5/13/2024

Last week’s curation at RealClear’s American Civics portal starts off with a piece at the Civics portal from historian David Head, an Associate Lecturer in the Department of History at the University of Central Florida and a fellow with the Jack Miller Center. Head commemorates Gálvez Day, which celebrates Bernardo de Gálvez, the commander of the Spanish force that defeated the British at the 1781 Siege of Pensacola. Head argues that while in the American mind the fight against the red coats took place in only New England, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and the Carolinas, the Revolution also happened along the Gulf Coast. The Revolution was in reality an “international war in which Americans were only a portion of the combatants,” writes Head. In conclusion, Head notes, “The Revolution was fought by men from many different backgrounds for reasons that didn’t include the creation of a new nation.” Gálvez himself said that “he commanded ‘men of all conditions, nations, and colors,’ and he served at the pleasure of his king.”

At the Baltimore Sun, Armstrong Williams reminds all Americans that they have a duty to ensure that our republican government remains in working order. As Williams argues, Americans “must exercise eternal vigilance over their government servants to prevent the republic from degenerating into a de facto monarchy crowned with limitless power.” Citizens need to keep power-hungry politicians and others from destroying the great republican edifice, which was built and maintained over the span of hundreds of years. Part of this is interacting regularly with our elected officials – “not only on polling day but on all days in between,” Williams says. Citizens must follow what their “representatives are doing or saying via newspapers, the internet, C-Span, the Congressional Record or otherwise.” As he concludes, “When it comes to keeping the republic, the buck stops with us.”