Checkers is a classic game that is painless for a young child to get the hang of. It’s graced the tables of families from what seems to be as early as 1400 B.C. according to some sources. The red chips versus the black chips leaping over their opponents and getting crowned when successfully reaching the contestants turf is enjoyed repetitively by children and adults alike.

Now visualize a game of checkers that worked hard at instilling important values of freedom and virtue into the heads and hearts of its players through standard play. What an incredible and resourceful idea! Especially as a parent of young American children, this would be a checkered board I would gladly welcome into the grasp of my babes.

Liberty Rings! has taken on the mission to equip Americans to learn, share, and perpetuate the important truths of the principles of liberty laid out by the Founding Fathers into everyday common items. The concept of “apperception” which is defined as the mental process through which a person makes sense of an idea by assimilating it into his or her body of ideas is what Liberty Rings! applies to their product line. They seek to meet their mission by creating unique symbols and pictures each representing one of the twenty-eight principles Dr. W. Cleon Skousen, a top authority on the U.S. Constitution, provides in his book The 5000 Year Leap, and familiarize their customers with these symbols and values by incorporating them into their products.

Liberty Rings! has accomplished instilling these principles into the classic game of checkers titled Glorious Standard of Liberty Checkers. The colorful checkerboard has black spaces and beautifully vivid background colored spaces. The black squares, on which the checkers begin, have the titles of the twenty-eight principles written on them in clear white lettering. For example they read, “Natural Law”, “Unalienable Rights”,
“Separation of Powers” and so forth.

Each checkers piece, likewise, has the symbol that corresponds to the principle on the board. These symbols can be identified and learned about from a small booklet included in the checkers box entitled The Glorious Standard of Liberty Summaries. This short booklet delivers snapshots of the concepts behind each principle as well as quotes from Founding Fathers and from Skousen’s book The 5000 Year Leap.

Our family has benefited tremendously from this checkers board. My children have brought it to game nights with their friends and it often accompanies us on our drive-in movie nights. I love hearing my children say, “Revealed Law just jumped Free-Market!” Being able to explain the core beliefs that our country was founded on as each chip exits the game has provoked incredible teaching moments between us and our children as well as my children and their friends. 

The notion of taking every day items and transforming them into powerful teaching tools is novel and impactful to say the least.

This game could be improved by maintaining the original red and black chip model instead of the all black chips. This would allow for simplicity when browsing over the board in meditation of one’s next advance. The game currently has principles one through fourteen for player one and fifteen through twenty-eight for player two with no real distinction save the icon stickers on the chips.

I greatly encourage patriotic families, and likewise, all American families, to allow this board to have a prominent place in their game closet and induce virtue, principle and truth into the hearts of all who play it. As it says in Liberty Rings! The Glorious Standard of Liberty Summaries, “By thoroughly acknowledging these core principles, a well-informed citizen will be liberated and empowered to contribute to the betterment of a free and prosperous society” (Principle #23 Educated Electorate).

- Product review by Cassie Deputie, The Old Schoolhouse® Magazine, LLC, August, 2018