Compatriots,
It is my honor to serve as your President this coming year and I thank each of our members for the truth that has been bestowed on me.
While we have hit 250th anniversary milestones of the events that led up to the American Revolution over the past few years, most notably the 250th of the Boston Tea Party on December 16, 2023, next month begins in earnest the rapid celebration of the events that will lead to the 250th anniversary of American independence.
I don’t know about you, but I was underwhelmed by the recognition (or lack thereof) of the 250th Anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.
Maybe the celebration was muted partly because our modern sensibilities are put off by the fact that the Patriots who boarded the ships and tossed the tea overboard were dressed as members of the Mohawk tribe. Maybe it’s partly because in some circles, the ideas of the American Revolution seem passe in our modern society. Maybe it was partly because American society seems more focused (and more divided) on current political realities and have no time for history.
Maybe, it was all of those reasons.
Maybe it was because of none of them, but for other reasons entirely.
But, freedom and liberty require eternal vigilance from each of us if we expect it to survive. Talking with college students, I see a growing love of tyranny among the young on both the right and the left. They say our problems are too big and freedom just stifles solutions. When I hear it, I’m quickly reminded of the words of a more recent American leader.
After being elected Governor of California in 1966, future President Ronald Reagan issued a dire warning in his gubernatorial inaugural address, telling those assembled, “Perhaps you and I have lived too long with this miracle [of freedom] to properly be appreciative. Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.”
On the 18th of April, shortly before we come together for that month’s meeting, we should pause to recognize the 250th anniversary of the midnight ride of Paul Revere, William Dawes, and Samuel Prescott to warn the leaders of the Sons of Liberty and the local militia of movement of British regulars towards Concord and Lexington.
The next day, April 19, it was a single shot, fired 250 years ago that is still heard around the world.
It is up to us, the descendants of the Patriots of the American Revolution to carry on the message and meaning of why they rode that night and why they fought that day. At Lexington and Concord, it was about reinforcing our rights as free men, rights guaranteed to us under the Magna Carta, the reforms of the English Civil War, and the Glorious Revolution. It would soon turn to a fight for a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
During this next year, let us rededicate ourselves to the education of the next generation. I’m challenging each member to seek opportunities to bring the lessons of liberty and freedom, so expertly distilled and refined in that one single document that passed Congress on July 4, 1776, and has inspired the world for nearly 250 years since, to all who do not know or have not learned what makes us different as a people.
As Americans, we are not bound together by a common tribe, long-standing geography, ethnicity, or faith…but bound together by an idea… freedom.
Our freedom shines a light on world that seems to be getting darker and more dangerous, but during this 250th celebration, we have an extraordinary opportunity to let that light shine high…higher even than the light given by those two lanterns that were hung by Robert Newman, sexton of the Old North Church, high in the steeple 250 years ago next month.
Let us not miss the opportunity.
Jason M. Shepherd
President
Captain John Collins Chapter SAR