Americans
Must First Want Freedom
Colonel Dan, SASS Life # 24025
“Yes,
we did produce a near perfect republic, but will they keep it, or will they, in
the enjoyment of plenty, lose the memory of freedom? Material abundance without character is the path of
destruction.” Thomas Jefferson
I once got an email from a highly placed Libertarian Party official
that supported a long-held theory of mine—not all Americans want freedom or even
know what it is! To demand and preserve
freedom, you at least have to know what it is, be dedicated to its principles,
be willing to accept the individual responsibility that comes with it and
ultimately be willing to aggressively defend it when threatened—simply put; you
must first want freedom before you’ll fight for it. If you don’t really want freedom, or even
recognize it, you don’t deserve it and you’ll never miss it when it’s gone.
Everyday
I see indicators that many would rather let someone else make the decisions in life surrendering liberty in
exchange for the illusion of security—even
if that means surrendering
A poll
conducted by the First Amendment Center awhile back tells me that those
questioned don’t know what freedom is nor realize the proper role of government
based on our heritage and think government should be involved in most
everything.
* 20%
said the
* 54%
said the government should rate entertainment programs shown on TV.
* 36%
would support a law that banned public remarks offensive to racial groups.
* 37%
could not name even one of the five freedoms guaranteed
by the First Amendment –the freedom
of religion, speech, the
press, assembly, and to petition the
government for redress of grievances.
In a
similar poll conducted by the Portrait of America:
* Only
36% believe Congress should follow the Constitution. [Does that mean the other 64% believe it’s OK
for Congress to circumvent it?]
* 22% of
respondents would vote against the Constitution while another 27% said they
were not sure whether they would support it. [That’s probably because they’ve
never read it]
* 35% said dropping the Second
Amendment from the Constitution and making personal firearms ownership unlawful
would make the
Expecting
government to provide solutions to life or even thinking that government has
the major role in it is not the way we started out in 1776. This concept however is now perpetuated by government
and willingly accepted by many of the governed who can’t see the dangers so
clear just a few generations ago. This tells
me that many modern Americans don’t have the same solid principles this country
was founded on and cherished by Americans of yesteryear.
At our
country’s birth, we were much more willing to accept the idea of self-sufficiency
and had a very healthy distrust of centralized authority. The founders knew that whatever government
touched, entangling strings were attached which jerked the bricks from
freedoms’ foundation.
Many
victims of American education and prosperity have lost that sense of colonial
traditionalism. They’ve become too
lethargic enjoying their plenty as Jefferson said and don’t want to be
distracted or bothered by anything that doesn’t immediately entertain or
provide more money and comfort…“let government handle that, I can’t be
bothered” and “Why doesn’t the government do something?” seems to be
the attitude of many who are so willing to trade liberty for a mere campaign promise
of security.
Another
reason I think many feel this way is that they just don’t know any better. Their education of our history, rights, and
our original form of government has been lost in a curriculum focused on
perpetuating politically correct illusion over truth and substance. When the modern S’s of sex, self, security and
socialism replaced the traditional R’s of readin’ ‘ritin’ ‘rithmatic’,
responsibility and rights in
American education we started down a very slippery slope.
Many
Americans are now ill-educated in their own culture. They know precious little about such things
as both Revolutions, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights as well as our
concept of limited government. Educational liberalism is now firmly
established as a way of life. In
general, we no longer teach kids to think, we teach them to feel good. We don’t
teach history, we teach PC-based revisionism and we don’t REALLY teach the
Constitution, the Bill of Rights or the responsibility every American has to
defend our homeland at all! Sadly, we
also teach that pride in things uniquely American, even Old Glory, is to be
shunned—after all, such displays of pride might offend a few foreigners.
The
undereducated and ill-informed are always more apt to be dependent and that’s
exactly what big government types want—more people dependent on them for
everything regardless of personal potential.
American
potential for success has always been great.
We’ve become very successful over the past two centuries because of our traditional
values of self-reliance, freedom and the willingness to stand up for and unapologetically
defend our American culture. As a
nation, we’ve been enjoying the fruits of our plenty that originally came to us
because of those founding principles. However, we’re losing the memory of true
freedom in the process and many are afraid to hold our political leaders accountable
even in defending our borders, language and culture. This attitude stems from the disease of
political cowardice that’s running rampant these days. Many so-called leaders would rather give up
our country than risk “offending” potential voters—even those that would eventually
destroy us.
Many
recipients of the real fruit of all that prior sacrifice of past generations have
become exceedingly complacent and are willing to trade traditional values for
the easier, “more enlightened level of existence.” In so doing we’ve sewn the wind and will inevitably
reap the whirlwind. We’re reaping fruit
that the concept of government dependence has sewn and losing the greatest
fruit of all along the way…Freedom.
I’m
afraid the time is quickly coming when young Americans will have lost ALL
memory of real freedom, replacing it with government-subsidized lethargy. But that course won’t last long nor bode well
for any long-term future for this country. History has repeatedly shown that
when a nation becomes too lazy and wrapped up pursuing pleasure, losing its
moral fiber, values, steeled willingness to defend itself and tenacity in holding
their political leaders accountable, it quickly disintegrates…it
self-destructs, as did Rome. When that
happens, the American life will be a hard one…subservience to big government always
is.
My guess is
that just a few generations ago, answers to those same poll questions regarding
the role of government would have been to tell the feds to take a hike. Until
Americans again want freedom badly enough to strongly tell government to butt
out, it will continue to butt-in…with one huge and imposing butt stamped, Property
of the U.S. Government. Trouble is, if
people want to choose big government over liberty and independence, they are
free to do that in
One final
thought. I’d love to see how our
founders would have responded to that same poll wouldn’t you?
Just the
view from my saddle…
Contact
Colonel Dan: coloneldan@bellsouth.net