On every Fourth of July holiday I can remember, there have always been a few critics, naysayers and sky-is-falling alarmists who see the nation’s hourglass as more than half empty. But this year we have a new breed of critics being celebrated and promoted by the mass media, vocal critics who are “ashamed to be an American” because of some grievance. And according to a July 4 Rasmussen Poll, only 18% of Americans think the country is “heading in the right direction.”

Count me in the 82% of Americans who are deeply worried about our nation’s direction. But for me, that is all the more reason to celebrate Independence Day: we might find the right direction sooner if we relied more on the right compass. As a former Colorado classroom social studies teacher, I am never surprised or dismayed by criticism of our nation’s shortcomings. Nevertheless, I am increasingly worried by the cascading rejection among our political and cultural elites, including classroom teachers and higher education institutions, of our nation’s founding principles.

Many critics, especially those with “celebrity status” from Hollywood, the music industry, appear to believe we must stop celebrating Independence Day until our society can declare victory over inequality. Such demands reveal a bogus patriotism rooted in a misunderstanding of our nation’s history, and especially, a misunderstanding of what Independence Day is all about.

Independence Day was not established to celebrate the achievement of independence, much less the attainment of the goals of a constitutional republic. Independence Day is a celebration of the day when our nation decided to assert the rights “ordained” by “our creator,” the rights to LIFE, LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS. The brave patriots who signed that declaration in Philadelphia were declaring that the trinity of rights are “ordained by Nature and Nature’s God” and that no government is truly legitimate if it tramples on those rights.

Patriots are celebrating not the achievement of national independence or the launching of aconstitutional government. We celebrate the first nation founded on God-given principles of human freedom, not military power and conquest. Certainly, July Fourth has never been a celebration of the full attainment of perfection in the full realization of those principles.

And yet, in July of 2022, we are seeing a new brand of negativism and a new breed of critic — the left-wing critic who rejects the very principles on which or nation was founded. The American left is now throwing a temper tantrum not because we have not yet fulfilled our nation’s founding principles, but because they insist we are celebrating the wrong principles. To the left, and to many of our “Woke Generation progressives,” equality and not freedom is the foundational goal of government. And by equality, they mean equality of condition, not equal rights under law.

Thus, the criticism from the left is not a demand for greater efforts to achieve “equal rights.”

It is a demand — backed by the very clear threat of violence — to require laws to aim at equal outcomes — and not equal for individuals but equal for groups defined by race, “class,” “gender,” or other dicta. No one should be under any illusion about what this means in reality: that goal requires a totalitarian government, not a government dedicated protecting each person’s equal right to pursue life, liberty and happiness.

And so, it is increasingly important to continue to celebrate Independence Day and the principles of the Declaration of Independence. We should contrast it to the type of declaration preferred by the radical left, a Declaration of Dependence, a dependence on the rules, mechanisms and judgments of an all-powerful government.

How many Americans are ready to replace Independence Day with Dependence Day? Sad to say, there are too many, and they have very loud megaphones and now control many of our most important institutions.

Tom Tancredo represented Colorado’s 6th Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1999 to 2009.

Tom Tancredo