“We Still Hold These Truths: Rediscovering Our Principles, Reclaiming Our Future” by Matthew Spalding is a must-read for every American who wishes to return a great nation to its true principles.

Spalding, the Director of the B. Kenneth Simon Center for American Studies at the Heritage Foundation with a doctorate in government from Claremont Graduate School, has written a beautiful, yet melancholy book. His prose is exceptional, his command of history impressive. In only 239 pages Spalding illuminates the principles of the American founding, how we took those principles for granted and began to lose them, and why we need to “reclaim” those principles.

Spalding crisply sets out the essential foundations of America’s beginnings in “We Still Hold These Truths,” taking 186 pages to set out in nine chapters the basis of what some still rightly call “American Exceptionalism.”

Chapter One, “A New Nation, Conceived in Liberty: The Roots of American Freedom,” explains the American concept of liberty, how Revolutionary-era Americans practiced it, and who and what they drew upon for inspiration (the Bible, practical experience, and Locke’s “Two Treatises of Government”).

Chapter Two, “We Hold These Truths: Equality, Natural Rights, and the Consent of the Governed,” sets the historical and philosophical stage for the Declaration of Independence, something that its primary author, Thomas Jefferson said was simply “an expression of the American mind.” The Declaration uses Natural Law as justification for equal rights. Writing of the soon to be independent colonists, Jefferson said the Americans claimed “their rights as derived from the laws of nature, and not as the gift of their Chief Magistrate (the king).” Later in the book, Spalding quotes President Calvin Coolidge using the principles of the Declaration of Independence in a devastating critique of progressivism: “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.”

Chapter Three examines America’s religious liberty and the linkage between faith and liberty.

Chapter Four discusses private property and prosperity in a commercial republic.

Chapter Five delves into rule of law and our Constitution with the aim being, as John Adams said of the Massachusetts Constitution he wrote in 1780, “to the end it may be a government of laws, not of men.”

Chapter Six explains how the purpose of constitutionalism is limited government so as to secure our “unalienable rights.”

Chapter Seven deals with how the principles of the Constitution play out in practice, discussing representation, separation of powers, federalism, and judicial review. It also has a needed treatment of the one of the salient compromises of the Constitution: slavery – one that progressive critics, aggressive opponents of the Constitution because it stands athwart their big government plans, have used to bash the Constitution and the Founders as fatally flawed from the start.

Chapter Eight details self-government, at the virtuous individual level (“Where licentiousness begins liberty ends,” said a Revolutionary period pastor), in families, in associations, and in local and state government.

Chapter Nine outlines America’s place in the world as an independent nation having a “separate and equal station” with the world’s other nations. Prudence, guided by justice, is to be applied in foreign affairs, so that America’s citizens may enjoy safety and happiness. The cause of liberty in the world is America’s cause, with the question being “not whether but how to advance liberty.”

Page 187 marks a jarring turn in Spalding’s book, one that the reader expects, but is disheartened to reach: Chapter Ten, “A New Republic: The Progressive Assault on the Founders’ Principles.” In 26 depressing pages, the author sets forth the Progressive agenda and why it has been at war with the American founding from its seeding in Europe, mainly Germany, to its spawning in the late 1880s. Spalding explains how the Progressives differ from the Founders in two key respects: they do not believe in fixed truths, but rather hold to a relativist view; and, they hold to “historicism,” the concept that ideas can only be understood in the context of their time. This leads to the Progressives believing in progress beyond the (fixed) principles of the Declaration. It is what President Coolidge so clearly explained in the above quote where he used a defense of the Declaration to launch a withering attack on the core Progressive philosophy.

After showing how completely Progressives have won the day in government, education, and culture, Spalding dares to light a lamp of hope in Chapter Eleven, “American Revival: The Case for Reclaiming our Future.” He aptly begins with Lincoln, “If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide.” Then he catalogues our current situation: soaring debt, a dominating national government, the administrative state, rule by bureaucrats, in short, the Progressive vision made real.

Against this awesome tide of “history” Spalding calls our way back to port, writing that “We don’t need to remake America, or discover new and untested principles. The change we need is not the rejection of America’s principles but a great renewal of these permanent truths about man, politics, and liberty–the foundational principles and constitutional wisdom that are the true roots our country’s greatness.” To affect this change, Spalding suggests beginning with education, re-instilling the ideals of liberty. These principles must then be spread through the popular culture. Next, political leaders are needed to prudently govern, seeing the Constitution as the responsibility of all three branches to uphold. Spalding advocates free markets and fiscal responsibility, not “a centrally planned system that suppresses capitalism in order to redistribute wealth and limit individual opportunity.” A true revival of self-government, both as self-governing people who willingly “challenge, engage, and reject the relativism and historicism that infect our culture and have caused such great turmoil in our politics” and as local associations, and government on the city, county, and state level is required to stop, then shrink the encroaching sphere of national government. Lastly, Spalding tackles the need for “Upholding liberty in the world” writing this self-evident truth “Without principled American leadership the world will become a more dangerous place–for Americans and for freedom. Transnational terrorism, rampant anti-Americanism, unaccountable international institutions, nuclear proliferation, and regional conflict all represent threats to our security, our liberties, and our prosperity.”

Spalding closes his book with the words of Joseph Warren, the leader of the Massachusetts Provincial Congress in 1775. Warren, a young doctor and widower with four small children who hoped to soon remarry, was with the militia in positions overlooking the British forces occupying Boston. Three months before the British attack at Breed’s Hill (the Battle of Bunker Hill) Warren said:

“Our streets are filled with armed men; our harbor is crowded with ships of war; but these cannot intimidate us; our liberty must be preserved it is far dearer than life.

“No longer could we reflect, with generous pride, on the heroic actions of our American forefathers….if we, but for a moment entertain the thought of giving up our liberty.

“Our country is in danger, but not to be despaired of.

“Our enemies are numerous and powerful; but we have many friends determining to be free, and heaven and earth will aid the resolution.

“On you depend the fortunes of America.

“You are to decide the important question on which rest the happiness and liberty of millions yet unborn.

“Act worthy of yourselves.”

Warren was killed during the third British charge up Breed’s Hill.

“Do we still hold these truths?” Spalding asks. “In times of peace and war, prosperity and poverty, political consensus and social unrest, every generation of Americans is challenged to vindicate the sacred cause of liberty.” Spalding closes, “This is our noble task now. Let us act worthy.”

Dr. Matthew Spalding, Ph.D. also authored “A Sacred Union of Citizens: George Washington’s Farewell Address and the American Character” and was the editor of “The Heritage Guide to the Constitution” which, I can personally attest, is an excellent resource on the original meaning of the Constitution in its entirety.

Reviewer: Chuck DeVore is a California State Assemblyman. He served as a Special Assistant for Foreign Affairs in the Department of Defense from 1986 to 1988, is a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Army Reserve, and is the co-author of “China Attacks.”

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