1945

1945 matters in the book chiefly as the date when New Hampshire adopted “Live Free or Die” as its official motto. The year gives a formal state setting to a phrase associated with uncompromising independence, while the surrounding argument turns that rhetoric into a test of what freedom means under political and economic power.

Adoption and Meaning

1945 marks New Hampshire’s adoption of the motto, which the book describes as possibly the best known of all state mottos. Its force lies in an assertive independence associated with American political philosophy and in its contrast with the milder sentiments found in other state mottos. The phrase therefore appears not merely as civic decoration but as a compressed declaration that freedom can be valued above continued life under domination.

Revolutionary Lineage

The motto’s history reaches back to General John Stark, identified as New Hampshire’s most famous soldier of the American Revolutionary War. On July 31, 1809, poor health prevented Stark from attending an anniversary reunion of the Battle of Bennington, so he sent his toast by letter: “Live free or die: Death is not the worst of evils.” The later official adoption in 1945 thus transformed a military and revolutionary sentiment into a continuing state emblem.

The book also stresses that Stark may not have originated the wording. “Vivre Libre ou Mourir” (“Live free or die”) was a popular motto of the French Revolution, and the politician Antoine Barnave had it engraved on his buttons. This possible French source complicates any simple story of uniquely American invention: the phrase belongs to a wider revolutionary vocabulary in which liberty is defined through resistance to subordination.

Freedom, Government, and Slavery

Within the book’s larger political argument, 1945’s motto is set against the claim that the right-wing disease associated with the Confederacy persists economically, politically, and culturally through predatory free-market capitalism. The text describes the Ownership Class as the rich elite, the 1 percent, and argues that its power depends on making the 99 percent serve its interests. The contrast between the motto’s language of freedom and the book’s description of capitalist employment as a modern form of slavery creates a deliberate tension: a society may celebrate liberty symbolically while leaving people materially dependent on employers presented as masters and owners.

That tension is extended through the book’s treatment of the American Civil War. It presents the conflict as a struggle over the nature of capitalism and over whether slavery could be accepted as a mechanism for maximizing profit. In this framework, “Live Free or Die” cannot be separated from the question of whose freedom is being defended. The text argues that a non-aggression principle invoked by right wingers can coexist with the treatment of human beings as property, making the rhetoric of unrestricted liberty compatible with domination rather than opposed to it.

Political Myth and Historical Recurrence

The motto also participates in the book’s recurring use of historical analogy. The Trump insurgency is described as “The Confederacy: The Sequel,” a return to far-right conservative rule based on racism, white supremacy, and ultra-plutocracy; it is also compared to Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged made real. The book’s argument is not that the year 1945 itself causes these later developments, but that the symbolic language of freedom can be repeatedly recruited by movements whose effects, in the author’s account, strengthen elite power.

Against that recurrence, the text invokes Abraham Lincoln’s opposition to the Confederacy and calls for a new Lincoln who would end the Confederacy as a mental entity as well as a physical one. It also invokes Thomas Jefferson’s language about refreshing the tree of liberty with the blood of patriots and tyrants, using revolutionary sacrifice as part of a wider political mythology. In the book’s final movement, the rise of a senior member of the 1 percent to the White House is presented as a historical reversal that may provoke a worldwide revolution. The motto inherited by New Hampshire in 1945 consequently becomes part of a larger vocabulary of crisis: freedom is not treated as a settled possession, but as a demand whose meaning is continually contested by the powers claiming to represent it.