"Without Liberty, We Might As
Well Be Dead"
from "In Defense of Rural
America"
By Ron Ewart, President of the
National Association of Rural
Landowners
and nationally recognized author and
speaker on freedom and property rights issues
Ó Copyright Sunday, November 2, 2014 - All Rights
Reserved
(This is a revsion to an article we wrote in
October of 2008, just before Obama was elected to his first
term)
As published on
Newswithviews, October 29, 2014
This article is also
available on our website at:
PROLOGUE: In a couple of
days Americans who care about their freedom will be faced with one of the
most important choices they will ever make since the American Revolution. If you
sit out this election, the other side will win. If you vote for a third party
candidate, the other side will win. If you write in a candidate, the other side
will win. Conservatives are by no means perfect and are at best, the lesser of
two evils. But at least they generally believe in the founding principles of
freedom. Conservatives believe in individual, unalienable rights as the gift
from their creator. The other side believes in the collective and the absolute
rule of the majority ….. the mob. The following story will give you an idea
where America is headed, unless conservatives like you come out en masse on
November 4th and relegate the other side to obscurity.
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"In the shackle room of the jailhouse, the jailer snaps
the handcuffs around your wrists and attaches them to the chain around your
waste. You tremble in anticipation of what comes next. The jailer then reaches
for the leg irons, and one by one, closes them tightly around your ankles. Your
anxiety rises even further. All through this process, you keep telling the
jailer that you are innocent. Paying no attention to your pleadings, the jailer
impersonally grabs you by the arm and pulls you out the door. You struggle to
walk because the chain connecting the leg irons is very short, forcing you to
shuffle. The people in the hallway and on the walkway outside stare at you with
disdain in their eyes, but you can't see the dread in their hearts. Paralyzing
fear grips you as you approach the steps to the gallows. You balk at the bottom
of the stairs but the jailer pulls on you harder, making you stumble up the
stairs."
"At the top of the stairs, the jailer walks you over to a
trap door and tells you to stand there. He pulls a black hood over your head
and then roughly places the thick hangman's noose around your neck and pulls it
tight. You are now blind and more than just afraid. You are terrified. Each
beat of your rapidly-beating heart reverberates in your head like a loud drum.
You contemplate your last few minutes on Earth and visions of your whole life
parade in a kaleidoscope of images in your mind. In pure anguish, you think
of what will happen to your wife and kids when you are gone. You let out a soft
moan at the thought."
"How is it you find yourself in this situation, when all
you had done was to speak out against the government? How did a once-free
society find itself in a police state where every single unalienable right had
been stripped from the people, one Amendment at a time? What happened to
freedom, liberty and justice, the pursuit of happiness and the promise of our
sacred Constitution? Was this Cuba or Red China? You say to
yourself, '..... what happened to my individual rights? Why didn't
someone fight for them?'"
"As you finally accept your fate, you flinch as the jailer
whispers something in your ear through the hood, but you can't believe what he
is saying. He said he had been given the authority to grant clemency and that
all I would have to do to be saved from the gallows was to denounce freedom and
liberty. Nevertheless, I would still have to wear the handcuffs and leg irons
whenever I was outside my cell, for the rest of my life. Knowing full well what
the consequences of my next act would be, I rose up tall, took a deep breath and
through the hood, told the jailer that without liberty, I might as well be
dead. And then I said, in almost a scream, "Give Me Liberty, Or Give Me
Death."
"To my utter surprise, the crowd around the gallows, who, in
the beginning, looked on me with disgust, started to repeat my statement,
chanting it over and over again. And each time their voices grew louder and
louder. In an act of pure solidarity, somehow triggered by what I said, they
rushed the gallows, tore the guns from the guards and stopped the jailer as he
was reaching for the lever that would open the trap door. I had been saved. I
had been saved by an idea. I had been saved by a concept that is as old as
civilization itself. I had been saved by the irresistible siren call
of freedom."
"A few in the crowd removed the noose around my neck,
lifted the hood off my head and then unlocked my shackles and chains. They led
me down off the gallows platform and lifted me up on their shoulders like a hero
and marched me through the streets, as a sign of protest to the authorities. I
was free at last and free because I took a stand against tyranny, even though it
could have meant my death. The people who witnessed this injustice
finally realized that they would also have to take a stand to protect their own
freedom, if liberty was to prevail for each of them and future
generations."
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Yes, of course, the foregoing was fiction but don't think it
can't happen in America. The story illustrates what can happen in a country when
the leaders are free to do anything they want to do, because the people refused
to hold the leaders accountable.
But most people, faced with the choice of slavery or freedom,
will eventually seek freedom. Americans tore themselves away from the tyranny
of England, at great cost. From that conflict arose the most powerful nation on
Earth, conceived in liberty; a nation built on the recognition of the inviolate
natural rights of man, but an idea that has been left to rust in the history
books....... for now.
If there were only a way for the cry, "Give Me Liberty,
Or Give Me Death" to infect every man, woman and child in America and
get them to rise up and storm the "gallows of politics and
politicians" and tear that "gallows" down with the same vigor and
determination that President Reagan told Russia's Gorbechev to "Tear Down
This Wall." And this they must do before no man is safe from
persecution for speaking out against a government, a government that is Hell
bent on the systematic destruction of a free society.
If comfort and security are more important than freedom and
liberty, then we give our consent to be enslaved. If being entertained is more
important than taking an active interest in what our leaders have done and are
doing, we deserve whatever those leaders inflict upon us. Should we turn our
heads away from our duty to preserve, protect and defend the constitution of the
United States and the freedom and liberty it guarantees, we perpetrate a grave
injustice on ourselves and on our children and grandchildren.
Americans have three choices, if freedom and liberty are to be
preserved; 1) replace the current leaders with new ones that will respect and
defend the Constitution; or 2) in a wholesale, massive act of solidarity,
protest in the spirit of a national Boston Tea Party and take away the "fuel",
our money, that "funds" those leaders who violate their oath to preserve,
protect and defend the Constitution; or lastly, 3) be prepared for a bloody
civil war or revolution. The third choice is fraught with uncertainty and is
the least likely to succeed.
Most of the other side's current slate of mid-term candidates
are clueless as to what America really is and for what it stands. Most of the
local, state and federal legislators continue to lead us into financial oblivion
and abject slavery, based on premises and policies far removed from the mandates
of our constitution. We must ask why it is, throughout our entire civilized
history, we find it necessary to always have to rest control from our leaders by
force, who eventually go out of control? Will we never learn from history, that
the price of liberty still is and always will be, eternal vigilance? We are
315,000,000 strong but are irreparably weakened by irrational division. We
either come together and agree on sound economic and political principles, or we
will disintegrate into chaos and servitude. The bottomless canyon we are about
to fall into is just over the next hill and there will be no rescue attempts,
should we fall.
Before it is too late, we need to hear once again, all across
this once-great land of ours, the rallying cry of our early ancestors that won
our freedom at such a huge sacrifice; "Give Me Liberty, or Give Me
Death." But those carrying this torch and making this cry must know in
detail, just what liberty really means. What the Founding Fathers laid out for
us in our Constitution was indeed, the design, or blueprint if you will, for
individual liberty. (No it is not perfect) However, what we have in
America today is nothing more than a socialist collective. It is the antithesis
of liberty. We have let the powerful, the ideologues and the educated idiots
take over this country, with the help of a government that funds and supports
them. If we want to take back this country and restore it to a Constitutional
Republic, conservatives are going to have to fight for it and not just at the
voting booth.
Never have so many been so complicit in their own demise.
Never has so many been so ignorant of the evil that lurks in the hearts of men
of wealth, influence and power, when left to their own resources and without
being held accountable for their actions by the people. Never have so many been
so guilty of thinking that they can get something for free without paying a
price. And the price they pay is their own enslavement. As was said several
times in the movie "Forrest Gump", "Stupid is As Stupid Does". The question is,
will the history books write America's epitaph with, "here lies the
remains of a once-free, powerful nation, that died a wrenching death because
of just plain stupidity?"
If you don't consider yourself stupid and agree with our
assessment, make the mid-term elections a rallying cry for "Give Me
Liberty, Or Give Me Death." Let all of America hear from you so that
conservatives don't feel like the only thing they hear is the sound of their own
voices echoing back to them from the walls of an empty canyon. If you don't
want to see America die a slow, painful death, then let's build a conservative
army to save it with only one thing in their minds, "Give Me Liberty, Or
Give Me Death."
America is infected with several cancers; the cancers of abuse
of power, corruption, greed and stupidity. Let's cut out these cancers with
good old American courage and intellect. For the last 10 years we have been on
the cutting edge of confronting those cancers with our weekly column and the
highly informative
NOTE: The foregoing
article represents the opinion of the author and is not necessarily shared by
the owners, employees, representatives, or agents of the
publisher.
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Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and
speaker on freedom and property rights issues and author of this weekly column,
"In Defense of Rural America", is the president of the National
Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) (http://www.narlo.org), a non-profit
corporation headquartered in Washington State, an advocate and consultant for
urban and rural landowners. He can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.
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