OK, But Why Should I Care?

aka "Wrapped in the Flag & Carrying a Cross"

The failure to overthrow the racist lie of a white supremacist past empowers those who would lead us into a white supremacist & anti-democratic future, here in America & around the world.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN

Is about returning America to an imaginary "lost Golden Age". It's about undermining democracy & truth in order to return us to the days of unassailable WHITE supremacy & elite rule.

In his New York Times video op-ed, Professor Jason Stanley describes Fascism as a style of governance grounded in three principles:

• A Mythic Past: Encourage Nostalgia for a Lost Golden Age
• Sow Division: Divide Us and Identify "Outsiders" Who Have Corrupted Our Purity and Led To Our Downfall
• Attack Truth: So All That Remains Is Confusion and Allegiance To Power

By discrediting the idea of a lost golden age of whiteness & celebrating the diversity that has been a fundamental aspect of our national history from the very beginning we destroy the neo-fascist argument at its root.

By demonstrating that people of color are not "outsiders", that they have been here from the very beginning & were foundational & indispensable participants in the American Revolution, we disempower those who would drag us back to a future of greater inequality & injustice.

by defending democracy

against those who would sabotage & destroy it, & by reminding ourselves of its generational power, we support & incite resistance to white supremacy & to inequality, & we play our necessary part in the still ongoing War for Liberty.

The Battle of Saratoga

"THE MOST IMPORTANT BATTLE OF THE LAST 1,000 YEARS"

was actually two battles, fought almost three weeks apart in upstate New york, during the darkest & most desperate time in the revolution.

WASHINGTON'S ARMY had just suffered a terrible defeat at Brandywine, & between the first & second battles at Saratoga the British occupied the rebel capital of Philadelphia.

The occupation of the capital was a terrible blow to morale, but also a deadly threat to the troops who'd been stationed there, who were now going to have to spend the winter without proper housing or supplies. (As it turned out, over 2,000 of the 10,000 troops at Valley Forge died that winter from exposure and disease). Things looked very grim for the rebels, and many in the British military thought the war would soon be over.

The Second Battle of Saratoga is the battle that changed everything, & it's at the center of our story...

The rebels' only hope of beating the British lay in having France or another of England's European rivals join the war, but the French didn't want to back a lost cause & wouldn't commit until the rebels won a decisive military victory.

Then, late in 1777, the British launched a campaign to crush the rebellion once & for all.

THREE GREAT ARMIES were to converge near Albany in upstate New York, cutting off the troublesome New England colonies from their southern neighbors and allowing the Brits to divide and conquer.

• One British army was to approach from the West under the leadership of General St. Leger
• One was to descend from the North led by General Burgoyne
• And a third army was to move north from New York City, under the command of General Howe

The plan did not go as expected.

St Leger's army coming from the west was blocked at Fort Stanwix & at the Battle of Oriskany, with significant help from the rebels' Native American allies.

General Burgoyne's northern army lost a thousand men at Bennington, as well as most of their Native American support.

And General Howe decided not to join the battle at all, opting instead for the presumably greater glory of capturing the rebel's capital city of Philadelphia, & maybe General Washington as well.

The First Battle of Saratoga

General Burgoyne found himself fighting the rebels' Northern Army all by himself.

The rebels established themselves on rugged terrain along the river north of Albany where they could block Burgoyne's path towards the city. The First Battle of Saratoga - fought September 19, 1777 - was essentially a draw.

The Second Battle of Saratoga

General Burgoyne never received new orders so he carried on with the plan to head for Albany, & he stayed put longer than he should have in hopes that reinforcements would arrive...

& while he waited, rebels arrived by the thousands.

WHEN THE SECOND BATTLE OF SARATOGA WAS FOUGHT ON OCTOBER 7, 1777 THE REBELS FINALLY GOT THE DECISIVE VICTORY THEY NEEDED.

Burgoyne's entire army was taken prisoner, &

the French soon announced their entry into the war in support of the rebels.

SARATOGA CHANGED EVERYTHING:

Saratoga was the first time in history that a British army had been forced to surrender,

THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE NAMED SARATOGA "THE BATTLE OF THE MILLENNIUM",

& the nineteenth-century British historian Sir Edward Creasy included it on his (very Eurocentric) list of the 15 most decisive battles in all of human history: along with the Battles of Marathon (490 BC), Hastings (1066), Waterloo (1815), and the defeat of the Spanish Armada (1588).

The rebel victory at Saratoga could be said to mark the beginning of the Age of Liberty in the Western world.

A few words on the painting in the background.

The painting depicts the Second Battle of Saratoga. It shows rebel General Benedict Arnold at left on his white horse, surrounded by rebels and redcoats and Native American warriors.

The image is unlike anything else I've seen, & it comes closest to how the battle is portrayed in the script.

The inclusion of Native American warriors as heroic participants & allies in the battle, & not as exotic "others" or dangerous "savages" is more unusual than it should be, & I believe it more closely reflects the truth of native participation in the war.

The Rebel Spies Who Won the War

(& Who Inspired a Character in the Script)

IN OUR STORY, THE CHARACTER OF IGGY IS BASED LARGELY ON THE LIFE OF JAMES ARMISTEAD

& also on the Lives of the Spies Lydia Darragh and Agent 355

James Armistead

Slave, Hero of Yorktown, & Greatest Spy of the War (& That may be him over there on the right in the fancy hat, beside Lafayette)

Yorktown was the Battle that Ended the War

In 1781, American and French forces trapped Britain's southern army on a peninsula in Virginia and forced their surrender, in the last major engagement of the war.

The Slave James Armistead

Made this Victory Possible

JAMES ARMISTEAD persuaded his owner to allow him to join the rebels, and volunteered to serve as a spy for the Marquis de Lafayette. Armistead presented himself to the British as an escaped slave seeking protection from his rebel masters. He ingratiated himself in the camp of British general and notorious traitor Benedict Arnold, then gained access to the headquarters of the British commander, Lord Cornwallis.

Cornwallis asked Armistead to spy on the Rebels, giving him the perfect cover to move back & forth between British & Rebel camps.

Armistead discovered the British were moving 10,000 troops to Yorktown, & provided intricate details of the move to a "stunned" General Washington.

"If he had not given the information that he gave at the strategic time he did, they would not have had the intelligence to create the blockade that ended the war."

- Rex Ellis, vice president of Colonial Williamsburg's Historic Area

Despite his Critical Contribution to Winning the War for Liberty, at War's end in 1783

James Armistead was Returned to Slavery

There was a provision in Virginia - often ignored, there as elsewhere - granting liberty to slaves who had fought as soldiers, but Armistead had served as a spy, not a soldier, and was therefore deemed ineligible. In 1784 the Marquis de Lafayette wrote a testimonial on his behalf, recounting his exemplary service.

Despite his service & Lafayette's support, Armistead was not freed from slavery until 1787, four years after the end of the war.

In gratitude to Lafayette, Armistead adopted the Marquis' surname and went thereafter by the name JAMES LAFAYETTE.

It's reported that when the Marquis de Lafayette returned to tour America in 1824, he spied James Armistead Lafayette along the parade route in Virginia, abruptly stopped the coach, & rushed to embrace his former comrade.

Native Americans & the War for Liberty: Then & noW

Most Americans know the name of the Native American Tisquantum ("Squanto") & that he helped the Pilgrims survive their first winter in the New World in 1620. Many have heard of Pocahontas, who helped the settlers in Virginia a few years earlier...

But after Squanto and Pocahontas, the next native names known by most Americans are probably Sitting Bull & Geronimo, two hundred & thirty years later, & 2,000 miles farther west.

General awareness of native history & culture is largely confined to the "Wild West" of John Wayne movies, & almost nothing is generally known about the customs & the lives of the native peoples of the northeast, or about their influence on the New American Republic that grew up in the shadow of their ancient traditions.

We must revisit & reclaim this lost past in order to protect our future

The profoundly intertwined issues of DEFENDING DEMOCRACY, REDUCING INEQUALITY & ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION ARE THE DEFINING CHALLENGES OF OUR AGE,

THEY ARE THE CURRENT BATTLEFIELD IN THE ONGOING WAR FOR LIBERTY & EQUALITY.

Native American help was essential to the rebel victory in the Revolutionary War.

Similarly, in the ongoing War for Liberty WE MUST RETURN TO NATIVE AMERICAN TRADITIONS OF EQUALITY & ENVIRONMENTAL STEWARDSHIP IF WE, AS A SPECIES, ARE TO SURVIVE.

THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION REPRESENTS A TRAGIC TURNING POINT in the balance of power between the First Nations, the colonists, and the European powers.

In the northeast, the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy descended into civil war during the American Revolution. Two of the Six Nations backed the rebels, while the other four sided with their traditional allies, the British.

THOSE WHO BACKED THE BRITISH were driven from their lands by a scorched-earth campaign waged by the rebel army.

THOSE WHO BACKED THE REBELS lost almost everything during the war. As a reward for their sacrifice, every treaty & promise made to them was broken or forgotten, & they were soon driven from their land as well.

The "slightly alternative history" in the script is mostly that our story imagines a world in which all six nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy make the crucial decision to back the rebel cause, & that they emerge from the war with their power not just intact but significantly increased.

How different might America - & the world - look in the present if a strong Native American power had been able to form an alliance with the most progressive of the rebels after the war, & to serve as a counterweight to the most aggressive & destructive of the colonial interests?

The last 300 years of extractive, predatory, & devil-take-the-hindmost capitalism, inequality, & Environmental destruction is an unsustainable historical aberration... In North America, it was preceded by thousands of years of human civilization that managed to live in relative equality, & in harmony with the natural world.

The script seeks to make visible that which has become invisible: to remind us of an alternative - & profoundly "American" - path back to a world that is more egalitarian & environmentally viable than the lonely & unsustainable world to which we have become accustomed.

symbols of liberty

Colonial culture had a profoundly confused relationship with Native Americans.

In the abstract, Native Americans were sometimes idealized as symbols of liberty & equality & natural dignity, or of a truly new world of possibility, as in the Massachusetts State Seal, below.

& the rebels who threw tea overboard in the Boston Tea Party dressed as Native Americans

although There's some disagreement as to why they did this. Some say it was because they wanted to show they were "American" now & no longer "British", Some that it was because Native Americans were specifically associated with a form of liberty superior to that of the European & colonial traditions of the time...

Some say the tea partiers were trying to blame the Mohawk for the crime, or that it was just a convenient disguise, but it's not clear that this would've been an especially effective way of concealing their identities or that it fooled the British into holding the Mohawk responsible.

Ben Franklin, among many others in colonial society, had extensive interaction with Native Americans, especially with the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee, & he was impressed & inspired by what he saw, & by the enduring nature of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy & its governing structures.

There is compelling evidence that Haudenosaunee civic and political traditions greatly influenced those who were trying to shape this new society of Liberty and Equality.

But whatever symbolic meaning may have attached itself to the "idea" of Native Americans in colonial society - & however much native traditions may have inspired rebel conceptions of liberty - actual, living Native Americans were constantly attacked, cheated, & ultimately driven from their land, & they suffered terribly as the European presence expanded.

A Brutal History: First contact, Eastern Tribes, & the Great Dying

When Europeans first arrived in northeastern North America, they encountered thriving native societies whose citizens probably ate better, lived more comfortably, & enjoyed greater freedom & equality than the vast majority of the citizens of Europe.

NATHANIEL PHILBRICK reports, in his book Mayflower, that the native diet included an enormous amount of protein and variety compared to a typical European diet of the era, and that on first contact the Puritans were shocked by the height and strength and robust health of the people of Massachusetts. Native houses were much easier to keep warm in winter and cool in summer, and an egalitarian tradition among the native people allowed an individual a far greater degree of autonomy, freedom of choice, and of dissent than was typical in Europe.

But the vast majority of these societies WERE CATASTROPHICALLY DESTABILIZED BY European intrusion.

European diseases & European greed quickly overwhelmed most native societies with which they came in contact.

In 1535, the French explorer Jacques Cartier and his crew were the first Europeans to visit the island that is the present site of the city of Montreal. Upon their arrival they were welcomed by many of the residents of Hochelaga, an Iroquoian village which lay near the mountain that Cartier named Mount Royal.

“And on reaching Hochelaga (island), there came to meet us more than a thousand persons, men, women, and children, who gave us as good a welcome as ever father gave to his son, making great signs of joy; for the men danced in one ring, the women in another, and the children also apart by themselves.”

The next day Cartier and 20 of his crew visited the village.

“The village is circular & is completely enclosed by a wooden palisade in three tiers like a pyramid… There are some fifty houses in this village, each about fifty or more paces in length, & twelve or fifteen in width, built completely of wood & covered in & bordered up with large pieces of bark & rind of trees, as broad as a table, which are well & cunningly lashed after their manner. And inside these houses are many rooms & chambers; & in the middle is a large space without a floor, where they light their fire & live together in common.”

After visiting the village, Cartier hiked up the mountain to get the lay of the land, then headed back to the shore. His final description of the people of Hochelaga is that when they saw

“our people tired, took them upon their shoulders, as on horseback and carried them.”

When Cartier returned, six years later, he makes no report of Hochelaga. Later European explorers were unable to find any sign of the village or its people.

The excellent Mohawk historian Darren Bonaparte argues they were probably weakened by disease, then driven off or absorbed by rivals or by friendly local tribes.

The same pattern was repeated over & over throughout the Americas, as native societies - which kept few domesticated animals & had no immunity to the diseases that spread when many humans & animals live in close association - came into contact with smallpox & other diseases which were endemic in Europe.

A new scientific study, released in March, 2019, argues that

native contact with European diseases throughout the Americas

led to the death of 90% of most native populations

and returned so many cultivated acres to wilderness that it actually led to CLIMATE CHANGE & may have exacerbated the Little Ice Age in the years following colonization .

Disease weakened the native populations to the point they were unable to resist the advance of European colonists, or to protect themselves from rival tribes who had not yet been overwhelmed by the plagues.

When disease was not sufficient to drive the native people from their land, the settlers used intimidation, legal pressure, violence, alcohol, treaties of dubious legality, war & sometimes massacre to take the land they coveted.

By 1675, when war finally broke out between the Eastern tribes & the European colonists in King Phillip's War, there were probably just too many colonists & too few natives, & the war led to the downfall of the surviving eastern tribes.

The vast majority of those who were not killed were sold into slavery or scattered, taking refuge among more remote tribes or attempting to conceal their native identities & disappear into colonial society, still here but hidden.

Algonquian speaking tribes ranged up and down the east coast, from what are now Maine and New Brunswick to North Carolina. In the map above, the Algonquian tribes are shown in Orange, the Iroquoian speaking tribes in purple.

By the time of the American Revolution, most of the eastern Algonquian tribes had been swept away, & their land had been occupied by European settlers who now threatened the sovereignty & integrity of the Haudenosaunee confederacy.

The French & Indian War... & the Royal Proclamation of 1763

The French & Indian War (1754-1763) was a conflict between the colonial forces of France & Great Britain that raged along the borders of their north American territories for a decade, & which dragged many of their native allies into the fray.

From the earliest days of European contact, French & English forces had competed for access & alliances with the native societies in the northeast.

This unstable situation allowed the Haudenosaunee, who lived at the intersection of the French & English territories, to play the dangerous game of pitting one colonial power against the other in order to maintain Haudenosaunee autonomy and influence.

But the defeat of the French in 1763 made England the sole colonial power in the northeast & severely reduced the Haudenosaunee's leverage in negotiations.

Following the war, the Royal Proclamation of 1763 forbade colonial settlement beyond the Appalachian mountains & declared the land west of the mountains to be an indian reserve.

THE ENGLISH were trying to placate the native populations beyond the mountains and avoid the expense of maintaining a line of forts and a standing army along the border.

Many among the Haudenosaunee & other native groups viewed the Proclamation Line - & British power - as their best chance of maintaining their territory & autonomy.

But many colonists & colonial aristocrats - including George Washington - had already received or aspired to receive land grants in the now-prohibited territory.

They saw the Proclamation Line as a threat to their own property interests, as yet another unjust limitation on their liberty, & as further justification for rebellion.

The Haudenosaunee Confederacy

At the time of the American Revolution, & for at least hundreds of years prior, the haudenosaunee confederacy was the most powerful native group in the northeast, & one of the most powerful in all of the Americas. They were feared as adversaries & desired as allies by the colonial powers, & their traditions & governing structures strongly influenced Ben Franklin & other rebel leaders.

The people of the Six Nations called themselves the Haudenosaunee, "People of the Longhouse".

Believed to have been established around 1150AD, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy brought together the previously warring Mohawk, Oneida, Onondaga, Cayuga, & Seneca tribes.

The Confederacy has been called the

OLDEST LIVING PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY IN THE WORLD

In the early 1700s the Tuscarora came north and joined the confederacy, which was now often known as the Six Nations.

The Six Nations home territories spread across almost all of what is now known as New York state, and into parts of Ontario, Quebec, Pennsylvania, and Ohio. Beyond their home territories, their influence often extended hundreds of miles further.

Early French explorers asked their Abenaki allies what they called their western neighbors & the French version of the response is "Iroquois"... This is a bit like asking a baseball fan in Brooklyn what you call someone from Massachusetts: You'll get an answer, but it's probably not going to be a polite one, or one that would be well received in Boston.

The true meaning & origin of the word "Iroquois" is disputed, but one translation is that it means "real adders" or "rattlesnakes". Regardless of the ascribed meaning, many people in the community do not consider the term to be accurate or entirely appropriate, though it's still widely known & frequently used, especially outside the Haudenosaunee community. It's used sometimes in the script in hopes that it may help people less familiar with the proper name to get their bearings.

During the American Revolution, most of the Oneida & many Tuscarora chose to back the rebels, despite enormous pressure from the rest of the Six Nations & from the British.

They made their choice with full awareness that it might lead to disastrous consequences for their families, villages, & tribes... & for the survival of the Confederacy itself.

The Battle of Oriskany

One of the bloodiest battles of the American revolution, a crucial battle of the Saratoga Campaign, & the beginning of civil war among the Six Nations of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy

On August 2, 1777, British General St. Leger laid siege to rebel Fort Stanwix on his way to meet up with General Burgoyne near Albany.

On August 6, 1777, a rebel column of about 730 militia & sixty to one hundred Oneida warriors were ambushed by a loyalist force of about 500 Haudenosaunee & 200 militia as they advanced to relieve the fort.

The battle went on for hours, but hundreds of rebels were probably killed in the opening moments of the ambush. As the battle proceeded, the loyalist warriors would wait until their target had fired their musket, then attack them - often with tomahawk or spear - in the twenty to thirty seconds it took to reload. In this way many were killed, until the rebels were able to reorganize themselves late in the battle to fight in pairs, with one standing guard while the other reloaded.

There are reports the battle of Oriskany provoked a renaissance in the use of bow & arrow among the Oneida, with its much higher rate of fire & lack of vulnerability to attack while reloading.

Almost four hundred rebel militia & Oneida warriors died at Oriskany.

It is reported that less than a dozen British participants were killed, and around sixty-five loyalist Haudenosaunee were killed or wounded.

The battle is nonetheless counted by many as a strategic victory for the rebels, who stopped the advance of St. Leger's army & ultimately forced his retreat back to Canada.

A Place of Great Sadness

is how Oriskany is remembered in many Haudenosaunee histories. Here Mohawk & Seneca fought against their Oneida allies & broke a peace which had endured for centuries amongst the confederated nations.

This is the dire & dangerous situation faced by the native people of the northeast at the time of our story.

The following individuals all figure prominently in the script.

Joseph Brant (Thayendanegea)

Joseph Brant was the primary leader of the Mohawk tribe, & of the Loyalist Haudenosaunee.

The Mohawk were the most powerful and the eastern-most of the tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. Joseph Brant spoke and wrote English extremely well and he had extensive experience and contact with the British hierarchies and colonial administrators.

Joseph Brant was also well traveled. In 1775-1776 he visited London and met with King George III and other British officials. During this trip he raised the issue of ongoing colonial encroachment on Haudenosaunee land, and received assurances from King George that this issue would be rectified upon the successful completion of the war with the colonists. The picture above was painted during his visit by English portraitist George Romney, the most fashionable artist of his day.

Joseph Brant also led the Loyalist Haudenosaunee forces at Oriskany. He appears in the script.

Molly Brant (Konwatsi'tsiaienni)

Molly Brant was Joseph's older sister, & she was the most powerful voice within the Haudenosaunee when discussing relations with the English & other foreign powers.

"One word from her is more taken notice of by the Five Nations than a thousand from a white man without exception."

-Daniel Claus, Loyalist Commisioner of Indian Affairs in Albany, NY

In 1759, in a traditional Mohawk ceremony, Molly Brant married Sir William Johnson, British Superintendent of Indian Affairs for the northern colonies.

The couple had nine children together, eight of whom survived to adulthood. Molly was widely known and respected as the wife of Sir William - helping to run the household and involved in the events held there - and as a leader in her own right.

Molly Brant was also a force to be reckoned with. She was the source of intelligence on the rebel relief column marching to relieve the siege of Fort Stanwix.

The information she supplied to her brother Joseph & their English partners allowed them to lay the ambush that became the Battle of Oriskany, & the beginning of the Haudenosaunee civil war.

Skenandoa

Skenandoa was a chief of the Oneida & a staunch ally of the American rebels. Like Colonel Louis Cook, it's possible that without the contribution of this one individual the War for Liberty would have failed.

He was originally a member of the Susquehannock tribe, an Iroquoian tribe to the south of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, but was absorbed into the Oneida in his youth and later elected a chief.

"There is no way now of estimating the value of Skenandoa’s services. It is even possible that if he had chosen differently, the Burgoyne campaign would have been successful & British power forever established over all of North America.

He was with Gen. Nicholas Herkimer on his march to the Battle of Oriskany. When Sir John Johnson, Walter Butler & Brant, the Mohawk, hung like a pestilence around the armies & settlements on the frontier, Skenandoa with 250 warriors ever kept a watchful eye upon their movements & gave warnings that often saved the Americans from ambush & massacre."

- Daughters of the American Revolution, 1912

Skenandoa was 6'5" tall and lived to be 110 years old. At the time of our story he was about 70 years old, the same age as Ben Franklin, and is said to have led many of the Oneida warriors at the battle of Oriskany. He figures prominently in our story.

Two Kettles together (Tyonajanegen) & Han Yerry Tewahangarahken

Oneida heroes of the Battle of Oriskany.

Han Yerry Tewahangarahken was a war chief of the Oneida. Two Kettles Together was his wife who fought beside him at Oriskany, along with their son, Cornelius. Han Yerry is described as being “too old for the service, yet used to go fearlessly into the fights”.

During the battle, Han Yerry was shot through the right wrist, preventing him from being able to load his gun, so Tyonajanegen loaded it then handed it to him as they rode through the battlefield.

A report from a newspaper of the time:

a friendly Indian, with his wife and son, who distinguished themselves remarkably on the occasion. The Indian killed nine of the enemy, when having receiving a ball through his wrist that disabled him from using his gun, he then fought with his tomahawk. His son killed two, and his wife on horseback, fought by his side, with pistols during the whole action, which lasted six hours

- Pennsylvania Journal & Weekly Advertiser, 3 September 1777

After the battle, Two Kettles Together rode to bring news of the engagement to local rebels and Native Americans. She may also have been the very first person to escape the besieged Fort Stanwix on August 2. She slipped past the loyalist forces surrounding the fort, made her way to a nearby Oneida village, found a horse, & rode to spread word of the British arrival.

Both Two Kettles Together and Han Yerry appear in the script.

Nicolai Copernicus

De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelsetium - 1543

COPERNICUS BEGAN THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION & THE AGE OF REASON WITH THE PUBLICATION OF HIS MASTERWORK, KNOW IN ENGLISH AS:

"ON THE REVOLUTIONS OF THE HEAVENLY SPHERES"

In his book he argued that the Earth orbits around the sun, & not the other way around as was commonly believed at the time.

Copernicus had been polishing this theories for decades, but was only persuaded to publish the book a few months before his death.

His hesitation was in large part out of fear he'd be attacked by the Church for challenging their position that the Earth was at the center of creation. As it turned out, the book didn't provoke as much controversy as Copernicus feared, maybe because he died so soon after publication and because the book was dense and not widely read.

Most people comfortably carried on believing the Earth was the center of the universe for a few more generations.

But as the idea slowly advanced, the backlash came.

In 1600, the philosopher Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake for heresy, in part because of his refusal to renounce the heliocentric view of Copernicus.

In 1616, the Inquisition banned the publication of Copernicus's book & others like it, & ordered Galileo Galilei to abandon any further advocacy in favor of the "foolish and absurd" view that the sun lay at the center of the universe.

In 1633, Galileo misjudged the tolerance of the Church for another book on the subject, & he was sentenced by the Inquisition to house arrest. He died - still under house arrest - in 1642, ninety-nine years after the death of Copernicus.

In the script, set almost two hundred & forty years after publication of De Revolutionibus,

Copernicus & Galileo are used as examples of the painstaking process by which "dangerous" new ideas gradually make their way into the mainstream: through constant exercise of the defining virtue of the modern age, the search for truth.

All of which goes directly to Professor Jason Stanley's third principle of fascism (from "Why Should I Care", above): Attack Truth.

Two hundred & forty five years after our radical Declaration that certain truths are self-evident

the "dangerous" new ideas of our era are still LIBERTY & EQUALITY.

It's helpful to remember the generational process by which these truths have advanced as far as they have already, and to be reminded of our own role in moving them forward as much as we can in our time.

The script takes its name from Copernicus's book because a functioning democracy is only possible when truth is actively pursued & defended.