Celebrating July Fourth, we should reflect on Patrick Henry’s call, “Give me liberty or give me death,” and simultaneously on our growing Orwellian legacy in Ukraine. The irreducible essence must forever be our own security. But Ukraine is not a charity case. Russia long ago declared the destruction of Ukraine as pivotal to its long-articulated goal of ensuring America’s demise. Why? How? Who remembers that “Make America Great Again” was Ronald Reagan’s 1980 campaign slogan? Western media and a priesthood of experts choked over his epochal “Evil Empire” speech before the National Association of Evangelicals in Orlando, Florida. But Reagan stood fast and understood the centrality of UkraineUkraine’s renewal of its independence in 1991 ensured the dissolution of the Soviet Union three weeks later. Slogan became reality. It halted America’s strategic decline and ended the Cold War losses of 100,000 of our finest and an estimated $27 trillion in today’s dollars. It restored America to global primacy not seen since World War II. What’s that worth? What ally, then or since, had such an epochal consequence for our security? Yet the Pentagon’s press secretary was promoted after having declared herself “proud to be an enemy” of Ukraine. Maybe the fall of the Evil Empire was a non-event? What exactly did we think were the implications of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s declaration that the Soviet collapse was “the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century”? We didn’t. We yawned.