“Liberty once lost, is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.”
~John Adams
I have found it exceedingly difficult for me to understand why so many Americans are willing to obey unconstitutional orders to stay in their homes and acquiesce to having the economy shut down. I have seen many people online express complacency with this. I have had several discussions online regarding the lockdowns. I also know people who have lost family members to this disease, so I am not trying to minimize their pain or loss. Be that as it may, too many Americans seem to have fallen prey to the narrative of fear that the government and the leftist media have been pushing. Neil Ferguson’s model, which had the death toll from the Wuhan Coronavirus projected to be 2.2 million souls, turned out to be wildly inaccurate. 2.2 million people dead is unquestionably a scary number, which prompted the “do something” reflex in our political class. Doing something for the sake of appearing as though you’re doing something often leads to doing the wrong thing. There is another scary number out there right now though. 30 million. As of this writing, over 30 million people have filed for unemployment benefits since this started. That puts the unemployment rate at about 14%. These numbers keep getting scarier, don’t they? However, they have nothing to do with the Wuhan Coronavirus; rather our reaction to it. Just to pile on the fear factor, the scariest part of all of this is that there are people, American citizens, on both sides of the political aisle that find this acceptable.
You may be wondering how this happened. It directly results from our education system. Over the years I have spoken to members of the baby boomer generation and their predecessors, the silent generation, about the state of education in this country. This includes my parents, parents and grandparents of my friends and acquaintances. Almost to a person they told me that the education they got in high school and college is far more advanced than what kids today get in public school and college. I had one person tell me that their high school diploma is worth more than a bachelor’s degree from just about any college in the country, with a few exceptions. They had to learn Latin; they had to learn basic chemistry and physics. They studied the classics like Shakespeare, Dickens, Twain and the Bible. They discussed them; they encouraged deeper thought than just writing a report or taking a test to prove that you read them. They learned about the constitution, how it came to be. They discussed the debates the founders had; they had to read the federalist papers, and some had to read the anti-federalist papers. They learned how the founder’s faith helped to shape how this country was formed. They learned about America and what made this country the best, most free and prosperous country in the history of mankind. Since then, the public education system has been infiltrated by Marxists who introduced Cultural Marxism in to academia. I will save the discussion of the Frankfurt School, how the intellectuals behind it came to this country and put in motion a plan to bring down western civilization for another time.
All one has to do is look at the professors on every college campus to see that most of them are Marxists themselves, indoctrinating students with their belief that capitalism is evil and creates economic disparities that are inherently unfair; the goal of society should be equal outcomes for everyone. Every generation since the baby boomers has been taught by Marxists who hate America and everything she stands for. They have pushed the belief that the founders were evil racists who owned slaves, therefore the very founding of this country is illegitimate. We now have several generations of people who were indoctrinated with the belief that capitalism is evil and the collective should reap all the benefits of your work; the government should take care of you from cradle to grave. They believe that individual responsibility is a concept that should be done away with. Marxist educators have thoroughly drilled this in to their students for generations. Models have this pandemic projected to kill about as many people as the flu does every year. Or a fraction of the number of people who die from accidents, heart disease, cancer or drug overdoses. Because so many of us have rejected personal responsibility, Many Americans believe that the Wuhan Coronavirus is a legitimate cause to shut everything down under the guise of keeping us safe. I for one will not buy in to that because personal responsibility is a concept that helped build this great nation.
The classical education that generations before us received taught them how to think critically, rather than just accept the story being told and regurgitate facts. Instead of being taught how to think, subsequent generations have been taught not only what to think, but that how you feel is more important than facts, and that the individual is less important than the collective. As a result, there is a significant portion of the population who believe that shutting down the economy and quarantining healthy people is a proper response to a global pandemic, even in the face of compelling evidence which suggests that course of action is a mistake. It feels better to have the government protect us because they have “experts” who are telling us that this disease is the most dangerous one ever to come along and the only way we can be safe is to isolate ourselves. Businesses must close, employees can file for unemployment and in return for obedience, we will pay an additional unemployment benefit, so you could end up making more money than you were at your job. Meanwhile, the police state tyrants in mayor’s offices and governor’s mansions issue edicts directing police officers to cite and/or arrest anyone who dares defy the unconstitutional directive to shelter in place. Unless, of course, you are engaged in approved activities they deem essential. This is the textbook definition of tyranny. A significant portion of the American population has been indoctrinated to believe that this is not only ok, but necessary.
This is not what the founders envisioned for this country. They fought a war to gain their independence from a tyrannical government. They wanted to be free to exercise their God-given, natural rights. In the declaration of independence they list unalienable rights as life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. I don’t believe it is an accident that the founders listed them in that order, but let’s focus on the word liberty. Liberty is the state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions or arbitrarily imposed government control on one’s way of life or behavior. It is something that the founders valued more than anything except God. Patrick Henry said, “Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect every one who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force: Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.” The police state tyrants are defecating all over the public liberty. There was a time when the words of the founders meant something. There was a time when Franklin’s quote, “Those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” was something we all believed. We valued liberty because we knew that as Americans, we have the capacity to take care of ourselves. We did not need the government to step in and protect us from the vagaries of life. Whenever we allow the government to control any aspect of our lives, they will not relinquish that control. We have allowed a dangerous precedent to be set in the wake of the Wuhan Coronavirus pandemic. Now that we have allowed people like Gretchen Whitmer, Andrew Cuomo, Gavin Newsom, Phil Murphy and Charlie Baker to impose their police state, tyrannical decrees, they, and their successors have license to do it again. And the next time, it will be to protect us against something slightly less dangerous than a pandemic. I am sounding the alarm now because liberty, once lost, is lost forever.