All patriotic Americans know of the Spirit of ’76, as in 1776. It is a spirit of independence, of self-reliance – or, looking to individual, ordinary people as the core strength of America and the power behind America’s greatness. That sort of ‘spirit,’ or mentality, logically leads to the call for a limited government, one that does not stifle free enterprise (the whole thing about “taxation without representation” was one of the main issues that drove us to cut the umbilical cord from the mother country, after all), and one that does not try to micromanage individual and interpersonal behavior (read: no “speech codes,” and no “sexual harassment” laws). In terms of foreign policy, that spirit is embodied by the Revolutionary era American flag, which had the alternating horizontal red and white stripes and a snake in the middle. Underneath was a script with a clear warning to would-be enemies: “[D]on’t tread upon me.” A similar flag from that era was also popular in the rebelling States.

   The Spirit of ’76 also provides the underpinnings of American Exceptionalism, the idea that there are reasons behind the fact that we have succeeded in many ways where before many nations and empires had failed. The aforementioned animus also encompasses a strong faith component. For all the revisionism that our Founding Fathers were “deists,” they all routinely appealed to a higher power, and routinely sought the blessings of an Almighty God – as understood through a Judeo-Christian lens – to guide them as leaders and to protect this young nation as a whole. George Washington prayed in church for guidance shortly before being inaugurated as our first president, and later in his term was the first to call for setting aside an official holiday to give thanks to God for the many blessings he had bestowed upon America (roughly 73 years later, Abraham Lincoln would finally make Thanksgiving an official holiday in 1863). All of this suggests a requirement that to maintain success both as an individual and as a society, it remains paramount to be able to acknowledge, at the very least, that there are bigger things out there than oneself.

   All in all, it comes as no surprise that the Spirit of ’76 is part of the driving force behind traditional Americans of past areas and those on the right side of the ideological spectrum in this modern era. Contrast that with the “Spirit of ’68,” as in 1968, which animates the modern left. Rich Lowry of National Review points out that what’s left out of the nostalgic accounts of young baby boomers coming of age in the 1960s and rebelling against their parents and “the system” is the nihilism, that ideological wrecking ball of tearing down tradition for the sheer, ephemeral thrill of it. In a past essay, I pointed out that the Republicans are the party of delayed gratification and working towards the future, whereas the Dems are all about the ephemeral here and now. That drive for instant gratification derived from rebellion, and the underlying nihilism that fueled said drive, is the ugly truth behind young, degenerate hippies then and the toxic leftist ideology they spawned.

   Everything these degenerate, spoiled brats stood for flew directly in the face of everything that previous generations had worked hard to build and fought/died to protect. Heeding the call for self-sacrifice and to protect America, the Greatest Generation came through. In so doing, they fought and bled to defeat the twin evils of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan. After they came home, through their hard work, they built the biggest, strongest middle class the world had ever seen:  one that continues to grow and flourish to this day. The grand irony in all of this is that the children of the Greatest Generation (not all, but at least enough to cause lasting damage to our society and culture) ended up giving rise to the Spirit of ’68, one that eschews delayed gratification, self-sacrifice, service in the form of protecting our nation, rewarding risk-taking and high productivity, and acknowledging the wisdom of those who came before you. 

   Monogamy was rejected in place of “free love.” Private property was seen as fascist, whereas communal property was seen as, like, cool. If you were poor, it was because evil corporations run by Adolf Eichmann clones were deliberately bleeding you dry. The Spirit of ’68 also dictated that love of country and American Exceptionalism were tantamount to evil, and in place came the celebration of world citizenship and denouncing America as racist, sexist, bigoted and homophobic. The adherents of the Spirit of ’68 called for “liberation” by hijacking Ivy League campuses and holding employees of those universities hostage with threats of escalating violence. Over time, this trend towards anarchy-as-“liberation” gave rise to the exact opposite of that against which they were ostensibly rebelling, as Rich Lowry chronicles.

   The self-centered flower children might have been anti-war, but that did not stop them from resorting to violence and related threats to have their way. Some radical leftists such as Barack Obama’s close friend Bill Ayers led the Weathermen Underground, who literally wanted to “bring the war home to America” and engaged in terrorist bombings on our own soil. The young idealists might have been rebelling against an authoritarian system, but authoritarian coercion turned out to be quite convenient for implementing “speech codes,” micromanaging individual relationships, and every other aspect of our lives.

   Whereas with the Spirit of ’76 there is a deep, abiding faith in its adherents that this is a blessed land of a chosen people (to quote the late Ronaldus Magnus), the adherents of the animus conjured up in 1968 reject what they have deemed to be an overly simplistic notion. 

   The gaps in the ‘spiritual’ sense (no pun intended!) perhaps speak the biggest volumes. Whereas the Spirit of ’76 includes acknowledgement of the blessings of Divine Providence as a prerequisite for understanding just how privileged one is to be American, The Spirit of ’68 sees all progress coming from Man and Man alone. Translation: conservatives worship God, while leftists worship the secular. Indeed, liberalism in its modern form has become its own ersatz religion (with abortion being the cult’s sacrament), a quasi-faith that is far more liberating to its adherents than the genuine, Judeo-Christian variety that reminds us there is a judgmental God out there and He would like for us to stay on the straight and narrow. This accounts for why those who spawned the Spirit of ’68 are overtly hostile to the Ten Commandments, as Michael Medved eloquently explains in a recent blog post. As inconvenient as this truth may be, those on the “religious right” and the “religious” left are therefore, in many ways worshipping two different gods. Conservatives of faith use themselves as vehicles to worship God, whereas leftists who give lip-service to religion actually just use God as a vehicle to worship themselves. No wonder the libs hate the “Big Ten:” the first commandment demands that they put no god before the Almighty, and yet they do so as a matter of routine!

   The ‘so-what’ in all of this is that the two presidential candidates are respectively faithful to these opposing Spirits. For all his faults, John McCain is a rather decent adherent to the Spirit of ’76. Meanwhile, Barack Obama is the most faithful, steadfast follower of the Spirit of ’68 than any other candidate in our nation’s history. The company he has kept for 20+ years with people who have dedicated their lives to destroying everything America stands for (e.g., Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Michael Pfleger) demonstrates that he is in the ’68 camp, rejecting the ’76 ideas. This alone should properly guide our voting decisions as we show up to the polls on Election Day. Come early November, we have a crucial opportunity to protect the Spirit of ’76 from a deadly assault by its hostile adversary.