Publicly declaring, “Give me liberty or give me death”, immortalized Patrick Henry in 1775. He wasn’t speaking abstractly or engaging in hyperbole. Soon thereafter the colonies were at war with Great Britain and over 100,000 lives would take those famous words to their graves. The founders ended their declaration of independence by swearing to each other allegiance guaranteed with, “our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”
They weren’t kidding.
Fast-forward almost 250 years and today, many are trading that liberty for what they believe is safety. In 1820, if you insulted a man’s integrity you might well die in a duel. In 2020, wide-spread self-loathing and an entitlement mentality have emptied the soul of many and hobbled the very concept of the American spirit and with it their sense of honor and integrity.
Libertas, the Roman goddess sculpted as the Statue of Liberty stands in the NY harbor as the national symbol of American freedom, a gift from France in 1886. Today, does she continue to represent hope, or our own despair?
Alexis de Tocqueville, the famous French philosopher who marveled at America’s creation offered a cautionary harbinger that I share with him, even though it was written over 150-years ago.
“I have remained an old and outmoded lover of liberty in a time when everyone desires a master.”
Every day, under the guise of safety, our freedoms are taken away, one by one by those posing as our masters. Police arrest a solitary surfer on a deserted beach in California. The Colorado father, arrested for playing catch in an empty park with his 6-year-old daughter. Parishioners in Ashville, Mississippi, in their cars, windows up, in the church parking lot receiving God’s message, ticketed and disbursed after the lead police officer announces to the pastor that he is, “suspending his rights.” Witnessing a veteran black police officer in Mississippi telling a black pastor that his rights are being suspended is something that should shock the consciousness of a nation.
Those same words, spoken just 60-years ago in Mississippi resulted in people hanging from trees.
The petty tyrant acts harshest and swiftest when near the levers of power. The clever, accomplished autocrat practices incrementalism and mutes his hunger with feigned benevolence. What difference be it a despot, disease or dread, all render those afflicted with fear as dead from the neck up, either in fact or demeanor.
Would be dictators are using these times to tear at the fabric of America. The deadliest virus here is tyranny and freedom the only vaccine. Emma Goodman reminds use, “People have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want and the courage to take.”
We are being lied to and worse, information is being kept from us. The Chinese Communist Party, (CCP) is I believe, behind the creation of this virus. Scientists say it was engineered in a laboratory in order to infect humans. Virologists who study this have determined that the way in which the proteins attach to this virus could not have happened in nature. The CCP cares nothing for human rights or human lives. We need to understand that the CCP is our mortal enemy with designs to strangle us. Until we accept that as fact, they will advance on their plans to overtake us.
Joe Biden is a CCP agent. Via his position as Vice-President, he arranged for his son to be involved with managing billions of Chinese dollars in a deal that defies explanation other than to conclude a pay-to-play arrangement. Biden is terminally compromised by the CCP.
The new, weak, masked and gloved America I’m seeing today doesn’t appear up to the task of maintaining our great heritage. Many Americans seem unengaged or worse, uncaring. Thomas Paine reminds us, “Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigues of supporting it.”
We need to first, abandon China entirely and declare it an enemy-state, prohibiting any and all business dealings with them. China cannot survive without America and we must allow the CCP to rot on the vine so the Chinese people can seize control of their country. The CCP is trying to kill us. We need to return the favor.
After the dust settles enough that we can escape the fog of war mentality that has overwhelmed some, we need to quickly identify those petty tyrants in local and state governments who were so quick to those levers of power and vanquish them from public life as unsuitable for the purposes of freedom. At the highest levels of our national leadership, we need to coalesce around a common theme of the survival of the American story and the demise of the CCP.
I desperately hope that I am wrong when I look at today’s Americans and see weakness. I hope that there are others who share my sense of disgust and disappointment and agree that we have to take back our destiny and determine our own paths. Bob Marley said, “
“Better to die fighting for freedom then be a prisoner all the days of your life.”
This new time in America provides for us a jumping-off point for a revival of what made us great in our inception. James Baldwin said, “Freedom is not something that anybody can be given. Freedom is something people take, and people are as free as they want to be.”
Do enough of us still cherish freedom as much as our founders did?
Let us rededicate ourselves to America and to our freedoms as we maneuver around today’s petty tyrants and a climate of misinformation. We do well remembering Henry David Thoreau’s famous words of inspiration. “I was not born to be forced. I will breathe after my own fashion. Let us see who is the strongest. Disobedience is the true foundation of liberty. The obedient must be slaves.”
We need to take back America now. Napoleon said, “Nothing is more difficult, and therefore more precious, than to be able to decide.” I pray to God for our country, and I pray we make the right decisions, closing with the beautiful words of Lord Byron, who said,
“But words are things, and a small drop of ink,
falling, like dew, upon a thought produces
that which makes thousands, perhaps millions think.”
I hope so.
Perspectives from the INTJ angle 
Good one Bob. I’m trying in a very small way. Dean
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Arrogance, ill informed individualism, paranoia, outright delusion. Much of what you say fits in one or more of these categories. Sorry, Bob but humans are a social species, meaning to survive they require the support, in one or many forms, of others of their society. Go ahead, claim you’re the pure embodiment of “American Exceptionalism”… you can lift yourself up by your own bootstraps morning noon and night…but Bob, some else had to make the boots, or the tools to make the boots, or the leather, or raise the cows to make the leather, or grow the feed for the cows, or build the trucks to deliver the feed, cows, leather and/or boots to their respective destinations. Get over it. America is full of people, not Supermen. To acknowledge, wisely and rationally, our vulnerabilities is not “self loathing” or wishing for a “master”. No, it is being sane, prudent and realistic. All the bluster you can muster will not protect you from an infectious agent. Grow up, grow a spine and accept your mortality and imperfection. Neither your nor my safe full of guns ‘n’ ammo will save us from an invisible enemy. Neither will prayer. Use your head. Stay a safe distance, don’t make it easier for the bug to jump from person to person. Listen to the best experts, not “some scientist somewhere”. Look for a consensus…that’s how science works, and no other system of learning exists that can self correct and make progress like science. And finally, when raising the specter of a so called autocrat or dictator, don’t forget that Cheeto haired asshole in the White House. He’s a menace to the health and well-being of all of us. Why? Because his ego is vastly more important than your life.
Live as free as you safely can, just don’t forget that most everything you possess or value was created in whole or part by someone else. We’re all in the same boat. Need help? Ask a human, not heaven(no one’s home there).
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Below is my response to this person, before I decided to allow his/her comments to be posted. I tried to send this to them directly, but because they have attempted to leave no trail as to their true identity, I post it here so the poster can see this, and so that other readers can see it as well.
Apex107… How brave of you to bluster mightily under cover of anonymity.
First, thanks much for reading, I appreciate your thoughts. That said, you sound like you’re channeling Elizabeth Warren and her famous speech, and ideology, (shared by Obama), “you didn’t build that”, which launched her entry into the presidential primary. We can see how that philosophy played out.
I’m sorry you’re offended by the specter of rugged individualism, as it contrasts apparently with your own standards, but that’s ok. The important part is that I prompted you to action and that is after all the point of writing, changing minds, or at least, getting people to think.
Should you choose to rid yourself of the cloak of invisibility, I’ll allow your comments to be posted, but not unless you have the balls to own it personally, like I do when I write. Deal?
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