We Can Do Hard Things with Glennon Doyle - Don’t Tread on Me: A July 4th Wake-Up Call

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

Listen to this 8-minute rally cry before Independence Day. 250 years into the American experiment, it's time to remember: July 4th isn’t about loyalty—it’s about resistance. About dissent, demand, and dignity. About overthrowing tyranny and reclaiming the promise of liberty for all. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey y'all, this is Amanda coming to you with a special short edition of We Can Do Hard Things, all about doing the hard thing of remembering what Independence Day is about. 250 years into the American experiment, let us be very, very clear about what Independence Day is and what it is not. It is sure as shit not about declaring yourself a loyal subject. It is about declaring your right to self-determination. It is about the collective power of resistance

to authoritarian rule. It is about overthrowing a tyrant to preserve liberty. The Declaration of Independence was then, and is today, not a symbol of loyalty, but the best breakup letter ever written. July 4th was a bold, dangerous, defiant moral action by a people who were so heartbroken and enraged by abuses of power that they became ungovernable. It was, don't tread on me. It was, we will ask you not to tread.

We will beseech you not to tread. And when you do not hear us, when your lust of unchecked power stands between us and our innate right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we will stop asking for our rights and instead exercise our right – end duty – to remove your boot from our neck. In the Declaration, would-be Americans said that legitimate political authority is derived not by edict of those in power, but only by the consent of the governed,

that there is an implied social contract between the government and the governed. And when in the course of human events, the abuses against the people's liberty become intolerable, that contract is broken. That's what patriots did. They listed the abuses of power that broke the social contract, they withdrew their consent to be governed by a tyrant, and they declared that they would instead govern themselves.

Don't tread on me was real then, and it's real now. Like our patriot forebears, we are living through taxation without representation, obstruction of self-governance, the arbitrary use of power, disregard for the rule of law, standing armies without local consent, and the use of violence and intimidation. We have minority rule in the U.S., presidents elected without the popular vote, gerrymandered districts that ensure that those in power will continue that rule regardless of what the people want, and a GOP on the war path to restrict voting access.

We have a Republican-controlled Congress unequivocally deserting their constitutional oath to uphold the co-equal branches of government, which were specifically created in contemplation and for the purposes of preventing a tyrannical president from centralizing power over the nation. We have a president circulating photos of himself with a crown, saying he will have a third term in direct violation of the Constitution. A president who, when asked by a reporter, don't you need to uphold the Constitution of the United States as president, said, with his own mouth, in front of God in America

and countless veterans, with and without bone spurs, who have fought and been maimed in the fulfillment of their oath to preserve America and its Constitution, he said, I don't know. And we have a GOP-controlled Senate, only one of whom was willing to say that following the Constitution was not just a suggestion. While 52 Republican senators who had taken an oath to defend the Constitution remained silent

as the president tread on his oath, our Constitution, and our last line of defense against tyranny. We have a president eliminating nonpartisan civil servants and replacing them with loyalists whose only qualification is allegiance to him, attacking judges, court orders, DOJ officials, weaponizing the legal system based on petty personal grievances. Like the Patriots, we have a ruler misusing our tax dollars and military in foreign wars we want nothing to do with. We have a president who on national television called for a national enemy to hack into the U.S. government databases to find dirt on his political

adversary. The dangerous foreign interference and influence directly outlawed by the U.S. Constitution. Who called for a bloodbath and retribution if he didn't win, then incited an armed insurrection against our nation to try to overthrow our democratic election. We have a president deploying federal troops against the will of the people and governors of sovereign states. A president calling for military action against dissenting Americans, deploying masked federal agents to descend on our churches,

schools and communities to hunt our neighbors without warrant or judicial order or criminal record or charges against them, and disappearing them in notorious maximum security prisons in other dictatorial nations. We have a president who has stated his intent to do the exact same disappearances to quote unquote bad Americans. This is the would-be king our forebearers fought and died to keep us free from.

This is the tyranny the drafters of the Constitution carefully prepared us to prevent. And make no mistake, they are testing us right now. They are testing us to see if Americans are still patriots. They started by stripping constitutional rights from immigrants, from queer, Muslim, and brown folks, because authoritarians always start by stripping rights from the most marginalized. Because they are testing us to see whether we will demand that the Constitution and the rule of law be enforced. Because make no mistake, if we let the Constitution fall for anyone, it's just a matter of time

until the Constitution falls for everyone. American history is complicated, and many parts are ugly. There is a long list of traditions that we can and must do the work of repairing. And yet our deepest American tradition is dissent and demand and dignity. Dissent, demand, and dignity were the guiding principles of the patriots and of every abolitionist and suffragist and civil rights leader who came thereafter. Dissent, demand, and dignity are our inherent birthrights, the spirit of our lineage and God willing,

our legacy to those who come after us. That is what Independence Day is about. That we are people who will not sleepwalk into authoritarianism. We are the people of resistance as right and as duty. We are the people of the don't tread on me rattlesnake. We do not go seeking out a fight, but when you threaten us, we will stand our ground. When you tread on us, we will make you wish you hadn't.

Now is a time for all American patriots to put down loyalty to leader or party and to reclaim the soul of their republic, their birthright to liberty, and their nation's fidelity to the Constitution. Happy Independence Day to all patriots willing to pledge their lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to freedom.