6 Methods to Spot the Fashionable-Day Redcoats in our Midst
We’re surrounded by redcoats.
They might not be part of King George’s military, but their mindset, what they support and what they’re willing to impose, is everywhere. The founders didn’t just fight an army. They fought a long, bloody war to secede from a system built on a set of views they considered as a fate worse than death.
Here are 6 ways to spot a redcoat without ever seeing a uniform.
LOYALTY
The quickest way to spot a redcoat is one question: where does their loyalty lie?
Loyalty to a single person isn’t patriotism. It’s a complete rejection of the American Revolution. Decades before the War for Independence, Samuel Adams already warned again allegiance to one individual.
“It is a very great Mistake to imagine that the Object of Loyalty is the Authority and Interest of one individual Man, however dignified by the Applause or enriched by the Success of Popular Actions”
Adams knew this as a student of history: loyalty to one man leads to tyranny.
“This has led Millions into such a degree of Dependance and Submission that they have at length found themselves oblig’d to homage the Instruments of their Ruin, at the very Time they were at Work to effect it.”
John Adams saw the same kind of end game for those who bend the knee to a political party, and flat out refused to do it.
“I would quarrel with both parties, and with every individual of each, before I would subjugate my understanding, or prostitute my tongue or pen to either.”
Some founders, like Noah Webster, saw party-loyalty as the most dangerous of all.
“nothing is more dangerous to the cause of truth and liberty than a party-spirit.”
Loyalty to a person, a party, or even a nation: that’s a redcoat. The American view? According to Thomas Jefferson and John Dickinson: it’s loyalty to liberty.
“our attachment to no Nation upon earth should supplant our attachment to liberty.”
ARBITRARY POWER
But as Samuel Adams warned, liberty can’t exist where government does what it wants.
“It cannot indeed subsist in an arbitrary Government,”
That’s the 2nd way to spot a redcoat. They support violating the constitution. The founders called that arbitrary power. James Otis Jr. defined it this way:
“arbitrary; which in plain English means no more than to do as one pleases.”
John Adams warned you have to stop it early, the moment you see it, not later.
“Obsta principiis – Nip the shoots of arbitrary power in the bud, is the only maxim which can ever preserve the liberties of any people.”
Because once you give in, it’s like a deadly disease, and it’s game over.
“When the people give way, their deceivers, betrayers and destroyers press upon them so fast that there is no resisting afterwards.”
NO EMERGENCY POWER
The next way to spot a redcoat? They make excuses for arbitrary power. John Milton gave us the most common one. It’s an emergency!
“So spake the Fiend, and with necessity, The tyrant’s plea, excused his devilish deeds.”
As Samuel Adams put it, when people with power get to decide if they have extra power or funding for an “emergency,” you’ll end up with never-ending emergencies.
“Those Kings by the way, being the sole judges when emergencies happen, they generally create them as often as they want money.”
Federal Farmer argued that even when the decision is left to the people, the trick is still the same: it’s always do or die right now. Manufacture urgency, slam the door on scrutiny, and hope nobody looks too closely at what’s being pushed through.
“It is natural for men, who wish to hasten the adoption of a measure, to tell us, now is the crisis – now is the critical moment which must be seized, or all will be lost: and to shut the door against free enquiry, whenever conscious the thing presented has defects in it, which time and investigation will probably discover. This has been the custom of tyrants and their dependents in all ages.”
St. George Tucker warned that it’s not just the size. Even the smallest step – the tiniest amount of arbitrary power – sets the precedent for even more in the future.
“Slight, and sometimes even imperceptible, innovations, occasional usurpations, founded upon the pretended emergency of the occasion: or upon former unconstitutional precedents”
That’s why George Washington called all arbitrary power – usurpation – a weapon to destroy freedom.
“let there be no change by usurpation; for though this, in one instance, may be the instrument of good, it is the customary weapon by which free governments are destroyed.”
WHO DECIDES
Because of this, the founders and old revolutionaries, like Samuel Adams and James Otis Jr., insisted on strict and fixed limits on government power.
“in all free states the constitution is fixed, and as the supreme legislative derives its power and authority from the constitution, it cannot overleap the bounds of it without destroying its own foundation”
The chain of command, Thomas Paine wrote, goes like this: people first, then constitution, and government at the bottom.
“A constitution is not the act of a government, but of a people constituting a government”
But who decides when the constitution is violated?
On this, spotting a redcoat is easy: they believe government gets to judge the limits of its own power. As Thomas Jefferson explained in his Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, this is putting the government above the constitution itself.
“the Government created by this compact was not made the exclusive or final judge of the extent of the powers delegated to itself; since that would have made its discretion, and not the constitution, the measure of its powers”
Jefferson applied this same principle at the height of the revolution, referring to a whole list of British acts as nullities, and void.
“The true ground on which we declare these acts void is, that the British parliament has no right to exercise authority over us.”
The people don’t get to decide what’s void if the government is the top of the food chain.
STANDING ARMIES
That brings us to the next way to spot a redcoat, and their favorite: standing armies. Because when they use arbitrary power, they need the military to enforce it. The American view is the exact opposite, and few captured it better than Joseph Warren. Standing armies have been absolutely terrible all throughout history.
“The ruinous consequences of standing armies to free communities, may be seen in the histories of SYRACUSE, ROME, and many other once flourishing states; some of which have now scarce a name!”
George Mason made clear there is no special exemption for America: a standing army is a threat to liberty anywhere and everywhere it exists.
“when once a standing army is established in any country, the people lose their liberty.”
When you understand history, from the ancient world to the streets of Boston, you understand their warning. This is why the founding generation so vehemently opposed standing armies. As Gen. Henry Knox explained, the danger was greatest in times of peace.
“whatever may be the efficacy of a standing army in war, it cannot in peace be considered as friendly to the rights of human nature.”
OBEDIENCE
The final, and most obvious ways to spot a redcoat? They demand obedience. No one summed up the total American rejection of that view better than James Otis Jr.
“He that would palm the doctrine of unlimited passive obedience and non-resistance upon mankind, is not only a fool and a knave, but a rebel against common sense, as well as the laws of God, of Nature, and his Country.”
Compliance with arbitrary power, as John Dickinson wrote, sets the precedent and guarantees total tyranny.
“If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”
John Adams recorded exactly what the American response to the Stamp Act was: even in the face of overwhelming power, compliance was a non-starter.
“The Cry was, if Parliament can tax Us, We are undone forever in Soul, Body and Estate. They can give Us, what Religion and Government they please: and do what they will, with our Property, Persons and Consciences. Resistance to the last Extremity, at whatever risque, must be made.”
Now that you know these six ways to spot a redcoat, it’s even easier to spot a real American. According to Samuel Adams, they’re the ones doing the complete opposite.
“The truth is, All might be free if they valued freedom, and defended it as they ought.”
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