September 24, 2005
Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free. - Ronald Reagan
AMERICA, THE BEAUTIFUL - But do we really appreciate America?
We all know the basics of our history, but we remember the details as if remembering that the sun rises in the east and sets in the west. Or, in other words, we give little contemplation to who we are and what we represent.
"Freedom" has become a passe term, almost cliche, in the telling and retelling of America's heritage.
"Heritage," you ask? "What heritage?" That kind of reaction is too prevalent today from our youth and even our old-timers who have fallen for the historical revisionism of Hollywood. Our youth is educated in school not in civics and political science, but in condom-use, gay and lesbian studies, and how to get abortions without their parents knowing.
Does anyone else see a sickness in this?
While the children are learning all these wonderful things, please remember not to insert any morality into the education and most certainly do not mention the g-word - you know, G-o-d.
What is the reality of America? State-imposed religion was so insultng that thousands emigrated from the European countries as colonists. When you are told how to believe and worship, changing from ruler to ruler, you can imagine that true believers had a hard time stomaching the force-fed, phony religion of King and country. American colonists gathered in small groups to literally build a civilization from the ground up. But remember, they were colonists. The British colonies organized on colonial precedence built from over 400 years of tradition. The American colonists organized a colonial legislature, as per their right and duty, as structured in the British documents - the Magna Carta of 1215, the Petition of Right of 1628, and the Bill of Rights of 1689. What the American colonists did was to establish a typical British colony and they expected full colonial rights that were well-established.
The Stamp Act of 1765 passed in England and imposed on the colonies violated basic colonial rights under British law.
Let me say something slightly off topic: The Europeans were glad to see the emigrants go. The religious idealists were a thorn in the side of the European intellectuals who desired to remove freedom as a goal of the individual and rather make it a gift of the state. This is important. Europe in the 1700s looked at American colonists and the colonies as repulsive gatherings of backward people. Hint: they still feel that way, today.
Back to the Stamp Act. The colonists didn't like it - it violated basic law and colonial rights. The colonial legislatures issued a letter of protest, to little avail. What is of interest is that the American colonists were never afforded basic British rights in self-rule. Only the colonial legislatures could pass tax law, or approve English taxes.
A little more on colonial establishments. Most were organized by immigrant region or religious belief. As these enclaves grew, power was very reluctantly granted to organized regional governments and legislatures. Remember, these people were burned on their previous governments in Europe and Britain. Only under extreme restriction and caution did the colonists form loose groupings of towns within a territory, and only for the benefit of colonial legal protection this would give them. The idea of even a state was so repulsive that the development of statehood was severely retarded during the birth of this country.
We know what happens with the continuing British encroachments. American colonists finally decide to declare independence so that they could continue to govern themselves as they believed was their British constitutional right. The British constitution? It's a "living" constitution - which means it can change with the times as the government sees fit. When you hear American liberals saying we need to be constantly reinterpreting the constitution as a living document, remember that our fathers in the 1700s declared independence to escape exactly that kind of "living document" and the governmental abuses it represented.
Quick quiz: What was the precipitative event that made independence a forgone conclusion? Taxes! Take a reality check, here. Would any of you pick up arms today to fight for freedom because of a tax? Your American forefathers did. Capital gains go up? Pick up a gun! Somehow, I can't imagine today's Americans doing so. But they did in the 1700s.
What were the realities of the American Revolution? Well, first, it wasn't a revolution. Compare the French revolution where the populace was fed up with the existing government and desired to remake everything into something else. The American colonists did no such thing. They declared a separation, not a change. And then they died for it. Imagine your loved ones picking up a gun over taxes and facing the world's most powerful army. The British empire was the most powerful entity in the world at that time, and we picked a fight with it. Imagine your loved ones facing that army and dying. That's what we did for years. We lost battle after battle but continued to fight and die. Over taxes. Would you be as willing? Their courage cannot be questioned.
But we finally won. America was born in blood. We fought the worlds most powerful army and won. For what? Taxes? Yes and no. We fought for freedom. It might have begun with taxes, but we picked up those guns and died with embarrassing ease because we wanted to be FREE.
That freedom we died for, we bled for, we killed for is present in no other country in this world. If you've read my Liberals and Nazis sections, you'll understand the philosophical differences between America and the rest of the world. Our forefathers embraced God and the Aristotelian philosophy of individualism and truth. In no other country on this planet has that ideaology survived. Only here. Is it any wonder that all the other countries of the world envy our success and hate us at the same time?
During the Civil War, which was not a civil war, the two sides fought not over slavery, as historical revisionism will want you to believe, but over the rights of the states over the reach of the federal government. Did you know that the New York ratification of the Constitution included the right to secede if the federal government became too oppressive? So did the ratifications of Virginia and Rhode Island. Seccession was a constitutional right afforded by the Tenth Amendment - any power not delegated to the federal government by the states, and not prohibited to the states by the constitution, remains a right of the states or the people. The Alien and Sedition Acts, the Kentucky Resolutions of 1798, the Missouri Compromise in 1820, the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854, the "protective tariffs" of the 1850 that were the federal government's direct attempts to force the south into federal submission only served to broaden the growing abuse of federal power. With Lincoln's ascension and stated goal of a stronger federal government and subsequent refusal to allow the dissolution of the union, is it any wonder that the South seceded?
Was it really about slavery? Union general Grant didn't think so. He even said that if the war had been over slavery, he would have taken off his union uniform and joined the other side. The War for Southern Independence was a result of a federal government that reached beyond the scope of the Constitution. The sovereignty of the states no longer mattered, and if you remember the founding of this country, you'll see that American colonists fought for their own self-rule away from a powerful central government. Lincoln's election spelled doom for the original intent of the founding fathers.
I may be a republican today, but I am deeply ashamed of the abuses the republican party dealt to America by the radical expansion of federal authority without that power being granted by the states. The south had a right, as a collection of sovereign states, to secede. They fought for the same principles our founders did, and it wasn't slavery.
That's why I put the Confederate flag underneath our American one. The Confederates were right, but they lost. America lost the main ingredient of its freedom - states rights - when the south lost. But it's history, now. The point is that we have always fought for freedom. Freedom is what makes America so special - and those aren't just cheap words. America is special because we value the individual - not the group, or the government. With freedom of the individual, America has grown to become the dominant force on the globe.
The governments of the world hate individual freedom. American liberals are constantly promoting the state over the individual - socialism. Why would we ever want the same disease that makes the rest of the world stagnant and backwards?
I'm an American and I'm proud to say so. My heritage is freedom and I'll die for it, if need be. The red, white and blue is a beautiful thing and I am so very privileged to be an American citizen.
Tradition tells of a chime that changed the world on July 8, 1776, with the Liberty Bell ringing out from the tower of Independence Hall summoning citizens to hear the first public reading of the Declaration of Independence by Colonel John Nixon.