Nearly two-hundred and fifty years ago, Patrick Henry made the claim that he would rather have death than a life of no liberty. Patrick Henry and many more of our Founding Fathers understood and cherished the idea of liberty. Today, we have seemingly forgotten the value of liberty, and make excuses for not holding to it so dearly.
A life with no liberty, to many of our Founding Fathers, is not worth living. They understood that the government is here to protect and secure life, liberty, and property, or more broadly, the pursuit of happiness. True, they understood the idea that freedom doesn’t come free. Sometimes in order to obtain liberty, we must give up our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor as they did. Obviously in order to have our property protected, we must give a small portion of our profit to a common defense, in the form of taxes. To secure our lives, it is sometimes required that brave men and women give up their lives. To secure our liberty, we must enslave ourselves to the cause of liberty itself.
But never did our Founding Fathers embrace the notion that liberty and security are opposing forces. They believe as I do, that when we sacrifice liberty for security, we lose both. After all, the purpose of the government is to secure liberty. Why then would we sacrifice the very thing we want secure in the name of security itself? Why do we believe we must submit everything to the government to direct our time, money, education, etc., in the name of security?
Both Democrats and Republicans are guilty of this. In the Bush administration, we have seen the idea that we need a “Patriot Act” to better secure us. We give up our privacy to what should probably be considered an unconstitutional establishment. We have the notion that a one-hundred years war is justified in the name of securing the peace. The government even forced nearly a trillion dollars of our money into corrupt banks in the name of securing the economy.
Democrats may claim to support personal liberties, but they often sacrifice our liberties in the name of securing comfort. Democrat and socialist Barack Obama wants to take away our liberty of choosing our healthcare in the name of the comfort of having affordable healthcare for everybody. Many Democrats suggest we must give up the liberty of owning a gun, a personal security, so that we have the comfort of knowing there are no guns around us (which is not very comforting to me if the criminals own guns). We must give up the freedom of educating ourselves so that the government can provide a level of comfort of teaching every child (again, not very comforting that the government controls education).
When will we stop sacrificing liberty for security, or comfort? When will we stop relying on the government and do things better ourselves? Liberty does not necessarily mean we are never enslaved to anything. In a sense as mentioned above, our Founders were enslaved to the cause of liberty. The major world religions teach that their followers be enslaved to the core principles of their faith. But our enslavement should not come from the rule or force of any other man. We cannot sacrifice liberty, and in the long-run have more security. In order to be more secure, our liberties must be secure. As Patrick Henry seemed to understand, what is the purpose of this life, if all of our liberties are taken away? Why live if we are not allowed to spend our money how we want to, worship how we want to, educate our children the way we want to, or even take care of our bodies the way we want to? I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/henry-liberty.html
What do you think?
God bless America
Pray for our Troops
October 27, 2008
Ryan Hampton
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