment—the right to bear arms—and the Eighteenth Amendment—the Prohibition amendment—were both based on personal desires, which is why neither of them really worked. The Eighteenth Amendment was reversed by the Twenty-first Amendment because it was a poorly thought out change based on a group of individuals’ personal “feels” rather than the population’s inherent rights, and the Second Amendment, as Warren Burger, former chief justice of the Supreme Court, pointed out, has been deliberately misinterpreted and is “the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud,” and he repeated fraud, “on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime” because it continues to cater to individual desires rather than the collective population’s innate rights. How free are we if we can’t go to school, a movie theater, a parade, or a concert without worrying about being shot? Easy access to advanced weaponry that allows distressed individuals to mass murder their fellow citizens is not what the Framers had in mind when they wrote, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed,” and defending it like it is has arguably made Americans less free, and the rest of the world look at us like we’re insane. If you ask me, it’s well past time to throw an amendment at that amendment.
When we talk about freedom, we have to remember all the things we take for granted. Not just things like freedom of speech, or freedom of the press, or the right to own firearms—which, as mentioned, I believe needs adjusting—but our right to a fair trial, and to vote in free and fair elections. Our daily lives are free because we have the luxury of not living in a war zone. We might disagree with our government’s policies, but the system itself, the institution of American government, has our back. I’m talking about the kind of freedom that includes everything from not worrying about taking a painkiller because you know our government has approved what’s gone into it, to the government implementing policies to stop food-borne illness or help its citizens survive a pandemic. Our modern society is free from diseases like smallpox and polio because our government paid for safe, healthy vaccines. Which is why the people who undermine these incredibly important programs and advances are doing the country such a disservice. They’re literally messing with our collective freedom.
At the end of the day, I consider freedom the “American way,” the ideal on which our society was built, and when I think of American freedom, I often consider the series of paintings by American artist Norman Rockwell in 1943 called the Four Freedoms, titled individually: Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear.
If you’ve never seen these paintings, I highly recommend you look them up. I went to the Rockwell Museum in Upstate New York when I was a kid, and I was so moved by the works I still remember them to this day. In fact, when the Four Freedoms toured the country after America joined World War II, they raised more than $130 million in war bonds. People donated a lot of money, right after a depression, to see that reflection of patriotism and American values.
Freedom of Speech shows a man bearing a strong resemblance to a young Abraham Lincoln standing in a local town hall sharing his thoughts. Others from the community look on, some with doubt, some in agreement, but everyone is listening, and the man—who seems not powerful or rich, but an everyman—is safe to speak and use his voice to talk about his government. He is a citizen respected by his country.
Freedom of Worship gives us a close-up of different faces in profile. There are men, women, Black, brown, young, old. Most are praying, but one appears to simply be contemplating. It is a multicultural, religiously diverse image. Of the four paintings, this is the only one with text, and it reads in block letters across the top: “Each according to the dictates of his own conscience.” This is the freedom of religion America should stand for. A nation where we are united as one people, free to worship or not worship, as we see fit. If 1943 America got this, I’m not sure how it became complicated in 2024.
Freedom from Want is probably the most well-known of the four pieces. Even if you’re not familiar with Norman Rockwell, there’s a solid chance you’ve seen this image. It’s a painting of a classic American Thanksgiving. It’s framed almost like a close-up photograph with someone looking cheekily at the painter from the bottom right-hand corner of the canvas. It’s a natural and authentic image, but the purpose of the painting is to show plenty. Well, maybe not plenty, but enough. The room isn’t fancy, but the table is nicely set. The clothes are dressy, but not formal. It’s an image of joy, of family, of togetherness and connection. A full table that will soon provide full bellies. These are people whose needs are met so they have the freedom to focus on each other.
I feel like this particular painting is a solid analogy of what we should all be striving for in America. Salaries that are respectful enough that we can feed and clothe our families. Housing that’s affordable enough to give our people a place to live. American citizens should expect to be clean, happy, healthy people. Yes, it’s a particularly white painting, both metaphorically and literally—I remember reading that Rockwell had used something like seventy shades of white for this image—not just for the people at the table, but the ice water in the clear glass on the white linen tablecloth—but, taken metaphorically, this is the kind of freedom we should all be fighting for. Freedom from want. We shouldn’t need to hug a flag or wear stars and stripes to prove we love this country. We should be fighting for the kind of life this country stands for and continuing to work for everyone’s best shot at that kind of happiness.
Freedom from Fear is the last painting in the series and perhaps the timeliest because I don’t believe people feel safe in America anymore. Fear and anger seem to have become our default, and those kinds of emotions strip us of our freedom. Freedom from Fear was created during the heart of World War II, the biggest war the world had ever seen. The image is of two children sleeping peacefully in their bed while their mother tucks them in and their father looks on. The father is holding a newspaper with a terrifying headline about the war overseas, but the painting is one of security. That is how American citizens should feel in this country. That things can be chaotic, and the world can rage, but we are safe here at home. Americans should be free to put their heads down at night knowing responsible people are looking out for us. We should seek a government that cares for us like the parents in this painting—solid, calm, trustworthy—understanding of the trials of the world, but protective of the people in their charge. A government who provides its people a safe place to build a life of worth and dignity. Leadership that believes we all deserve to live without fear, or persecution, or want.
This is the kind of freedom all Americans should be demanding.
The Framers might have been men of the past and products of their time, but they had vision. They knew things would change and we should change with them. As I said, there are only seven articles in the Constitution, and one is completely devoted to amending it. The supreme law of the land was designed to grow as our country did. To literally be, as people like to call it, “a living document.”
Thomas Jefferson once proposed revising the Constitution every nineteen years to write a new one. He wrote:
I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made... and manners and opinions change... institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times. We might as well require a man to wear still the coat which fitted him when a boy as a civilized society to remain ever under the regimen of their barbarous ancestors.
Consider that the men who wrote the Constitution didn’t know about airplanes, let alone nuclear weapons, computers, or AI, but they created a system that would allow for future generations to update our rights as need be. The Constitution isn’t locked, it’s simply the framework we were given on which to build a nation. The Founders made compromises from the beginning to get the Union together, but they punted the ball of “liberty and justice for all” to a later date. Throughout history, each generation has picked up that ball and run with it. Which is why modern Americans should hesitate when someone, particularly a Supreme Court justice whose job it is to interpret the Constitution, calls themselves a “textualist” or an “originalist” and attempts to gaslight us into thinking we’re supposed to be living under the scope of the law as it was written in the late 1700s, because (a) the Constitution was already a compromise, and (b) the men who wrote it were very clear that things should change.
Which is also why we should be concerned that we haven’t had a new constitutional amendment since 1971. Sure, we got the Twenty-seventh Amendment in 1992, but it was really an amendment from 1789 about congressional pay raises, so it had nothing to do with what we’d learned as a country or evolving with the times. The last amendment that really mattered was ratified in 1971 when Congress passed the Twenty-sixth Amendment to lower the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen. Most people think the move to make this change started during the Vietnam War when “Old enough to fight, old enough to vote” was used in every youth/antiwar movement across the country, but the amendment was actually introduced during World War II, after the government lowered the draft age from twenty-one to eighteen. Jennings Randolph, a Democrat from West Virginia, introduced the amendment eleven times between 1942 and 1971, never changing any of the wording but always speaking of the great faith he had in the young, because they possessed “a great social conscience” and were “perplexed by the injustices in the world and anxious to rectify those ills.”
This is exactly what Jefferson was talking about when he proposed updating the Constitution every two decades. The goal was to honor the people who came after, those who would live in a different world, with different needs, and require different rules. If we were supposed to be living under the same rules of 1776, slavery would still be legal and women wouldn’t have the vote, and while I recognize that idea would thrill some people, it’s not at all in line with what the Founders imagined, nor is it in line with what the majority of 336 million Americans would want.
Freedoms are only as strong as the society in which they are placed. America started with freedoms for few, and moved to freedom for some, but the closer we got to freedom for all the less we progressed. We allowed ourselves to stagnate, we stopped evolving, and now, if certain people get their way, we’ll begin to move backward. As Jefferson said, it’s as if we’re being jammed back into clothes that no longer fit us, and that type of constriction is a prison that has no place in a land of freedom. We evolve or we die.