As I’ve done for every Fourth of July since the 1976 bicentennial, I settled down last week to watch my favorite patriotic movie: “1776.”

The music is as familiar as it is delightful, the actors are perfectly cast, and the finale never fails to bring tears to my eyes.

Those bells — that bell — chiming as each delegate signs the Declaration of Independence creates a crescendo of suspense. It’s not corny to say that for those few seconds, I fall in love again with being an American.

Conservatives are cast as the villains in this show, a necessary conceit to lionize the rebels like John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and my Philly homeboy Ben Franklin.

To make them look honorable, which they were, it was important to make their rivals look dishonorable.

First we had Edward Rutledge, played by the legendary John Cullum, who represented South Carolina. He leads the contingent that refuses to abandon slavery, and forces Jefferson to rewrite the Declaration so it remains licit for the foreseeable future.

But the Rutledge character is at least given a pleasant, almost seductive personality. Except for being a racist, you actually like him.

The conservative villain who really gets the short end of the celluloid stick is John Dickinson, one of the three delegates from Pennsylvania.

He and Franklin are the polar ends of the commonwealth’s approach to independence: Franklin is one of its most passionate advocates while Dickinson is as passionately opposed.

History has been kind to Ben, a man who would never have survived the MeToo movement had it arrived two centuries earlier. His flaws were overlooked, partly because he was a genius and partly because he hated King George.

Poor John Dickinson has been viewed as a collaborator with power, a man so enamored of money and privilege that he was willing to trade freedom for affluence. The movie doesn’t even try and make him appealing. He comes off as smarmy and petulant, uncaring of the pain his neighbors in Massachusetts are suffering and a panderer to the British crown.

But perhaps, without even intending it, the writers of “1776” gave Dickinson and the other conservative delegates the best song in the show: “Cool, Cool Conservative Men.” These lyrics have always stuck with me:

“Come ye cool, cool conservative men / Our like may never ever been seen again

"We have land, cash in hand / self-command, future planned

"Fortune thrives, society survives/ in neatly ordered lives / with well-endowered wives”

Except for the endowered wives part, the rest of it is pretty reasonable.

Owning property, for which you have paid, having the ability to determine your own destiny, with a thriving and ordered society that is the firewall against chaos. What’s wrong with that?

And when accused by John Hancock of only caring about money and says “Fortunately there are not enough men of property in America to determine policy” Dickinson replies:

“Well, perhaps not. But don’t forget that most men with nothing would rather protect the possibility of becoming rich than face the reality of being poor.”

And that’s always been the conservative, free market small government philosophy of conservatives. Give people opportunities to flourish. Don’t over regulate. Don’t engage in class warfare.

Watching poor John Dickinson get out voted on independence made me happy for the country, because I’m not a fan of British cuisine or rugby.

But at some level, I understand what he was getting at. Contrary to recent slanders from those who use terms like MAGA, Trumpster or fascist interchangeably, the conservative movement has been as deeply wedded to freedom and individual autonomy as any party.

When feminists crow about getting the government out of their uteri, the concept of self-determination is a conservative one. The idea of faith can be claimed by both parties, but the Free Exercise and Establishment clauses of the First Amendment were developed to allow Americans to choose their own form of worship, without government interference.

It may seem counterintuitive, but far from providing obstacles to our founding, conservatives made this nation possible by embracing the idea of controlling your own destiny.

So the next time you watch this fantastic movie, consider the possibility that Pennsylvania had two different but equally important patriots in our delegation.

Perhaps history will catch up and we will one day realize that the conservative, who by all accounts had only one well-endowered wife and no extracurriculars on the side, was as noble as the guy who electrified the nation.

Copyright 2024 Christine Flowers