Over a million Americans have died in wars over our nearly two-hundred-and-fifty-year history.
Considering the cultural and political unrest we are dealing with currently, it may be appropriate to ask just what it was that they died to accomplish and whether we are, after all their sacrifice, at risk of losing it all.
Are we now giving away that which cost them so dearly?
The world of 1776 was largely a world of monarchies. King George, like most other kings, considered himself the “owner,” or at minimum, the master of the empire. The preface to the names of ships, for example, HMS or “His Majesty’s Ship” was not mere words!
It is important to understand that the American Revolution was, shall I say, revolutionary? It proposed an idea that very few had ever imagined, and certainly no one had ever really attempted on such a scale. The Founders envisioned a country where each individual largely controlled his own life by secure ownership of property and sovereignty over the product of his own labors.
The ancient Greek and Roman republics, while resembling the American Republic in some respects, gave no significant rights to common citizens! And the French Revolution, coming only a few years after ours, was not of the same substance at all.
Even in modern times the fundamental elements of monarchy continue to flourish in many countries outside the West. They have only been given a fresh coat of paint and a new name. They are now called “socialist” or “The People’s Republic” or some other misleading appellation.
Fidel Castro and Mao could quite accurately be called kings. Monarchs would claim to rule for the “good of the people,” and of course, so do the communist dictators, to the same totalitarian ends.
Monarchies and socialist dictatorships may have numerous distinctions, but in the end, one is not so unlike the other. In fact, it may be that ancient monarchies were less brutal than their modern socialist iterations. I do not recollect ancient kings slaughtering hundreds of millions of people as the 20th Century socialist thugs did!
Benjamin Franklin, when asked what the Congress had provided for the Americans, reportedly replied, “a republic, ma’am, if you can keep it!”
He apparently understood that such a government was fragile and would face many threats. Be sure of this, having freed themselves from the tyranny of a monarchy, at great cost, the Founders would certainly not have welcomed the same bondage under a different name.
No doubt they would have opposed the wokeness and oppression now offered by our socialist politicians just as strongly as they did King George.
When Joe Biden commented about Georgia gubernatorial candidate, Stacy Abrams, that if the Democrat party had a few more like her they could “rule the world,” he exposed his own, and his Democrat Party’s tyrannical ambitions.
America’s “rulers” are THE PEOPLE not the politicians, and our Constitution was specifically designed to be a barrier against such threats!
The American Revolution freed the people from those who claimed “divine right” to rule from above, and placed the governing authority in the hands of the citizens, with the Constitution and legislatively instituted laws binding the hands of those who were elected to be “public servants.” Power was to reside in the Constitution and the people, not the individuals chosen to do the people’s business.
Kings and queens, seeing themselves as “sovereigns,” would tax and spend according to their own personal whims. The wealth of the nation was under their purview, and thus to be distributed according to “royal” will. As we hear the thoughts of politicians in Chicago, Springfield, and Washington D.C., do we not hear the same sentiments?
Do they not use the same terms? Do they not tax and spend as if the money, that is, the product of OUR labors, belongs to them? Are they not actually guilty of the very thing they accuse capitalists of doing, which is exploiting workers for their own ends?
Their excuse that they use the dollars for better purposes than the capitalists do is both arrogant and specious. It is no secret that much of the wealth confiscated from citizens via taxation is wasted through carelessness and corruption, and another significant amount goes to buy votes. The amount that finally reaches appropriate targets is a very small percentage of the total.
It is easy to spend and waste other people’s money!
Because entrepreneurs and capitalists understand how difficult it is to create wealth, they are far more likely to spend it wisely.
Inherent in the proposition that the monarch owns everything is the corollary that the people own and control little to nothing and are thus powerless to resist the monarch! Is this not precisely what we see in socialism, and what we are experiencing in America?
They are so cocky as to tell us, “You will own nothing and be happy!” Sure! Everyone is “happy” when the options are to be “happy” or be punished! Reminiscent of the sardonic “pirate” posters tourists find in Caribbean shops, “The beatings will continue until the moral improves.”
The only difference being that our would-be socialist masters are serious!
Again, there is no debate as to whether the Founders would knuckle under to a socialist government. They would not, and neither would the million-plus Americans who have died since then to keep us free. Over 400,000 Americans died in WWII specifically to prevent a socialist takeover of America!
But socialists are not beating at the gates, they own the gates! They dominate in such a way as to control the narrative and instill hatred in naïve youth for all the things that made America good and great. They have, as the Bible warned, turned that which is virtuous into wickedness, and that which is evil into virtue.
And they intimidate the weak into submission.
While the majority of Americans hold onto at least a vestige of traditional Christian and family values, anyone in the public eye who speaks out in favor of those values will be eviscerated in the Media. Such was the plight of Harrison Butker, kicker for the Kansas City Chiefs, who spoke vital truths in his commencement address at St. Benedicts University recently, supporting historical family and Christian ideals.
Many were calling for his firing!
Fundamental to liberty, and essential to keeping tyranny at bay, is the ability to speak one’s mind without reprisal. But tyranny is tyranny regardless of the name over the door. Government officials denying, or seeking to deny one the ability to work, own property, and speak one’s mind is evil whether it be a monarch, a socialist “comrade,” or an arbiter of political correctness.
No valid argument can be made for silencing personal opinions, regardless of how “offensive” those opinions might appear. Be sure of this, the idea that child sexual predators be locked up is offensive to child predators! Child abuse has become so mainline that many politicians now align themselves with the predators who demand that removing perfectly healthy body parts from young boys and girls be normalized!
No! Our veterans, who died to preserve America, did not die for these evils! They did not die for the right to slay babies in the womb. They did not die to protect sexual perversions of every type. And they did not die to allow politicians to spend the nation into poverty.
If we are honest, we will admit that what those great men and women died for is messy at times. For example, under the Constitution’s provision that citizens be considered innocent until proven guilty, some evils occur.
Some guilty people will escape justice! Critics say that too many evils occur, and demand limiting individual liberties to correct for it. However, the Constitution does not permit too much freedom, some people just have too little character!
It is ironic that Christianity, which many hate because they perceive it as restrictive, birthed the most free nation in history. America was never a theocracy, so it is an error to call it a “Christian Nation,” but it is correct to note the connection. Christ stated that “if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed,“ (John 8:36 NKJV) and, “you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free,” (John 8:32 NKJV).
God is THE AUTHOR of liberty, which accounts for the visceral hatred of liberty expressed by the atheistic Leftists, who comprise the socialistic groups seeking to destroy the country.
Are there only two options: too much liberty or none whatsoever? I think not!
Such limited options are offered only by those who would enslave us. It was for the middle ground, that balance of liberty and responsibility that the Founders envisioned and sacrificed for, and our veterans died to preserve.
Setting aside other issues, a republic is like a machine, there being certain ingredients essential for its efficient operation. There must be a generally accepted consensus regarding values, a respect for the law, and an informed and disciplined citizenry. We face an existential threat from those who are undermining these principles.
Are we not now called upon to stand with those who defended them in the past in order to renew the vision, educate the young, and resist the enemies?
To lose our liberties would be a double loss: no longer being free to pursue their dreams, aspirations, and ambitions, or to develop one’s giftedness to its fullest is soul crushing, and to voluntarily give up what so many paid “the last full measure of devotion” to secure, would be the ultimate manifestation of disrespect and distain for their sacrifice.
Whether God will bring about a “new birth of freedom” as Abraham Lincoln hoped in his “Gettysburg Address,” or whether the immorality and godlessness the nation has sown have reached the point of harvest, God alone knows. But those who have cast their souls into the hands of God for His keeping, having rejected the sin and trusted the blood of the Redeemer, will find peace today, and joy for eternity.
But for this moment in time, let us remember that over one million Americans have died to prevent our enslavement, and that is the reason for Memorial Day. As we witness the Progressives transforming America into a socialistic state, we must ask again, “what did our soldiers die for?”
It was not for this!
They did not die so that children could be made victims of powerful and perverted abusers. They did not die so that a fraction of the citizens could intimidate the majority into silence and submission. They did not die so that the government could subject future generations to poverty and hopelessness.
They gave their lives for liberty, not license. They fought for justice not repression. They died to liberate truth and to silence lies. They paid the ultimate price to make us free, and we must not allow the oppressors to succeed in robbing us and our children of that freedom!
We must not allow their deaths to have been in vain!
