A Young Patriot’s Manifesto
It has been over a year since I have posted, mia culpa. I have been diligently at work in Law School. However, I did have time enough to give the following address to the Norfolk Virginia Tax Day "Tea Party." Feel free to comment.
Generational theft. I’m sure you all think I will be speaking to the fact that our country is incurring debt at a rate once thought unimaginable outside the Soviet Union; a rate that amounts to approximately 10% of our gross domestic product per year. I’ll bet you expect me to decry this tithe to government as a disease that can only be cured by Liberty and shrinking of the Beast that is the modern Federal government. However, this spending is simply a symptom of the greater disease.
The pathology that plagues our nation is one that germinated in the academy, strengthened itself under the codling wing of the media, has evidenced itself for the last 60 years as a seemingly benign malignancy, and has now, having gone undiagnosed out of both fear and apathy, become a threat to our very existence as a free people.
The disease is statism, the belief that all problems that one faces can be cured by government. Tantamount to a religion, our children in state-run schools learn to revere and are indoctrinated to have faith in its sacraments daily, its liturgical mass is celebrated in the halls of congress, its praises are sung by the mass media and voting population alike.
The state has become, in the minds of many Americans, a panacea, a cure-all. We have opted, in the face of daunting free will and an even more harrowing possibility of failure, to cede our God-given choice to those awaiting with baited breathe to retake the reigns of our will that they lost at Lexington and Concord. They know they “can,” because they have. They “hope” that our disrespect for history and our distain for absolute truth will guide us into their awaiting trap. They know it is only a matter of time before the “change” that has been the dream of the few comes to fruition.
Some of you may be thinking, “I never consented to any such thing,” but the fact that we stand here today for the reasons we do evidences the tacit fact that none of us have done enough. We have been too sedated in front a flickering box, too insulated by our things and our egos to notice that our nation has been stolen right from beneath our noses.
The greatest generation fought to end tyranny abroad and yet allowed a “new deal” that introduced us all to it here. The my father’s generation brokered the deal to exchange autonomy for equality in the hopes of a “great society,” and are just now awaking to the result of their folly. The true pity resulting from these facts, is that my generation is diametrically split as to whether autonomy is a good thing or not. They have been so indoctrinated (at the tax payer’s expense I might add) that they question whether the freedom to choose their own destiny is even a good thing. They debate as to whether the ability, to choose their own schools, to choose their own health care, to choose how they spend their own money, to choose their own leaders, to choose what they say, what they think, how they worship their God is at all beneficial.
They have not been taught history, so they are not aware of the oppression, death, destruction, heartache, and bloodshed that has resulted every time a people has given up their freedom in the name of ease. The Romans had circuses and bread. Napoleon took espoused liberte and egalite and wove a net of tyranny. The Soviets promised land and bread. In turn, others now offer “hope” and “change.” Sadly, my generation has become so self-absorbed that such unpleasant realities are rebuffed only with old standby, “whatever.”
We have become so focused on the differences amongst us, and so wary of emotionally stunting each other, that we have become what can only be described as analytically retarded. Our children are no longer taught how to think syllogistically, but are rather taught how to view injustice as cultural peculiarity, that freedom is oppression, that 2+2 can equal 5 if that is what you feel, or any other Orwellian doublespeak one can imagine.
Only in modern times has the ability to argue a salient point through concrete fact been rejected so vehemently by those who rely solely upon how they feel. For example, it is no longer glaringly apparent that increased governmental spending and lower taxes cannot co-exist, or that the larger and more activist the government becomes the less freedom the people who live under it are afforded, or that once you make poverty comfortable the less motivation there is to break the bonds of it. You may feel this unfortunate, but I posit it is as deliberate. It makes good sense to keep the new generation of worker bees as dronelike as possible.
So, I wake up each morning say my prayers thanking God for another day’s worth of breath as a citizen of the last great hope of man on Earth. I then flip on the news and watch as my birthright as an American is being slowly and methodically sold without my consent for the proverbial bowl of beans. As I watch, I vacillate in my sentiment as to whether I am witnessing the death throws of a republic or that same republic ripening for the rebirth of true Liberty in our time.
I harken back to my time as a younger man reading Alexis Tocqueville’s Democracy in America, noting in the margins the phrase “is this now?” by a passage where Tocqueville observed that the greatest danger to our then fledgling republic was the tendency of Americans to be “so enamored of equality that they would rather be equal in slavery than unequal in freedom,” that “the American Republic will endure until the day Congress discovers that it can bribe the public with the public's money,” and that “if despotism came to be established in the democratic nations of our day, it would have other characteristics:” than those that have preceded it, “it would be more extensive and milder, and it would degrade men without tormenting them.”
Degradation is exactly what we face today as a free people. Degradation of our rights both to our property and the produce of our industry, degradation of our currency, degradation of our sovereignty, and, worst of all, degradation of our humanity.
We are illegally forced to pay an unconstitutional unaportioned income tax that was enacted to pay interest collected to a private bank that lends us our own currency. We are insecure in the ownership of our homes as the high court of the land has allowed them to be taken to increase further the tax revenue. The Fed prints our money at such a staggering rate that it boggles the mind; all so our pandering so-called leaders can fraudulently incur debt only so that they may continue to sit high atop their inscrutable perch.
We are tagged, licensed, poked and prodded like little more than cattle. We are told how we can apply our industry, how we must raise and educate our children, where we may proclaim the name of our God, what words we may use, and what thoughts we may have. Our choice is removed from us in the name of convenience, our rights are removed from us in the name security, our fortune is taken from us in the name of fairness. In the eyes of those who represent us (and I use that term loosely) we are no longer citizens of a free republic, but rather simply a source of revenue.
That assertion may jar some, however, its evidence is born out every time the American people are silenced. Every time we flood the halls of congress with calls decrying the out of control spending and are ignored, every time we demand a wall be built and it is not, every time we publicly declare our morals and are told they are unconstitutional; we are silenced. To be free men, we must be treated as such, rather we are treated as serfs who’s only utility lie in our ability to finance the agenda of the few.
Men some 230 years ago felt the same injustice. These were great and learned men. Men of status and wealth, but also of conviction and courage. These men were willing to sacrifice their lands, their titles, their fortunes, and their lives if need be in the name of an idea, a dream dreamt since the dawn of civilization. They wrote,
“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. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.”
They were willing to stand not only for themselves, but their posterity as well. They were willing to be labeled radicals. They were willing to stand and perhaps die as men rather than bend their knees and live as anything less. They went on to write,
“when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”
I stand here today not advocating revolution at arms, but rather a revolution within the minds of all Americans; a revitalization of the founding principles of this great nation. A new reverence for Liberty, and renaissance of the boldness that defined that generation.
Our forefathers imagined a nation of entrepreneurs, of self sufficient dreamers who would risk the frightening specter of the unknown in hopes of its possible reward. A nation where one could take such a risk secure in the knowledge that, should one fail, one’s countrymen, not the state, would be there to dust him off and help us all move forward towards the future. That such brothers would do so in a spirit of Christian charity and not as a result of governmental coercion and theft.
Later on in his work Tocqueville watched in awe, something that to us seems rather mundane. He marveled at American ingenuity and described how a group of men, when facing a felled tree in their path, simply moved the tree and went about their business. At what did he marvel? The fact that none of the men sought approval or permission or even help.
That same ingenuity and boldness, a characteristic that has defined America for over two centuries, is one that is being leached from us all, as more and more of our resources and resolve are being replaced with dependency upon governmental initiatives. Tocqueville observed that the greatness of America lie in our insistence on blazing new trails, not slouching down the primrose path. We must insist, not just today, but every day, upon our right to blaze our own trail. In short, we must insist on our liberty. We must insist upon the ability to fail and to excel.
I have watched two generations of men in my family blaze their own trails through their own blood and sweat. My grandfather, a man who came to this country not speaking the language, who more often than not ate lard sandwiches as his school lunch, helped vanquish tyrrany on two oceans, built his own home, and put two children through college. My father, a Vietnam vet, a teamster, a man I watched nod off at the dinner table many times – too exhausted even chew – but nevertheless put me through school and was never late on his mortgage payment.
Don’t get me wrong, and begin to think that I pity them or even look upon them as the exception to the rule. We have all watched much the same from our parents or grandparents. Rather, I look upon them with envy. I envy them for the freedom and pride they have felt in accomplishing the goals they set out to and have achieved through sheer will and prayer. I envy them for the nation in which they lived; which they served. I envy the fact that they could dream, that they could work in good faith for that which they dreamt. I envy them that they could actually own their homes, that they could defend them, they could make money and save it, they could raise their children without fear.
The world my generation and I face is one in which none of those things are guaranteed, and they become less and less likely with every passing day. The truly palpable irony is that I and my children and my children’s children will pay for the privilege of never having to make a choice. I will pay for my nation’s funeral. In effect, I will finance my own enslavement.
Our only chance to avoid that fate is to remind the politicians in D.C. that their privilege to both wield power and to control the purse strings are indeed limited and enumerated. The Constitution still has effect, despite how passé that assertion may have become. We must stand and say with a united voice that the nineteen powers granted the Federal government are the entirety of their influence, and declare with vehemence and dedication to cause that we will no longer allow a document which every man and woman in service to our country has sworn to uphold, be bastardized by those few who feel themselves above it. We must remind them that no man is above the law, and we the people are the ones who define those laws.
Thomas Aquinas said that an unjust law is no law at all. I do not propose Anarchy, but rather a truly representative republic. We the people are the only barrier to tyranny, and we cannot allow our complacency to usurp our call to duty.
Generational theft. We have not merely been robbed of our treasure, but also our respect. Both the respect due from those that govern us, but respect for ourselves as well. We have ceded our chance to live the American dream by default, and are now duty-bound, if in nothing else than in reverence to those who have sacrificed their dreams so that we may live out ours, to oppose this usurpation of power.
At this point, we have no choice but to stand together and warn those who would trample our liberties, “Don’t tread on me.” In this season of resurrection and rebirth, we must declare our insistence upon resurrecting that which seems all but dead, we must declare our rebirth as free men and women. Men and women allowed the opportunity, no the blessing, of having a say in our futures, of having a say in how our money is spent and how our nation is governed. We must remind those who would abscond with our rights as Americans that those who would seek to govern us, do so only upon our consent. That we have not consented to the theft that they have perpetrated, and that we will no longer stand idly by and simply endure their overreaching power.
So, back to my aforementioned vacillating sentiments. Today is a moment which will represent a turning point in the history of our republic. It will either be the moment that the people of this country opened their eyes and refused beyond threat, coercion, pandering, or bribe to close them again, or it will be the moment when we looked upon the world as it really is, when we saw the injustice being commited upon us, and, overwhelmed with the enormity of it all, sold our liberty once and for all. However, I must remind you as another great once did, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And…that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
We will define our times, and my generation will be forced to face our futures either way. Today can be a beginning or an end. We can do more, or give up the right to complain. I for one will stand today, will stand tomorrow. For, without liberty, life ends and simple existence begins. Yes I will stand, and I beg of you to continue to stand as well. And when we have done all to stand we will all stand therefore.
