On March 23, 1775, Patrick Henry gave his “Give me liberty or give me death” speech at the Second Virginia Convention, in favor of a resolution that Virginia form a militia to oppose King George’s tyranny. Moderates at the convention were somewhat reluctant to go on record saying explicitly that George was a tyrant who must be resisted by armed force—and to give the moderates their due, legislatures really shouldn’t go around proclaiming such things every day. They should reserve such proclamations for rare moments of revolution. Henry, in words we have as pieced together some decades later, then gave his immortal peroration:
If we were base enough to desire it, it is now too late to retire from the contest. There is no retreat but in submission and slavery! Our chains are forged! Their clanking may be heard on the plains of Boston! The war is inevitable and let it come! I repeat it, sir, let it come. It is in vain, sir, to extenuate the matter. Gentlemen may cry, Peace, Peace but there is no peace. The war is actually begun! The next gale that sweeps from the north will bring to our ears the clash of resounding arms! Our brethren are already in the field! Why stand we here idle? What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
The Convention, at first shocked into silence, voted narrowly in favor of the resolution.
Read Wikipedia on Patrick Henry—sufficiently reliable for such entries, if not for modern politics—and you will discover that he had spent much of his career indulging in radical oratory. Indeed, there was relatively little to his career but radical oratory. As early as 1765 he spoke of George in ways that made many of his audience cry Treason! and Henry happily responded, “If this be treason, make the most of it!” Henry was not radicalized; he was always radical. The times changed to make his speech fitting, a clarion call for the day.
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Some men’s words are best fit for trying times. Winston Churchill, God bless him, could be a bit melodramatic on ordinary occasions. To wit:
GENERIC MP: What does the Honorable Mr. Churchill think of the price of eggs?
CHURCHILL: We face a grievous threat that imperils the British Empire and Western civilization.
The Honorable Mr. Churchill’s contemporaries knew that the great man indulged himself in his resort to the heroic register. They also knew that when their country did face a grievous threat that imperiled the British Empire and Western civilization, there was no one better than Winston Churchill to lead them and to speak the words that would keep them fighting in their darkest, and their finest, hour.
In our time, America also has champions of the word, for whom the times have made their words appropriate. Elon Musk is no orator himself, but he has been a midwife of America’s free speech. His purchase of Twitter, now X, liberated America’s people to speak their minds freely—to let all our Patrick Henrys and Winston Churchills speak freely so that the American people can hear and judge without the censoring interposition of their would-be rulers. J. D. Vance combines forensic excellence in debate, fluent use of X for intellectual debate—and the rare ability to use the talents trained in the ivory tower and the corridors of power to speak on behalf of his home in the opioid-wrecked shards of Hillbilly America, and on behalf of all the Hillbillies still living in those shards.
Now, neither the National Association of Scholars nor I are in the business of making political endorsements. But President Trump, of course, is the greatest example of a man for whom the times have come to make his words appropriate. He does not have the oratorical training or ambitions of Henry or Churchill—and his appearances in presidential debates have tended to repel voters more than they have attracted them. He is a stand-up comedian, a Don Rickles insult comic, and a teller of pungent home truths elevated to power. His power is precisely in his comedy. A comic, the academic theorists tell us, creates communities, telling truths that include or exclude. He is a laughing Orpheus whose poetic power creates or re-creates a nation. At the most trivial, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America is funny—a joke with power. Trump redoes Whitman’s barbaric yawp as improv politics. He is not Henry or Churchill, but he is of their company.
For Henry said, Give me liberty or give me death, and Churchill said We shall never surrender. And if Trump’s Fight! Fight! Fight! of Butler, Pennsylvania is less eloquent—well, word variation may not be at the top of your mind when you’ve just been shot. They are our poetic champions of liberty. We are fortunate that Patrick Henry has worthy heirs.
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“and the rare ability to use the talents trained in the ivory tower and the corridors of power to speak on behalf of his home in the opioid-wrecked shards of Hillbilly America, and on behalf of all the Hillbillies still living in those shards.”
Not everybody living in those “shards” answered the siren song of the opiates.
Some of us had the willpower not to — and may not have had a whole lot of money, but weren’t like his family was. I think that needs to be said.