The Fourth: A Reminder

On the Fourth of July, thinking back to those brave souls who sacrificed everything when they put their names on a document they knew the King of Britain would see and read, it’s startling now to see the whole of it is crashing down and the average American is either unable to see it, or unwilling to react to what they see.

Of those men, most of them were ruined by what they did. Most of them knew that they would be ruined, whether the ultimate conflict would be won or lost. Certainly if it was lost.

The goodness of the American man was not really neutered until their instincts toward defending women and children or civil society with violence was met with lawsuits and prison sentences. All throughout my life I had seen it degraded little by little, but I lived outside of that, for the most part, dwelling where mutual combat was not a criminal offense; where police and sheriffs could look at a situation and sort it out on the spot, usually correctly. A night in jail to let tempers cool was the worst of it, no case, no “anger management” classes.

For me, and many like me, there exists a boiling internal rage for the loss of our freedoms. We have been confounded as the law has been turned against those freedoms, watching institution after institution designed to protect them corrupted to uselessness. But the rage remains, waiting for an opportunity to unleash it against our rightful enemies. Whether we have known for a long time, or have just noticed it, the worst of them are internal.

This is a complicated time, though. It isn’t just these internal enemies, but the external as well. It’s now foreign fighters brought in by a selfish desire to win an election, to change the demographics along with the politics of our nation, the one fought for by our fathers and forefathers with courage and determination.

The lines were clearer then, the tyrants and enemies were of one people. We could have stopped the slow degeneration of our society, but it would have seemed rash. It’s through gradual steps that one arrives at destruction. The people themselves have to come to a point of understanding their oppressors as I and many others do. That is the thing we have been waiting for, the lines to be clear enough for others to see. That time is now.

The ones who oppose freedom, who have turned the laws against the people, are the enemy. They seek the death of not only the people, but the whole land itself, every scintilla of the freedom that sprang up in 1776; its very roots.

As I explained in Nine Principles of Freedom, the American described by the Constitution, is one who is equal to the government. They can have millions of prosecutors, but an American is armed with rights that destroy their cases simply by exerting those rights. They can write thousands upon thousands of laws, none of which can be enforced if it requires the infringement of individual rights. In every case of injustice, it is the government violating the rights of the individual, not the other way around. You can and should fight City Hall, the figure of speech that “one cannot fight City Hall” was designed by City Hall to violate one’s rights.

If given the proper weight, individual rights are the ultimate equalizer between the power of the government and the citizen. To think then, knowing the evil that is government, that it would not put all efforts and resources to move that calculation into their favor is naïve. Let us not be naïve. To look 248 years down the road and not understand that every encounter with the government must be contentious is to ignore nature. Imagine the tumult and desperation of a state that had to, in every instance, justify their slightest action or assertion. It’s the slow compliance out of ignorance or expedience that the state stands defiant of our rights.

It is tiresome and vexing to question every action or assertion of government and they have the organization and training to use language that seems to override our rights and back us down. But now that we see where it leads, to the tyranny that it emboldens, one might consider it an individual battle in a larger war, unsung and unappreciated, though vital. Experience aids in the endeavor. Take little steps.

I could give you a list of examples of me doing what I suggest here, but I do pick and choose my opportunities. If everyone did it, even occasionally, and were armed with their rights and could recite them as pertains to the occasion and not back down in the face of aggressive and dismissive officials, they would find it would transform government. It would put them back into their defensive shell.

Unfortunately, that is a long-term prospect and this union has little time left for any number of reasons. That I have been encouraging this sort of behavior for two decades is of little consequence. But it should be natural to an American to engage with the government, not as a subservient, but as an equal.

I have an upcoming event in the Texas Panhandle on the 18th of July. If you want to know more contact me at editor@twelveround.com. Aside from that, visit twelveround.com/store to get any of my novels or a link to a free version of Lies of Omission.