Now that it’s over, I can ask, “How was your July?” I have a certain affection for the month due to the fireworks at the beginning and my birthday near the end. But this one lacked the usual oomph! A pervasive ennui hung in the air along with the miasmic humidity that wouldn’t quit. From the flags at half-mast to the flooding rains and record temps, July was a month to forget, at least in my neck of Connecticut.

It began with the flags—our nation’s proud banner, Old Glory, lowered in the self-styled “Constitution State” as we prepared to celebrate America’s independence. This cast a pall on the usual bombast of the holiday, the unofficial start of summer. Driving along the main streets of Connecticut, one couldn’t help but feel deflated by the huge flags set at half-mast outside Wal-Mart, Stop & Shop, and the rows of car dealerships, as though the nation had expired in some fashion, or didn’t have the energy to celebrate its founding.

And why were the flags lowered for nearly two weeks? Not for a brave soldier or heroic firefighter or police officer. Rather, it was to observe the death of a turncoat Republican congressman, senator, and one-term governor, Lowell Weicker Jr., who is best remembered for imposing the state’s income tax in 1991, after promising not to do so in his campaign. He ran on the self-serving “A Connecticut Party” line—like your local AA plumber or auto mechanic of Yellow Pages days, he added “A” to the short-lived party’s name so it would be listed first on the ballot. In response to the tax betrayal and other misguided policies, famed Connecticut resident William F. Buckley popularized the saying “Does Lowell Weicker make you sick?”—which helped keep the governor from winning a second term.

Of course, Weicker is loved by Democrats to this day for being the first Republican senator to turn on Nixon over Watergate, for which he earned the tag “Maverick,” the somewhat immodest title of his autobiography. So it was very much in character when Governor Ned Lamont, a man of few values and little accomplishment, sought to raise himself on the shoulders of his predecessor by decreeing flags be flown at half-mast for a full ten days until Weicker’s funeral.

With all due respect for the dead, I couldn’t help applying Buckley’s bumper-sticker question to our current governor. “Does Ned Lamont make you sick?”

With this as background and looking to distract from the dreary days of our present republic, I decided to look elsewhere for edification. I cracked open one of those coffee-table books we all receive at Christmas from relatives who don’t know what to get but know our general interests. The Quotable Founding Fathers, published in 2004, had sat on my shelf for more than a few years, just waiting to be pulled down on this particularly depressing July 4th. I found it a treasure trove of hope and inspiration for today, when so many who are running our government seem to despise our country’s founding values and traditions.

Listen:

“Yesterday the greatest question was decided which was ever debated in America; and a greater perhaps never was, nor will be, decided upon men. A resolution was passed without one dissenting colony, that these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent states.”

That was John Adams writing to his beloved wife Abigail on July 3, 1776, reporting on the decision that gave us the Declaration of Independence.

Here is George Washington on matters of politics and character: “Nothing but harmony, honesty, industry, and frugality are necessary to make us a great and happy people,” he wrote to Lafayette in 1789. That same year, in his First Inaugural address, Washington said, “The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty and the destiny of the republican model of government are justly considered, perhaps as deeply, as finally staked on the experiment intrusted to the hands of the American people.”

These were great men engaging great and timeless issues “in the course of human events” at a precarious and pivotal time of history, with wisdom and wit that were equal to the tasks at hand. On every page of this book, you get the sense that the speakers weighed well the dangers they faced against the moral necessity of war and came down on the side of “liberty or death.”

Today, as the American founding is diminished or even discounted as racist at worst or serving a small aristocracy at best, we need to hear from our Founding Fathers and be reminded that the preservation of our republic is in our hands. Those who signed the Declaration of Independence, pledging their lives, liberty and sacred honor, really stood for the good of humanity as they forged a form of government that is, for all its faults, both at its founding and to this day, “the last best hope of earth.”