SurvivalBlog reader B.B. suggested this piece by Mark Steyn: The Drift toward Despotism. And joining the chorus, even more stridently: The Creeping Police State. Soon after sending those links, B.B. sent this brilliant essay from Daren Jonescu: The Progressive Degradation of Freedom.
Reading Jonescu’s cogent words crystallized a nascent theory that had been nagging me for a decade. It is this: America’s systemic reaction to the unspeakable horror of the 9/11 attacks was to “protect” ourselves by planting the seeds for a police state that will eventually strangle the freedom that we grew up cherishing. Each incremental step seems toward tyranny so “logical” and so “justified” to the minds of the statist Powers That Be. The citizenry, mimicking the Germans of the 1930s passively goes along with each of these baby steps, never quite chafing to the point of outright rebellion. The end result is a society that has made itself voluntarily monitored 24/7, agreed to centralized background checks just to exercise a Constitutional right, that has agreed to being either fondled or x-rayed by blue glove-wearing half-wits at airports. With our own tax dollars (annually self-assessed, of course) we have equipped an army of steroid-pumped henchmen who are ready, willing, and able to not just Taser us at the slightest sign of noncompliance, but even willing to arrest and drag us to a hospital for multiple rectal examinations because of the mere suspicion that we “might be hiding something.”
Unless we individually and collectively develop some backbone, right quick, then it will be too late. The chains will be too solidly forged. The web of surveillance will be too complete. And the cross-correlated list of malcontents will be small and easy to round up. Unless we get active politically and forcefully stand up to tyranny, then we’ll become outnumbered.
Benjamin Franklin presciently wrote: “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.”
You were right, Ben.
So…
Here is it folks, the challenge for our generation, most likely to be answered in this decade: The next time there is another Ruby Ridge or Waco-style “standoff” with “extremists” happens, We The People will have two choices: We can passively sit by, watch it all on high definition television, wringing our hands and just muttering “That’s so awful.” Or, will enough of us grab our gear and drive there and set up a perimeter around their perimeter. Once in place, we’ll show some backbone and take photos, take video, take names, and if need be be prepared to take lives. The choice is yours, America. Are you going to show up to the event and do what is right, or are you going to let the ninja-jackboot-thugs simply haul us off to the gulag one by one?
I’ll leave you with another quote from the brilliant mind of Benjamin Franklin: “We must hang together, gentlemen…else, we shall most assuredly hang separately.”
– J.W.R.