Yesterday I saw a bunch of Democrat friends gushing on social media about a speech given by Joe Biden. To commemorate the January 6th capitol riot (an unofficial Democrat national holiday), Biden spoke at Valley Forge. So, I decided to check it out and see if it was any good. You can watch and judge for yourself here if you want, or read a transcript here.
Long story short, the speech was actually pretty good, but I don’t think that Biden lives up to it. But his party’s insatiable desire for more gun control makes them more similar to the villains described in his speech than he probably realizes.
Not a bad speech
In a vacuum, I’d have to say it was a pretty good speech. He brought up important moments in American history including the struggle to keep an army together at Valley Forge, and the desire for independence from monarchy and despotism that held the army together. He also spoke of George Washington resigning his commission when he could have very easily become a king, and Washington voluntarily ending his presidency after only two terms, when he could have very easily stayed in office for life.
He frequently contrasted Washington’s service to that of Donald Trump, and made some good points there, too. I won’t go into all of the details, because we’ve heard them all incessantly before, but I share many of those same concerns. The idea that we can cast the rule of law aside to own the libs is short-sighted at best and at worst disastrous for liberty and freedom. It’s the electoral equivalent of selling our American birthright for a quick meal because we’re hungry.
Taken alone, I agree with much of what Biden said, as will most if not all readers here. Representative government, individual rights, the idea that all people are created equal, and the need to preserve freedom for future generations are near-universal American values that we hold more sacred than life itself.
Why It All Rings Hollow
As much as I may have liked the speech, it can’t be viewed in a vacuum. We have to focus on substance, not style or mere words. It’s critical that we look at a politician’s track record to decide whether they really believe what they’re saying in front of the cameras or if we’re being sold oceanfront property in Utah.
Sadly, Biden’s long track record simply doesn’t support anything he said his speech. Worse, the speech makes a mockery of those who suffered and died there at Valley Forge.
To understand why, we have look at what came before Valley Forge. We have to start before the Declaration of Independence and look at the history of what was here before the United States.
Before Valley Forge
Many say that taxation without representation is what led to the Revolutionary War, but there was a lot more to it than that. After unfair taxes, colonists engaged in civil disobedience and some rioting, including the Boston Tea Party. In response, the empire cracked down tighter and tighter, eventually massacring protesting civilians and denying more and more rights throughout the colonies. That put the legitimacy of British rule in the colonies into a death spiral, with crackdowns inspiring defiance which lead to more crackdowns.
When it became clear that the British had lost de facto control over the colonies (they had formed shadow governments, which had assumed real governmental power), the Continental Congress decided it was time for the ultimate crackdown, described in great detail in the Declaration of the Causes and Necessity of Taking Up Arms in 1775 and the Declaration of Independence in 1776.
But to achieve their crackdown, the Redcoats knew that they had to disarm colonial militias, which were under the control of rebel governing bodies. The armories had originally existed for governors and parliament to call upon for fighters, but they knew that the weapons and ammunition would be turned against the empire once colonists caught wind of what the military had planned.
Unfortunately for imperial troops, rebel intelligence gathering operations found out about the planned seizure of weapons in advance, and the contents of the armories were moved elsewhere. When the British troops went for the armories, they faced resistance, including “the shot heard round the world” starting the battles of Lexington and Concord. When they couldn’t find the supplies and faced an increasing number of colonial militia units swarming into the area, the imperial force had to retreat, facing harassing fire all the way back to Boston.
The militias that had chased imperial forces back to Boston weren’t even an army at that point, but had contained the British and weren’t really sure what to do other than besiege them. It was only at that point that colonial governments appointed George Washington to assemble the various militias together into an army and make a plan for a full-scale war.
Even then, colonists didn’t want independence as much as they wanted the empire to respect their rights under the unwritten constitution and common law of the time. But continued warfare against the colonies and attempts to crack down even harder led to the Declaration of Independence and the fight toward that end, with the winter camp at Valley Forge being a part of that story.
Biden’s Just Another King George
When we consider this history, some comparisons become clear.
First off, we’re nowhere near a Valley Forge moment. The fight between Biden’s political faction and Trump’s supporters isn’t even at the level of Lexington and Concord. January 6th was more of a Boston Tea Party moment, or similar to one of the many other times when colonists tarred and feathered imperial officials who denied them their rights. The most aggressive people on January 6th ran into the Capitol with zip ties, not shouldered rifles or drawn pistols. The people who got the heaviest sentences had left their guns in Virginia.
Yet now the guy who’s calling for gun control and more limits on the right to armed self-defense is trying to assume the mantle of George Washington. If anything, Biden’s calls for banning guns and limiting ammunition make him far more like King George. California, Illinois, and New York have cast themselves in the role of the British Parliament in this play by denying people their right to keep and bear arms in such radical ways.
The more intolerable acts they pass and the more games they play, the more legitimacy they’ll lose. While Donald Trump is even remotely comparable to George Washington, the continued legal prosecution of a political rival by Democrat state officials and Biden’s Department of Justice make him look more and more like King George.
If Biden wants us to take his speech seriously, he needs to live up to it. He needs to oppose the prosecution of Donald Trump and call for him to be on all 50 state ballots so that there won’t even be the appearance of an unfair election. He needs to publicly announce that he’s abandoning his push for ever more gun control, and will faithfully abide by the NYSRPA v Bruen decision. He needs to condemn Democrat-dominated state legislatures for their conspiracies to limit Second Amendment rights. Then, he needs to commit to working with all parties to run the cleanest and fairest election in American history and agree to abide by the result.
Unless he can do all of those things, he doesn’t get to stand at Valley Forge and make a speech about liberty and expect to be taken seriously. By anyone.