Richard Lorenc: We celebrate America’s freedoms on the 4th of July, not Britain’s

Fast on the heels of the latest No Kings protests against President Donald Trump comes an odd suggestion that Americans would be better off nowadays if we had remained part of the British Empire an empire whose titular head drum roll please is King Charles III the British monarch The fact that specific Americans even think this way illustrates how out of touch they are with America s history and ideals Granted the British throne in the current era doesn t wield broad authority as it did in when the American colonists in their Declaration of Independence spelled out King George III s History of repeated Injuries and Usurpations all having in direct Object the Establishment of an absolute Tyranny But the nature of currently s ceremonial monarchy doesn t make the United Kingdom s form of authorities preferable to ours For starters power in the United States is vested in the people not in the cabinet and certainly not in a sovereign We have no kings We have no princes or princesses counts or countesses dukes or duchesses As President Abraham Lincoln stressed in his Gettysburg Address dedicating the cemetery where Union soldiers were laid to rest after the historic Civil War battle ours is a establishment of the people by the people for the people It is not a cabinet of the nobility by the king for the benefit of the gentry Moreover the presidency unlike the Crown isn t hereditary it is not passed from parent to child dynasty to dynasty We can kick elected personnel out as we do regularly Not so the British monarchy which traces its bloodlines back to when the English and Scottish kingdoms were united as Great Britain Then there s the critical matter of the U S Constitution the legal bedrock of our country and the Bill of Rights the first amendments to the Constitution spelling out the all-important unalienable Rights or personal liberties to which the Declaration of Independence refers Although the United Kingdom is described as a constitutional monarchy or a parliamentary democracy and is ranked among the world s freest countries it has no formal constitution Instead as the London-based Constitution Society points out its constitution is an amalgam of Acts of Parliament court decisions common law and understandings of how the system should operate More central there are minimal checks on the power of a ruling body with a majority in the House of Commons unlike the United States where the Constitution itself established an ingenious system of checks and balances meant to right the ship of state when politics pulls it too far off class Ours is a nation of ideas and ideals That s what the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution are all about the people s freedoms and how to organize a regime that respects and protects those freedoms This is not to say things are perfect For example the United States has been having an issue with the liberties outlined in the First Amendment from cancel practices to the unhinged voices in politics and on social media However as we ve seen time again during America s -year history the preponderance effective antidote to unhinged speech is more speech rational speech not repression The United Kingdom regrettably has chosen the latter repression According to Dominic Green a fellow of the Royal Historical Society British police during the past decade have investigated more than a quarter million non-crime hate incidents which he described in The Wall Street Journal last fall as speech exhibiting perceived hostility or prejudice against any protected characteristic Imagine being investigated because you reported or wrote something that somebody else perceived as hostile prejudicial or hurtful At each major crossroad in America s history the Revolutionary War the westward migration the Civil War the Great Depression the two world wars we ve leaned into our values and ideals and emerged stronger for it If you d rather live in a society where the police can be called whenever someone says something that hurts someone else s feelings send me a postcard I m staying here Because despite the imperfect nature of the continuing American project the United States is and remains the only nation founded on ideas ideas intended to enhance and expand human liberty Richard Lorenc is president and CEO of Lexandria a project of the teaching nonprofit Certell Inc intended to help develop U S high school students into principled citizens He wrote this for InsideSources com