Celebrate Independence Day by Reading Judge J. Michael Luttig
Judge J. Michael Luttig published a brilliant article on Ryan Lyzza’s Substack Telos. It is called “The Self-Evident Truths of Freedom - and of Tyranny.”
It takes every paragraph of the Declaration of Independence and “translates” it into its 2025 meaning. The brilliance of the article is that it warns against the dangers our Republic is facing today without making any partisan or political references. But the reality behind the words is self-evident. He flashes out the self-evident truths of today and the historical parallels.
“The genius of the American experiment in self-governance is that “We the People,” not the government, possess all power and we govern ourselves by representational democracy. We entrust our power to our government to exercise on our behalf in the interests of our nation. To ensure that our government faithfully exercises the power we entrust it with, we the American people ordained and established government by law, instead of by kings.
When the tyrannical reign of King George III became destructive of the ends of government by law under which all persons are equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights, the American Colonists declared their independence from the British King, chronicling 27 grievances of self-evident truths about tyranny as reasons for their declaration of independence.
On this July 4, 2025, the eve of the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of America’s declaration of independence and the founding of this Nation, “We the People” hold to be self-evident these 27 truths about freedom—and about tyranny.”
Here is the link to the article.
And here is the video recorded by Judge Luttig with Ryan Lyzza and Steve Schmidt. I recommend watching it. It is truly inspiring, it will give you a deeper understanding of the article and more context.
