How America Won Against Impossible Odds and Why Freedom Still Demands Courage

On this special Independence Day eve broadcast, July 3, 2024, Kim Monson welcomes historian Scott Powell and sixth-generation farmer Trent Loos to examine the spiritual and civic foundations of American freedom. Powell traces the improbable patriot victory in the Revolutionary War while Loos reports on a modern-day push to reclaim self-governance in Illinois, drawing sharp parallels between the founding generation’s sacrifices and the challenges of 2024.

The Improbable Triumph of the American Revolution

Start listening at 1:27 – Hour 1

Scott Powell, author of Rediscovering America, lays out how the Continental Army faced almost certain defeat against the most powerful military on earth. Washington’s under-trained, under-equipped forces numbered barely half the British Army, and the Continental Navy fielded only 25 converted merchant ships against 270 British warships. Powell recounts Washington’s back-to-back surprise victories at Trenton and Princeton in late 1776, when the junior-most American officer rallied retreating troops and inspired local townspeople to grab their guns and join the fight.

The story of Washington’s divine protection anchors Powell’s argument. At age 22, during the Battle of Monongahela in the French and Indian War, Washington had two horses shot from under him and took four bullets through his coat without suffering a scratch. That experience gave Washington an unshakable conviction that God protected him, a faith he carried through six years of leading from the front on horseback. Powell stresses that America is the only nation in human history founded entirely on the principle that God-given rights cannot be taken by any earthly authority, and that 5% of the world’s population has generated 94% of global creativity and 25% of its wealth.

“America is the only nation in human history that was completely born of noble and deeply spiritual principles that all men are created equal, that they have been given God-given rights that can’t be taken away by any man or earthly authority.”

Scott Powell, Author of Rediscovering America

New Illinois and the Fight Against State-Level Tyranny

Start listening at 59:36 – Hour 2

Trent Loos reports from the road in Missouri on a growing initiative to form a new state of Illinois. Forty-four of Illinois’s 102 counties have adopted resolutions and begun drafting a new state constitution, citing corruption from Cook County and Springfield. The movement gained momentum after Governor Pritzker signed a gun law so extreme that 92 county sheriffs publicly refused to enforce it, calling it unconstitutional. Loos draws a direct line from the founding generation’s grievances against the British crown to rural Illinois counties demanding representation free from Chicago’s political machine.

Loos weaves together a remarkable chain of historical connections, from visiting Hancock County, named after the Declaration’s first signer, to encountering Tamworth hogs developed by British Prime Minister Robert Peel, the man who repealed the corn laws that had starved Ireland. The real lesson, Loos argues, is that tyrants never create anything new. They recycle the same tactics of controlling food, restricting movement, and suppressing dissent, whether it was the British crown in 1847, Stalin in 1920, or COVID lockdowns in 2020. Both Loos and Monson point to the Denver ballot initiative to shut down Superior Farm and ban fur sales as the latest example of government overreach attacking property rights and local food sources.

“This is why we do what we do. We do it because it has nothing to do with us. It has everything to do with this daughter that’s riding with me in the pickup and the two that I have at home and the thousand kids that are there that are oblivious to what’s actually going on in the world.”

Trent Loos, Sixth-Generation Farmer and Rancher