The other day a friend and I were having a conversation(to protect the innocent, I’ll call him Steve). Somehow, the conversation drifted off into politics. During our political discussion Steve said to me “why do you even care about politics? Why even try to stop this stuff? There’s nothing you can do. You should just live your life and go with the flow.” I told him “that’s exactly why I care. I just want to live my life. I don’t want the government involved in every aspect of my life. Who are they to tell me how to live my life? Who are they to tell me what to do with my money? … I care because if everyone had this “give in” attitude we would already be living under tyranny.”
The thought of Steve’s “just give in because there’s nothing you can do about it” attitude has been swirling around in my head for a while now. It’s shameful that any American’s feel this way. It is infuriating that any man would prefer a life of uninterrupted subservience to government authority over one of turmoil in defense of their own rights and that of their descendant’s. Yet it seems that many American’s have this attitude. Our founding fathers recognized this unfortunate trait that many human beings possess. They recognized that people would often prefer to do nothing rather than stand in their own defense. They warned us against this attitude.
I have compiled a list of quotes from the founding fathers warning us against quietly submitting to the will of men in power:
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
-Samuel Adams
“Shame on the men who can court exemption from present trouble and expense at the price of their own posterity’s liberty!”
-Samuel Adams
“…it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation?”
-Patrick Henry
“…all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”
-The Declaration of Independence
“a long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom.”
-Thomas Paine, Common Sense
“Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless. A single zealot may commence persecutor, and better men be his victims. It can never be too often repeated, that the time for fixing every essential right on a legal basis is while our rulers are honest, and ourselves united. From the conclusion of this war we shall be going down hill. It will not then be necessary to resort every moment to the people for support. They will be forgotten, therefore, and their rights disregarded. They will forget themselves, but in the sole faculty of making money, and will never think of uniting to effect a due respect for their rights. The shackles, therefore, which shall not be knocked off at the conclusion of this war, will remain on us long, will be made heavier and heavier, till our rights shall revive or expire in a convulsion.”
-Thomas Jefferson, Notes on the state of Virginia, Query 17
All of these quotes have particular significance in present day America. They exemplify our founding fathers’ predictions on the temperament of the people towards government rule. The founders’s predictions were true. The American federal government has become a centralized conglomerate involved in nearly every facet of American life. At every turn, the federal government is there waiting to regulate, take, and redistribute anything they can. For many Americans, centralized government intervention is all they have ever known. A great number of these individuals are so accustomed to this that it has, as Thomas Paine puts it, “a superficial appearance of being right.”
What so many people fail to recognize is that the federal government has no right to be so deeply entrenched in our personal lives. The level of power that the federal government now exercises over the people was never intended by our founders. The federal government is in place to defend our rights and uphold the constitution. They are not here to redistribute our wealth, indoctrinate our children, or create rights and entitlements through the use of perverse and unconstitutional legislation; Yet they do all of these things, and the American people tolerate it. From time to time the people will rise up in descent. Much like a tide the government may recede for a time, but the tide always rises again, eroding the shore line further and further.
If I could make a plea to the American people it would be this:
“Do not be complacent; complacency can only serve for you to live in blissful ignorance until the day you come to realize that you are no longer an individual, but rather just a number that is ordered to live in a way that complies with a centralized government’s policies and procedures.
Stand in defense of your liberties. Tyrants will not wait until you are ready to exercise their tyranny. It is not your right to defend freedom, it is your duty.
Be proud of your country. It is the last beacon of freedom amidst a rising sea of tyranny. If America falls, what hope of freedom does mankind have?”
I leave you with one last appropriate quote, not from our founders, but from Martin Luther King, Jr.
“The hottest places in hell are reserved for those who in a period of moral crises maintain their neutrality…there comes a time when silence is betrayal.”