“Give me Liberty, or give me Death!”
Those were the famous words dispelled in authority by the great Patrick Henry to King George of Britain; an American patriot of the ages submerged in the fight for liberty and a Constitutional Republic. Indeed, the Revolutionary War set the cornerstone for what would eventually become the “Shining City on a Hill”. But what granted the United States the ability to uphold this mantle of being “A Shining City on a Hill”?
Since the authoring of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the establishing of the rule of law in the Constitution in 1787, the collective idea upon which our great nation was founded was based upon an idea as opposed to a structure.
Rather, in the words of President Thomas Jefferson, we would be a society where “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness”. Those mighty words written in iron ink in the Declaration of Independence established a mindset predicated upon the greatest unalienable right ever to be discovered by man: Liberty.
In the face of tyranny, the voices of liberty and individual sovereignty against oppressive government have been what have silenced the onslaughts and have elevated America to its rightful place as the leader of the free world. Oh the precious Stars and Stripes that continue to wave in the winds of glory, constantly reminding its defenders of the cost of this liberty!
This Liberty, paid for in blood, raised up the principle that no man should endeavor to be subjected to any worldly authority greater than the authority of his convictions; that he should live freely solely at the behest of his own will and not by the whims of a dictatorial government.
Tyranny is consumed only by its hunger for power and prestige, willing to crush anyone that stands up to its injustices. This inarguable truth is what makes Liberty in every sense “The Citizen’s Ally” in halting the conquest of Tyranny.
When citizens unite under a common motivation for “freedom," the government becomes the servant. Whereas the people are empowered to become fearless leaders.
This institution of liberty— evangelized in our U.S. Constitution and emphasized in our Bill of Rights— becomes a mighty sword in the stone by which not even the great monarch King Arthur himself can remove.
Throughout the 239 years we have endured as a nation, we have outlasted every attempt of tyranny to destroy the free society and the American dream. Whether this attempt is the Revolutionary War itself, the War of 1812, the Civil War, World War 1, World War 2, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the Iraq War, the 9/11 Al Qaeda attacks or the rise of terrorism itself— the United States has held strong to its liberty. The US has clung to the stone that forever sheathes its sword.
However much we have been victorious against the threat of tyranny, it always rears its putrid face in one way or another. As we enter into this post-modern era we have raised up a generation that has forgotten the importance of this liberty and are consumed with indoctrinating it into the subordinative nuances of socialism. We are in the midst of a generation where individuals forget their sovereignty to sell their freedoms in the name of achieving a level of glamorized security.
In the sobering words of Benjamin Franklin, “Those would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety”.
The Constitution was not designed to be a form of law that dictated the people, but rather a sacred document that dictated limited power to the authorities that executes its provisions in a “checked and balanced” system of government.
It is these provisions and the sacred rights that supersede legislation that have come under dire threat over the past years. Government has become more powerful than it was ever intended to be, and elected officials have acquired success in dividing the people against themselves. They have amassed support by weakening the bastions of freedom that balance their powers; now the lures of socialism loom over the brink and are waiting to deliver its fatal blow.
Oh that our times reflect the inadequate efforts to educate our generation on the importance of freedom! It is not biased, it is not discriminatory, it is not exclusive and it is not the idea of a political party! Rather, in the words of Benjamin Franklin, “Freedom is not a gift bestowed upon us by other men, but a right that belongs to us by the laws of God and nature.”
In essence, unalienable liberty rises above the bondage of any executive action, legislation, judicial opinion, oligarchic provision or monarchial decree. It is a fundamental right given to all men by our Creator, and indeed no law made by the fallible and corruptible methods of men can abridge its strength. In this society, we have taken to submitting the lion to its tamer.
In the ultimate reality, freedom can only die, and indeed the Sword can only be removed from its Stone, if the voices of liberty cease to speak and the patriot refuses to take up arms. For our nation has become more divided than it has ever been before. And in the shadows of the Capitol, the halls of the Supreme Court and on the steps of the White House, the inner workings of Tyranny are moving to strip every fiber of liberty away from its people. As President John Adams once so eloquently said, “The jaws of power are always open to devour, and her arm is always stretched out, if possible, to destroy the freedom of thinking, speaking, and writing.”
The moral convictions of unalienable Liberty that once drove men like Patrick Henry to pride sacred Liberty over that of his own life; that drove the men of the Union to storm down the hills of Gettysburg; that drove Old Glory’s young men onto the shores of Normandy; that united our country together under the leadership of Martin Luther King Jr. during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and that held our heads high when the World Trade Center came crashing down have now been decimated into the annals of history and have instead been replaced by Tyranny’s narratives in progressive ideologies and in the process removing any recognition of individual liberty.
Indeed, it is only liberty that unites us all young and old, man and woman, black and white, religion and philosophy that makes us an impregnable force against the forces of evil that would see us enslaved to their will. In this country we live by a cardinal ethic put forth by Evelyn Beatrice Hall, that although we may not agree with what each other may have to say, we will fight to the death for our rights to speak. This principle under Liberty has united us all, and any attempt to dismantle it in our philosophy in greed for wealth of power should be cast out into the darkness. As Samuel Adams once asserted, “If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
What about enslavement? Can it coexist with freedom? During the years of slavery, President Abraham Lincoln once declared “Near eighty years ago we began by declaring that all men are created equal; but now from that beginning we have run down to the other declaration, that for SOME men to enslave OTHERS is a ‘sacred right of self-government.’ These principles cannot stand together. They are as opposite as God and mammon; and whoever holds to the one, must despise the other.” For this reason, any attempt by any sitting government to enslave its people to its will must be seen as the ultimate offense against freedom. In essence, such opposites cannot indeed coexist with one another.
In the archives of our history, only freedom has kept the Sword in the Stone and has kept Tyranny at bay. Despite any effort to remove it over the centuries, the infallibility of unalienable liberty has remained strong under the watchful eye of Almighty God himself.
We now are in the fight for the soul of this nation and the decisions we make as a people in the future will decide our country’s course. Do we leave it vulnerable to Tyranny’s venom, or do we once again dust off our war boots and raise the battle cry of freedom? The choice is ours, and for this patriot, my liberty will only cease with my death. When liberty is threatened, it is the citizen that rises and takes up the mantle of “patriot” to uphold and defend the Constitution and to preserve the freedom that was fought for on the battle plains of the soldier.
During these uncertain times we will decide the course of this nation and it is once again time to raise Old Glory high above the billowing smoke and to declare to the world that we are free and no longer will we be enslaved! As it says famously in Galatians 5:1”
“For freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm therefore, and do not submit again to the yoke of slavery.”
It is now time to rise patriots; Republican, Democrat and Independent alike and raise your voices in unity and in the splendor of the fire of liberty that shall forever burn within the depths of our hearts!
Let us march forth in freedom and in defense of the Sword in the Stone. In liberty, my comrades, we shall so fight and raise Old Glory high!
As the late actor Charlton Heston once said, “Every time our country stands in the path of danger, an instinct seems to summon her finest first; those who truly understand her. When freedom shivers in the cold shadow of true peril, its always the patriots who first hear the call. When loss of liberty is looming as it is now, the siren sounds first in the hearts of freedom’s vanguard. The smoke in the air of our Concord bridges and Pearl Harbors is always smelled first by the farmers, who come from their simple homes to find the fire and fight! For they know that sacred stuff resides in that wooden stock and blued steel. Something that gives the most common man the most uncommon of freedoms. When ordinary hands can possess such an extraordinary instrument that symbolizes the full measure of human dignity and liberty. That’s why those five words issue an irresistible call to us all, and we must… So as we set out this year to defeat the divisive forces that would take freedom away, I want to say those fighting words, for everyone within the sound of my voice; to hear and to heed!...‘From My Cold Dead Hands!”
