By Peter Lemiska

The Fourth of July is nearly here, and patriotic Americans across the country will be celebrating our nation’s birthday with fireworks, parades, and family gatherings. Most are deeply proud of our country and sincerely grateful for the freedoms and the boundless opportunities that come with American citizenship.

But some Americans see our country differently. They despise the values that the rest of us cherish — values like free speech, religious freedom, and equal justice under the law. They’ve set out to destroy them and sadly they’ve made substantial progress in recent years.

We’ve seen our free speech suffocated by woke activists and progressives. They label any opinions that contradict theirs as “hate speech” and do their best to silence them. We’ve seen countless speakers driven off college campuses in recent years because a few students and their agitators didn’t want to hear what they had to say. The news and social media have also proven to be invaluable dupes by silencing information they disapprove of. And if that’s not enough, we’ve actually seen efforts by this government to create a new bureaucracy, the Disinformation Governance Board, tasked with regulating free speech.

Lifestyles that were universally rejected by society just a few years ago are welcomed even exalted today. And because Judeo-Christian teachings have always rejected amoral, hedonistic lifestyles, religious freedom and family values — ideals that all Americans once cherished — have also come under fire.

Suddenly, our schools have become breeding grounds for a strange new malady. Gender dysphoria, something never before seen in the classroom, has suddenly become an epidemic. No one should be puzzled by this disturbing new phenomenon. Young children, once blissfully oblivious to carnal matters and protected in the classroom environment, are now being taught by educators to question their sexuality and their own sexual identity. Parents who object are labeled troublemakers or worse, and teachers and government bureaucrats are claiming the right to mold the character of students as they see fit.

And consider our American justice system, once the envy of the world. It’s never been perfect. No system is. But equal justice under the law has always been a hallmark of our republic. That, too, has changed in recent years.

The first real indication of a problem came seven years ago, on July 5, when FBI Director James Comey issued his public statement identifying clear criminal violations by presidential candidate Hillary Clinton. He went on to describe the potential devastating impact they had on national security, but ended with his astonishing conclusion, “No reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case.”

We then learned of the infamous email exchanges between upper-level FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. Most people were first stunned and then outraged to learn that these unelected bureaucrats were scheming to reverse the will of the people in a presidential election.

In their zeal to destroy Trump, nothing was off the table. One senior FBI attorney helped secure surveillance authority by altering evidence presented to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (FISA) Court. He received a slap on the wrist after pleading guilty to the charge.

Much of that is addressed in the Durham investigation, established to look into the irregularities in the 2016 election. One inescapable and deeply troubling conclusion Durham reached was this: “The Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law.” Yet there has been no real accountability.

But much deeper corruption was revealed on another matter.

While the DOJ and FBI were vigorously pursuing Donald Trump, they were ignoring potentially far more serious crimes. In 2019, the FBI came into possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop. It contained substantial evidence of influence peddling to foreign adversaries by Joe Biden and his family. Since then, informants, whistleblowers, additional emails, photos, and congressional investigations have all substantiated the allegations against the Bidens. The malfeasance has become so apparent and the potential impact so significant that it cannot be ignored. Yet still, the DOJ, the FBI, and Biden allies pretend it doesn’t exist. With the symbiotic relationship between Biden and the DOJ well established, they’ve apparently abandoned even the pretense of integrity. They’ve learned to dismiss all questions about it through obfuscation and denials.

Government corruption has no party affiliation. Once it takes hold, it’s nearly impossible to root out. It will eventually impact all citizens. Scholars throughout the ages have recognized the greatest threat to any powerful nation comes from within. Perhaps the earliest warning came more than 2,000 years ago from the Roman statesman Cicero. He wrote, “The enemy is within the gates; it is with our own luxury, our own folly, our own criminality that we have to contend.”

Birthdays are a time of celebration, but on this July 4th, it should also be a time of reflection. At 247 years, America is still a young nation. We, the people will determine her direction and her destiny. The contrast has never been clearer or the choice simpler. Will we continue to embrace those things that made America exceptional, or will we allow hateful and destructive internal forces to bury them?