This Election Is a Choice between Freedom and Slavery, Good and Evil

Ronald Reagan famously observed nearly sixty years ago: "Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.  We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream.  It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same[.]"  The man could say so much with so few words.  (1) Freedom is an idea; (2) it belongs to anyone wise enough to recognize its value irrespective of race, color, or creed; and (3) it will be endlessly threatened at all times by those opposed to liberty.

Three generations later, and Reagan's warning is uncomfortably prescient.  Before the Chinese coronavirus turned into a weapon for destroying freedom, we were already under attack.  For years, hate speech laws have been used to censor points of view and silence critics.  Public schools have replaced education with "politically correct" Marxist narratives, while Christianity is banned from public life and public squares.  Socialists attack words as violence so they may use violence against our words.  Wherever we look, the left has been nibbling away at liberty and pushing us toward gilded cages under their control.

Now the Democrats' push to "fundamentally change America" is in overdrive.  A combination of their awareness that they have lost ground since President Trump's election and a growing sense of urgency to speed up their revolution before his looming re-election has led them to throw all caution to the wind.  

What could have been seen as a moment for national unity just as WWII was for that generation of Americans, the present pandemic unleashed by China, has become nothing more than an opportunity for Democrats at every level of government to steal freedom in the name of security.  

Joe Biden talks openly of a "physical revolution" ahead.  

Barack Obama no longer pretends to be a moderate and instead openly trashes police officers as racists and murderers, chooses the side of Antifa anarchists destroying federal buildings and harming American civilians, and turns funeral memorials into political rallies demanding that new socialist legislation be pushed through Congress despite the will of the people.  

Mayor de Blasio has installed checkpoints to restrict free assembly and arbitrarily and capriciously shut down businesses and church services with fines exceeding ten thousand dollars, while openly encouraging Antifa and Black Lives Matter shock troops to run roughshod over New York City.  

Mayor Garcetti has empowered himself with the authority in Los Angeles to deprive individual homes of power and water should he find their owners in violation of any new rules he unilaterally creates.

The Democratic Party is furiously scrambling to use the pretext of public health to force "cheat by mail" voting schemes upon swing states within their control just in time to steal a presidential election in November.  

And Google and Facebook and Twitter have turned a health emergency into one more excuse for censoring free speech and depriving conservatives of having any voice in what is indisputably our modern town square. 

China released a virus upon the world, and Republicans and conservatives rolled up their sleeves and said, "Let's get to work."  Democrats and the socialists running their show grinned and said, "This is the perfect time to fleece Americans for everything they've got."

If it feels as though we're surrounded, that's because we are.  For freedom-minded Americans, this is an unnerving time.  But that's exactly the way it's always been.  

As inspiring as Reagan's words are, they leave out the chilling context that Lord Acton's provide: "At all times sincere friends of freedom have been rare, and its triumphs have been due to minorities[.]"  If the task of defending freedom seems daunting, if the odds of success seem narrow, if socialism's darkness seems ever near, take strength that this has always been the price for freedom.  We are all of us at all times cut-off paratroopers far behind enemy lines.  Defenders of freedom will always be surrounded.  No battle will be final, no victory permanent, no peace respected by freedom's enemies.  We will be forced to fight tooth and nail for freedom, or there will be none at all.  

I am convinced that the battle between good and evil is, at its heart, a fight between truth and deception.  Not falsehood, but deception.  Evil always comes in the form of an ideology that allows man to justify unspeakable acts and unconscionable harms.  

Auschwitz greeted each prisoner with the lie that "work sets you free."  Buchenwald added to the insult by insisting that "everyone gets what he deserves." 

Now Joe Biden's Democrats spread fascism while calling themselves "antifascist."  Democrat race-baiters and race-hustlers insist that "black lives matter" while doing everything in their power to kill black babies before birth and to deprive black Americans of their God-given freedom in return for cradle-to-grave government control and subsistence.  Democrat operatives unleash armies of domestic terrorists upon American cities, and then Democrat congressmen ignore all the mayhem, carnage, and murder they have caused by disregarding the visible destruction as nothing but "myth."

Lies and arrogance have a tendency to topple empires.  Leaders mistake their offices for temples to be adorned and their orders as commandments to be obeyed.  Faith in institutions dries up while nobody is looking.  History is forgotten, and stupidity rises to rule the day.  

There is an antidote: freedom.  Its power to confront evil is immense.  Its protection of life is unmatched.  And it exposes socialism's lies by drenching darkness with light.  But at all times, the cost of freedom will be borne entirely by its few, true defenders.  A line in the sand is small compared to the beach, but when enough of us come together, a line in the sand is all we need.  So take heart that you are not alone.  Find strength in those around you.  No matter what, hold that line.  

Hat tip to TimothyGKC.

Image: Ninian Reid via Flickr.