The Gaspee’s embers glow

Gaspee Days bring about the beginning of summer with a festive, patriotic flourish and an intensely local celebratory energy that you should experience at least once if you live in Rhode Island.

The commemorating of the Gaspee Affair reminds us that at one point, our nation was not a nation at all. We were a playground for a monarchy an ocean away – a laboratory it could impose its restrictive rules upon and exploit financially without worry that its subjects might want to speak for or represent themselves.

While the burning of the HMS Gaspee was not the incident that ultimately triggered the American Revolution, it was one of thunderbolts that reverberated throughout the Colonies at the time, making it clear that the time for standing up to the British Crown was imminent. The overreach of British rule was symbolized by the authoritarian image of the Gaspee, and its burning became a powerful symbol that such tyranny was headed for a fight.

We would be wise to remember what the Sons of Liberty were fighting for when they set the schooner ablaze on June 9, 1772.

They were fighting against a government that trampled on the basic human rights of its people, that imposed policies that prevented them from securing a prosperous life for themselves and their kin. They were fighting against too much power being vested in one person who too often supplanted the will of the people with the will of himself.

We would argue that the Sons of Liberty would be uneasy with the consolidation of power we are seeing today coming from the current leader of the executive branch.

In a retreat from freedom aided by the obsequious surrender of our tyrant’s morally vacant allies in the legislative branch and the disappointing indulgence of the Supreme Court, the checks and balances that countless thousands have died to protect in our system of government are being put through a stress test like the nation has never seen.

Just as there were Colonists who supported the British and decried the burning of the Gaspee as treason, there are people today who simultaneously fly flags warning the government not to “tread” on them while they celebrate this executive (without any discernible sense of irony) as he threatens protesters with violence and activates the military to patrol domestic streets as if they were a foreign combat zone, as he undermines the foundational pillar of due process that supports our entire justice system, and as he rules by decree rather than through the legislative process that has underscored our entire nation’s history.

Perhaps it is fitting, then, that on the same day that we locally celebrated our historic act of rebellion, thousands of people across the nation stood up to protest the very same thing and declare that America never has been and never will be the playground of a megalomaniacal king.