If we want to live in liberty, we must be prepared to fight for it
Over the past several years, three things have become clear to me: not everyone wants real liberty, not everyone is willing to fight for real liberty, and there are way too many people more than willing to surrender real liberty for tyranny.
In America, we used to be taught that nothing is more foundational to our existence than liberty and the need to fight for it. We used to be taught about Patrick Henry and his impassioned cry, “Give me liberty, or give me death!”
Even our national anthem reminds us of our history and the brave men and women who gave their lives to preserve liberty. It’s the reason we celebrate Independence Day on the 4th of July, is it not? We’re celebrating God’s gift of liberty and all that America stands for.
In the past, most Americans used to believe that liberty was something worth dying for. Unfortunately, in the years since 9/11 and COVID tyranny, too many have forgotten that living in liberty requires the rejection of the politics of fear and tyranny.
Strident Conservative contributor Christin McMasters has written a multitude of posts on her website about what liberty is, how it can’t exist without law, and how real liberty should never be confused with license; rather, it requires us to be responsible over our individual choices. Still, there are those who demand license over liberty.
If COVID tyranny taught us anything, it’s that there were many people who wanted the regulations government was more than happy to hand out. In other words, they were quite happy having government tell them what to do. They wanted government to force them to wear a mask. They wanted government to force them to get vaccinated. They wanted government to track everyone via vaccine passports. They wanted government to tell them how to run their businesses.
And since they had surrendered their liberty, they wanted government to mandate that everyone else do the same thing.
This isn’t liberty, it’s government’s tyrannical control over our lives. Republicans and Democrats love this kind of control because it equips them to control the population through unconstitutional laws and excessive big-government regulations. This is where the truth becomes crystal clear. As long as people don’t have to be responsible for their own actions, they won’t care what and how much government controls.
This is why true liberty requires individual responsibility. Every one of us must take responsibility for our own actions to be truly free. If we mess up, we and we alone will bear the consequences. But if we succeed, we and we alone reap the rewards.
Not everyone is willing to pay the price necessary to live in liberty and freedom, and because of their unwillingness, they hold the belief that no one else should live in liberty and freedom either. The irony, of course, is that the very people who want more government regulation and control — who see government as the solution to all of life’s problems — will scream and yell if government does anything that even remotely inhibits inhibit their license.
Too many of our fellow Americans don’t really want liberty; they want license (i.e., tyranny). They want to do whatever they want without consequence, which means without responsibility. If since they take no responsibility for their actions, they can escape the consequences. They want mob-rule and the tyranny it brings.
A classic example of this mindset can be seen radical LGBT agenda, where radicals demand license to choose their sexual orientation and to be sexually intimate with children at any age.
Unlike liberty, license is not worth dying for; license is tyranny in disguise. License leads to chaos and chaos leads to tyranny. These liberty-hating, license-loving individuals may have second thoughts once they are under the grips of tyranny and have their license to do as they please, but by then it’ll be too late.
As I contemplate the sad fact that not everyone in America really wants or understands liberty, I’ve come to the conclusion that this is at the root of all our problems. This is the motivation behind the far-left’s desire to see American history re-written or destroyed and all quintessentially American virtues thrown out and replaced.
They don’t want to live in America because America is synonymous with liberty. And since they don’t want liberty, they must work to destroy the very nature of what America is. What they really want is for America to be more like a modified version of Russia or China where license remains. They want to turn this country into something else while naively believing that they can still have their iPhones and AirPods while complaining to the media about how they are being oppressed.
The luxury we have in America only exists because of real liberty; because of individuals who took individual responsibility over their actions. Not because of license. License leads to tyranny. We need to fight the forces in our country that simply don’t want to live in an America without government control. We need to fight for liberty, not surrender to tyranny.
If we fail to expose the progressives in both parties and continue to allow them to change America into something it was never intended to be, there will be nowhere left on earth for freedom to turn.
America is the last bastion of real liberty left in the world . . . and that is worth fighting for.
David Leach is the owner of the Strident Conservative. He holds people of every political stripe accountable for their failure to uphold conservative values, and he promotes those values instead of political parties.
Follow the Strident Conservative on Twitter and Facebook.
Subscribe to receive podcasts of his daily radio feature: iTunes | Stitcher | Tune In | iHeart | RSS
For media inquiries or to have David speak to your group, use the Contact Us form.
