Ipswich, Massachusetts is a bucolic, stereotypical New England town. It sits on Cape Ann, home to well-known neighbors Salem and Gloucester. Ipswich softshell clams are featured on menus around the globe, and history buffs cherish the oldest stone arch bridge in the country and the largest number of houses built prior to 1700 to be found in any American town.
Ipswich’s population of approximately 13,000 is governed via a Selectboard that oversees a mayor, and through the longstanding town meeting process.
For many years the population was extremely heterogeneous. You’d find direct descendants of Mayflower royalty and the Commonwealth’s earliest governors and leaders side by side at the local donut shop with clammers who were born in the local hospital and might never have ventured the 40 miles to Boston.
And there was mutual respect.
Ipswich comfortably and graciously accommodated members of all economic classes - from fantastically wealthy members of the nearby Myopia Hunt Club to those living in local subsidized housing. Three Catholic (Italian, Polish, and French Canadian), Greek Orthodox, Episcopal, Presbyterian, United Church of Christ, Lutheran, Christian Scientist, Russian Orthodox, Baptist, and Methodist churches ministered to the population including many immigrants who arrived to work in the thriving stocking mills located along the Ipswich River. There were even sections of town where different nationalities congregated, socialized, and held festivals. “Pole Alley,” an area of factory-built housing for Polish immigrants, is still the home of the local Polish Legion of American Veterans post.
The 2009 celebrations of Ipswich’s 375th anniversary drew large crowds who valued the history, tradition, stories, and sacrifices that made the town possible. There was shared joy and gratefulness.
Ipswich has changed though, and not necessarily for the better. The elite - those who believe they hold the proper education, enlightened global mindset, awareness of important issues and priorities - have gradually insinuated themselves into positions on local boards and committees. With energy and determination fueled by their zealous ideology, they occupy roles while others try to just live their lives and care for their families. These zealots have worked incrementally to wrest control of the diversity that powered Ipswich’s success and replace it with homogeneity in thought and regime of regulatory oppression.
It’s become a town, located in a blue state, where it’s no longer “safe” to speak up lest your neighbors shun you or refuse to patronize local businesses that aren’t fully supportive of the vocal, prevalent ideologies that inform the administrative “state.”
It’s sad. It betrays Ipswich’s history and traditions. And it’s uncomfortable for those who don’t hew to the officially sanctioned ideologies.
And of course, it’s not that unusual. Nearby towns ban leafblowers and residents of nearby Lexington, the site of the first true battle of the revolution, work tirelessly to impinge individual liberties enshrined under the 2nd Amendment.
But to complete the important context, there’s one other fact that’s critical for you to know…
Ipswich - Birthplace of American Independence
Ipswich, Massachusetts markets itself as the Birthplace of American Independence.
The legendary and heroic opposition by the people and leaders of Ipswich to a tax imposed by the Crown in 1687 is commemorated in the seal of the town of Ipswich, which bears the motto, “The Birthplace of American Independence 1687.” This act of resistance has been called ‘the foundation of American Democracy,’ and was the beginning of a series of events which eighty-eight years later culminated in the Revolutionary War.
So while nearby communities like Salem might be remembered for their witch hysteria, Gloucester for its fishing tradition, Peabody for its leather industry, and Newburyport for its role as a clipper ship port enabling global ocean trade, Ipswich has planted its flag in the turf of independence and liberty from tyranny.
An Eroding Ethos
Comfort and progress, along with the generational diffusion of intense recollections gradually diminished the action-oriented aspect of this legacy, and it evolved into a fun academic distinction.
Over the course of the last twenty years, however, the erosion of this ethos of independence and irreverence toward authority has accelerated, and now the marker on Town Hill that memorializes Ipswich residents’ courageous role in the founding of our amazing Republic is just a cynical, taunting reminder of how far the town has drifted in the opposite direction.
The COVID19 situation and the manifold attendant abuses of power by autocratic administrators highlighted the drift.
Time to Course Correct
In early 2021 I decided that periodic letters to the paper weren’t enough, and that more visible and energetic efforts were required. So I undertook two specific actions.
First was organizing a March for Liberty. Recognizing the anniversary of the Boston Massacre - the indiscriminate oppression of residents of various backgrounds and races by a tyrannical power - patriots gathered at the site of the “Birthplace of American Independence” marker to demand freedom from regulatory oppression.
I also undertook to place multiple citizen’s petition articles on our Annual Town Meeting Warrant. Five articles which I advanced addressed topics including:
Increasing the Town Meeting quorum to make the outcomes more representative
Ending profligacy in spending and failure to fund our municipal employee pension obligations adequately
Providing publicly available recordings and transcripts of public meetings
Prohibiting the use of misrepresented climate change data to justify future Town Meeting articles
Requiring the key town officials, board, and committee members to publicly affirm their support for the Bill of Rights
I believed, as did citizens who were signatories to my petitions and voted for the articles at the meeting, that each was an appropriate step.
I also assumed that the fifth; the affirmation of the Bill of Rights would be a lay-up. That it was so non-controversial and would be so embarrassing for someone to publicly oppose seemed obvious. And that it would pass unanimously at the meeting after receiving the full endorsement of all the boards and committees that weigh in in advance assured. (A recording of the presentation and the Town Meeting Warrant Article are both included below for those who want more detail.)
I was mistaken on both counts, and on May 15th, 2021, the administrative management of the Town of Ipswich, and the small number of residents remaining in the fourth hour of the town meeting revealed the true state of decay in our culture.
The Radical Extremist Rot Runs Deep - Even Where Tradition Should Support Fealty to Our Founding Principles
Although what follows likely reads as a litany of woes, that’s not the intention.
My goal in presenting this narrative is specific.
To offer a cautionary word to everyone who assumes it’s safe to silently persevere.
It’s not.
Even the most fundamental facts which many are confident unify us at a meta-level can no longer safely be assumed. And keeping ones head down, working, sleeping, caring for family and occasionally grabbing a moment for recreation and worship is precisely the disengagement that the Marxists rely on to conquer our republic before we’re aware.
Each of us must recognize the malignancy that’s rapidly metastasizing - often among our neighbors - and speak directly and unashamedly against the ideology. In some cases the people themselves are dastardly. More often they’re simply deluded or compelled by fear of any variance from the accepted orthodoxy. So we must take an approach of loving the sinner while hating the sin - expressly condemning vile ideologies in every manifestation.
The Debate and the Outcome - The Bill of Rights is a “Gotcha”
On May 15th the final tally was decisive. The Article was voted down by a count of 8 in favor to 113 opposed. (Of those 113, approximately 20-25 were members of boards and committees - including one who rose to speak against it. So roughly 10% of citizens who remained at the meeting supported the article.)
What’s even more informative is the process leading up to it.
Ipswich’s Town Bylaws which, along with the laws of the Commonwealth of MA, outline the process for handling citizen petition articles. It includes an advance review and recommendation “for” or “against” of the Citizen’s Petitions by the Select Board, Finance Committee, and School Committee. Those meetings were held in March and April.
The local paper reported on the Select Board’s discussion.
What’s not to like about the Bill of Rights? Nothing, it seems. But being asked to reaffirm your support for it feels like a “gotcha,” said selectperson Willy Whitmore.
…Article 31 would have the town “instruct public officials to publicly and irrevocably affirm the inviolable nature of the U.S. Constitution, including the Bill of Rights.”
“Ipswich has played an important role in the founding and establishment of the United States — mankind’s greatest experiment in liberty and freedom. We should recognize and celebrate that role,” Marsh wrote in his summary.
“If I oppose this, I don’t want to sound like I don’t support the Bill of Rights,” selectperson Nishan Mootafian said at the meeting.
“I support the Bill of Rights, but I don’t understand the point” of the article, Whitmore agreed.
“It puts you in a corner. I’m not sure how you get out of that corner,” Mootafian said.
Whitmore said the article dealt with a national issue that is being brought to the local level and that it felt like a “gotcha moment.”
The board voted 4-0 on Monday not to recommend the article to town meeting. Selectperson Kerry Mackin was absent. Meanwhile, chair Linda Alexson said she agreed with the board, “clarifying that I do support the Bill of Rights but I don’t support this article.”
Unreported was the objection vocalized by one member that the article noted the “Creator” as the origin of these rights.
The Finance Committee more aggressively focused on the reference to Creator. One member suggested he’d support the article if that word was removed. The chairwoman of the committee strongly objected to the word. Speciously citing a faulty interpretation of “separation of church and state” she went on to respond, when asked from whence natural rights are derived, that it is from fellow citizens.
“Gotcha”
“Backed into a corner by the Bill of Rights”
“Natural Rights come from our fellow citizens.”
Imagine.
Elected local officials in the purported “Birthplace of American Independence” feeling so comfortable in their ignorance of our animating principles that they would freely and publicly articulate this ignorance.
A couple of days prior to the meeting the Town Moderator imperiously announced that he was rejecting most of the slides I had prepared and told me to be thankful that I could use any.
And finally, as he introduced the article at the meeting, the Town Moderator suddenly announced that the article wouldn’t be enforceable even if it were to pass.
In Hindsight
I have no regrets for the time and effort invested. Even if the vote had been unanimous against I would have had none.
The incredibly powerful insight I gained, and the one I’ve tried to share here, is the fact that the powerful core ideals which once bound us soundly even as we squabbled about details no longer provide that fundamental grounding.
The shared American experience and mindset are being consigned to the trash heap of history, at least in corners of the country where radical liberal extremism is ascendent.
Therefore rather than focus on distractions like the absurdities of whether blacks, like whites, can be racist, or the number of genders in nature, we must recognize those for what they are. Misdirections.
And we must focus on articulating, and affirming in every action and word, the core ideals that originally animated Ipswich residents as they birthed the American Independence movement, and later those brave souls who persevered and then with Divine inspiration, created the most enlightened structure of self-government in the history of mankind.
Resources
Warrant Article