The True Enemy of Freedom

posted at 5:19 pm on July 2, 2009 by Doctor Zero
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Independence Day arrives with news that the Iranian revolution might not be over. As we celebrate our national birthday, we should remember that the revolution is never over. The American revolution is entering its two hundred and thirty third year. Not one of those years has passed without our liberty standing in jeopardy.

Too many of us live under the dangerous illusion that our freedom was secured forever with victory in the four great and terrible wars we fought against monarchy, slavery, fascism, and communism. Too many of us look at the rest of the world with the equally dangerous misconception that its dictatorships and tyrannies all tremble on the edge of collapse, as the human race moves inexorably forward toward universal liberty. The sober truth is that our American Revolution was a relatively unique event, not the first in a cascade of dominoes leading to a free and democratic planet. Our Founding Fathers were among the few revolutionaries who managed to do better than replace one set of tyrants with another. Their War of Independence was one of the few that ended in victory. We should do a better job of teaching our children the full story of that war, and the breathtaking courage our Founders displayed as they faced an unbeatable enemy, in the name of an impossible dream.

Some of us have waited our whole lives for the oppressed people of other nations to follow the American example… only to have our hearts broken, as their impossible dreams died in killing fields and torture chambers. These men and women, who longed to be our brothers and sisters in freedom, had courage to match that of George Washington or Thomas Jefferson. We have learned that it takes more than a few people with courage to overthrow tyranny. Our revolution produced a democracy that has endured for over two centuries. Most of the others ended with tyrants billing the families of their victims for the bullets that were used to murder them.

At home, Americans have watched an astonishing amount of their freedom stolen during the past six months. We have been told the thieves were acting in our own best interests, and intend to compensate us for everything they have taken. It is our national shame that too many of us have gone along with this quietly, or actively supported it. If you talk with one of these supporters, or watch them interviewed on television, you can make out the true shape of freedom’s immortal enemy. There is a thread that binds the growing dependency class of our increasingly decadent republic with the captive populations of the world’s dungeon states. The emotion that motivates many Americans to cash in their own liberty, not to mention the property and liberty of others, is not greed or indolence. It’s not even hatred, although the venom of class and racial warfare can make them feel more righteous, and less helpless.

The true enemy of freedom is fear.

It’s fear that makes people abandon the last, faded pretense of democracy, at the insistence of thugs and secret police. The lonely souls that yearn for freedom in a dictatorship do so in silence, because they fear that if they speak up, there will be more enforcers bearing down on them, than friends standing beside them. This is the terrible silence that America’s voice was meant to shatter. We know that we cannot liberate the rest of the world with military force. Our greatest weapon against tyranny is our courage. We know that freedom is not a special privilege reserved for people fortunate enough to have been born in the United States. We know it’s not a peculiar quirk of Western culture, impractical or meaningless to the people of other nations. We know from the writings of Russian dissidents that the strong support of the American president helped them endure prison cells and exile camps. We should never hesitate to roar our defiance, and contempt, in the faces of dictators. They have no more right to rule the people of Iran, Honduras, Cuba, or Venezuela than they did to rule Germany, Russia, or France. The language of freedom cannot be properly spoken by appeasers, manipulators, or international socialists. It is the speech of eagles and lions.

It is also fear that robs people of the confidence they need to compete in a system that offers the opportunity for success, rather than the guarantee of subsistence. Confused and frightened by the complexities of medicine or finance, they are willing to let smooth salesmen talk them out of their right to control their own health care, or manage their own debt. Convinced they can’t prosper in a market rigged against them, they are willing to endorse the seizure of property from those they perceive as the wealthy winners of that crooked game. They’re not afraid of losing their freedoms, because they regard most of them as dusty old antiques, which can be pawned for easy money. What good is the “right” to choose between specialists in a discipline you don’t pretend to understand, when measured against “free” health care? How can a decent person quibble about surrendering some economic freedom, in order to save the planet from destruction?

To those of us who oppose the Total State currently under construction, it seems foolish to hand over so much power to a ruling class noted for its personal greed, lust for power, and lack of self-control. Those who support the designs of the ruling class might respond that both politicians and captains of industry might be crooks, but at least they can vote the politicians out of office. The one thing that makes them fear the State less than capitalism is the comforting delusion that they exercise some measure of control over the State. They retain just enough faith in American exceptionalism to believe our socialist experiment won’t end in the same bitter, barren wasteland as all the others.

This Fourth of July, remember that our fireworks are echoes of the cannons and muskets that won the greatest victory for freedom the world has ever seen. It has been a tragically lonely victory, and the freedom it secured is a prize whose value can only be measured, and preserved, by the brave. It takes courage to respect the freedoms of others, when it’s so easy to vote for politicians who promise to “spread the wealth around.” It takes spirit to build the future, when it’s so easy to saddle it with a mountain of debt, and let a generation unborn figure out how to pay the bills. Light up the sky in celebration of those who pledged their lives and sacred honor to the proposition that liberty should never be taken by force… or sold in desperation. There is still plenty of room on the Declaration of Independence for you to add your signature.

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