We are losing our freedoms real fast:
One of the more significant things purported to have been said by Benjamin Franklin involved an exchange he had with someone who asked him, “Doctor, what have we got? A republic or a monarchy?” He is said to have responded this way: “A republic, if you can keep it.”
Whether these are the actual words of his can be a matter of debate. But the truth that lies behind them is not debateable. No free nation is guaranteed permanency. Republics and democracies and other forms of limited government always have to be worked at and carefully defended.
They are continuously being threatened from within and without. And while the threats of external enemies are always an issue, the real problem may be the threats from internal decay, exhaustion and collapse. History makes this all too clear. One famous discussion about the fate of democracies by the English writer and historian Lord Macaulay (1800-1859) puts it this way:
From bondage to spiritual faith.
From faith to great courage.
From courage to liberty.
From liberty to abundance.
From abundance to complacency.
From complacency to selfishness.
From selfishness to apathy.
From apathy to dependency.
And from dependency back again into bondage.
Simply forgetting our own past is a big part of this. We sure see this clearly with the ancient Israelites. Despite their miraculous beginning as a nation with the Exodus, they soon enough forgot their past and forgot their God. As a result they kept getting into trouble, climaxing in the period of captivity in foreign lands.
Modern-day Australians, Brits, Americans and others are in the same boat. We are too forgetful about our past and too indifferent to the things that matter. We simply assume we will always be free and prosperous people in free and prosperous nations. Sadly, we are just dreaming here.
This is especially the case with Americans. How many of them know anything about their own glorious past? How many of them know anything about things like the American Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and the US Constitution? Very few I suspect. And that historical forgetfulness, coupled with an emphasis on self and on pleasure, will lead to America’s downfall.
A few years ago Eric Metaxas wrote an important book called If You Can Keep It: The Forgotten Promise of American Liberty (Viking, 2016). He of course used the Franklin story as the springboard for his discussion. Early on in his book he discusses a church candle that he recalls at Easter services when he was a child, and he says this:
What the founders gave us is like that flame. There is something holy about it, but once they passed it on to us, their job was done. They could only hope and pray that we would guard it and tend it and keep it, so that it wouldn’t go out. That flame was passed from them to others, who passed it to others, who passed it to others – and it is at this moment in history in our hands, yours and mine. The burden of “keeping it,” as Franklin said, is excruciatingly important. And here is the main reason for that: Once it goes out, it goes out forever. If the flame given to us goes out, we will not only lose the light ourselves forever but will also lose the ability to pass it along to all those others who are waiting for it. That is what makes keeping it so important and the thought of letting it go out so terrible and tragic.
One ominous example of how we can lose it all
Just earlier today I penned yet another article on the really frightening prospects of mandatory Rona vaccines and vaccine passports. Anyone who loves freedom and is concerned about preserving our basic human rights should be gravely concerned about where we are heading with this. See my earlier piece here: https://billmuehlenberg.com/2021/05/19/vaxx-passport-madness-is-getting-out-of-control/
I am not alone in sounding the alarm here. Just today Mat Staver, Founder and Chairman of the US-based Liberty Counsel sent out an email warning about these very matters. His letter begins as follows:
We warned about tracing, tracking and health passports last year. Now, multiple governments and industries are pushing these digital passports. The goal is to require this passport to work, shop, travel–or even to worship. This is absolutely shocking. Even if you have already been vaccinated, or plan to be, we cannot give up our freedom to travel, work, dine, shop or worship. Our freedom is under the fiercest attack I have ever seen in America.
Dr. Leana Wen, former Baltimore city health commissioner and president emeritus of Planned Parenthood, appeared on CNN to say, “We have a very narrow window to tie reopening policy to vaccination status because otherwise if everything is reopened, then what is the ‘carrot’ going to be? How are we going to incentivize people to actually get the vaccine?”
This CNN contributor said, “Make it clear to them that the vaccine is the ticket back to pre-pandemic life. The window to do that is really narrowing. … [Because states are reopening, the government] needs to come out a lot bolder and say, ‘If you’re vaccinated, you can do all these things. Here’s all these freedoms that you have.’ Because otherwise people are going to go out and enjoy these freedoms anyway.”
We must not give up our freedom so easily.
Already, VAERS [the US government Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reports as of May 7, 192,954 adverse reactions, 4,057 deaths, 11,572 hospitalizations, 25,603 urgent care visits, 32,803 office visits, 9,175 severe allergic reactions, 1,262 heart attacks, 940 anaphylaxis cases, 939 thrombocytopenia/low platelets and 275 miscarriages. This injection MUST remain a free choice.
The push for a digital health passport is much broader than COVID. This agenda has been in the works long before COVID….
His concerns are spot on. Everywhere in the West we see our ruling classes, along with woke capitalists and others pushing these things. Coercion is the name of the game, no matter how much they might speak of things being voluntary.
Indeed, here’s the scoop: when politicians and leaders try to tell you that the Rona vaxx will not be mandatory, but they insist that states and businesses can refuse customers, deny basic services, and prevent things like travel, education and entry into venues, guess what: we DO have mandatory vaccinations!
Whether it is a carrot or stick approach, it is all about COERCION. Free choice is effectively being denied to everyone who has any legitimate concerns about the vaccines. Those who comply will be rewarded. Those who dare to say no will be punished.
Little did many of us know a decade or two ago that the main means by which tyranny would replace freedom and democracy in the West would be via a public health crisis with draconian overreach by governments to ‘keep us safe’.
But that makes perfect sense. Dictators have always run with a crisis – or made one up – in order to instil fear in the population and further consolidate power and control. It works like a charm every time. The masses of sheeple will happily go right along with it all.
As F. A. Hayek put it some decades ago: “‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded – and once they are suspended it is not difficult for anyone who has assumed such emergency powers to see to it that the emergency will persist.”
Another quote purported to be by Benjamin Franklin puts it this way: “Those who give up liberty for security deserve neither.” That is exactly where we are at today. Panic over a virus has reduced most folks to a flock of sheep who will suspend all critical and moral judgment and simply go along with whatever their overlords tell them to do.
Who will resist Big Brother statism and stand up for liberty and basic human rights? I sure will.
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