Principles of Constitutionalism: You Only Have the Liberty You Are Willing to Fight For

The failure is one of the will. It is high time for the good and decent people of this nation to regain their nerve and find the will to defend their freedom

Principles of Constitutionalism: You Only Have the Liberty You Are Willing to Fight For

Throughout this series of essays, I have emphasized that there are a number of key concepts that lay the foundation for a successful republican and constitutional government that serves to preserve liberty.  These include concepts such as natural law, natural rights, the rule of law, the division of governing power, and the reasonableness of laws that are made.  Now, as I close this series, it is time to point out something that may be uncomfortable for many, but which is nevertheless true.

All of these concepts are toothless without the will to put them into practice.

We can talk about natural rights until we are blue in the face, but the fact remains that while we may possess them from God as our natural birthright as rational beings created in His image, the only way we can effectively enjoy them is to be diligent about both securing and then maintaining our ability to use them.  Who cares if you have a theoretical right to free speech when you silently acquiesce to cultural Marxists when they ban as “hate speech” whatever expressions of thought are offensive or inconvenient to them?  Of what good is your right to be secure in your property and effects when you meekly submit to police who freely rummage through your home without a warrant or an EPA which arbitrarily declares your field a “wetland” and forbids your use of it upon pain of fines and imprisonment?  Talk talk talk, all day long – but until you step up and fight for your rights, you might as well be bellowing madly at a stone wall.

I am reminded of the statement by the German general in World War I, Hans von Seeckt, who wrote, “Das wesentliche ist die Tat” – “The important thing is the deed.”  Or put simply, if you don’t act, then you won’t achieve anything.  All the good intentions in the world aren’t worth a stick of rancid butter if you don’t follow through on them.

I write this because it is most needed today.  If there is one overarching thing for which I would criticize many, perhaps most, conservatives and self-professed lovers of liberty, it is this: They are lazy, self-centered, self-absorbed, and completely unsuited as they currently sit to truly enjoy the fruits of the animating conquest of liberty.  Conservatives will lounge around on internet forums and social media and complain about this and say that “somebody ought to do something” about that.  They may even show up to a rally for the free food and the entertainment, if it fits their schedule.  Sure, they’d really, really like to get involved to do something about defending the 4th amendment except, well, hey, their kids have a ball game that night and we can’t miss that.  In short, they’re so fat and happy that they don’t even have the will to stand up and stand together to do something about the dissipation of our liberty in the face of the left-wing/cultural Marxist/homosexualist/Islamist agenda.

And then you have the conservatives who hear any kind of call to work together for the common goal of recovering lost liberty and disdain it as “collectivism.”  They’ll pat themselves on the backs for being “rugged individualists” who “don’t let anyone tell them what to do.”  Ridiculous fools all.  Benjamin Franklin – who knew more about the foundations and principles of liberty than any one of us alive today – warned his contemporaries that they needed to hang together lest they all hang separately.  If you can’t work together with likeminded patriots, then you’re no good to the cause of liberty.  Go back and pay your taxes and enjoy your chains.

The enemies of freedom are many – liberals, “progressives,” radical homosexuals, Islamofascists, environmental wackos – the list goes on and on.  Each of them wants to take away your rights.  The sodomites are gunning (sometimes literally) for your freedom of religion. The econuts are composting your property rights as we speak.  The radical Left is working hard to grant Islamic terrorists an assassin’s veto over your freedom of speech.  Of course, all of them want to take away your ability to defend yourself from all enemies, foreign and domestic.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/act-four/wp/2015/05/05/subjecting-free-speech-to-the-assassins-veto/

So what are you going to do?  Are you going to sit by and let it happen?  Or are you going to stand and fight?  Failing to do so when the problems were only beginning has led us to where we are today.  “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.”  The Right’s collective failure over the course of several decades to vigilantly defend liberty allowed the Left to run wild, which means it will be that much harder now to regain our lost liberty.  I believe that we can still recover this republic, through diligent prayer, diligent repentance, and diligent jealousy for our natural liberties, by peaceful means – but it will require an end to the laziness, the excuses, and the fighting amongst ourselves.  There may well come a time where the tree of liberty will be watered by the blood of patriots and tyrants – but it would be much wiser to seek to make sure that that day never comes by getting busy now.

The failure is one of the will.  It is high time for the good and decent people of this nation to regain their nerve and find the will to defend their freedom


By Tim Dunkin