David

Karki

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February 18, 2009

The Death of the Republic

Last Friday night, while many of us prepared for Valentine's Day with that special someone, the hundreds of despots that comprise our government lived down to that description. They rammed through an 1,100-page, $3.27 trillion bill that they couldn't possibly have read, which the minority party was not allowed to see at all, which as of this writing wasn't even yet fully written, and which in one fell swoop all but ends the republic bequeathed us by the Founders.

In its place will be something very much like that which we spent 40-plus years defeating – a totalitarian Marxist society wherein a small bunch of tyrants are determined to control everyone and everything, in which the system is rigged to ensure they never lose power short of people fleeing and escaping the mechanisms put in place to contain them.

In the Cold War, this was the Berlin Wall and other fencing erected by the Soviet Union to keep the masses imprisoned. Only when the walls fell and the borders opened did the communist society they had propped up follow suit.

The barriers here aren't nearly so obvious. But then, that's the point – to keep us all ignorant until they are fully in place, so by the time we attempt escape they are impregnable. To quote James Madison:

“Since the general civilization of mankind, I believe there are more instances of the abridgement of the freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments of those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.”

Nor is there already a free country next door into which to escape. But I submit to you that the stakes are the same, perhaps much higher. To quote Ronald Reagan's “A Time For Choosing” speech of 1964:   

And the Cuban stopped and said, "How lucky you are! I had someplace to escape to." In that sentence he told us the entire story. If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth.

The Cold War is back with a vengeance, having gone domestic. If we lose this latest battle with the relentless evil that is government tyranny, the entire world will suffer for it. The lights will have been doused and the city on the hill will shine no more. And where light doesn't shine, darkness necessarily fills the vacuum.

I'm sure some of you are uncomfortable with my drawing such distinctions and think I'm engaging in extreme hyperbole. I maintain that any government that could so flagrantly defy the Constitution they swore oaths to uphold, and do so with such arrogance that they barely tried to hide it, is the extreme entity that has by definition destroyed its legitimacy. Moreover, in that it has demonstrated quite clearly that there are no limits on its power that it will respect, it is very much to be feared.

I neither take any pleasure in saying this, nor joy whatsoever in despising my government, and wish with all my heart it wasn't necessary. But as long as the likes of Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and Barney Frank are determined to forcibly remake America in their Marxist image, and will not cease their incursions upon and violations of a free people's Creator-endowed liberty, I haven't a choice.

Nor do I fail to see the harsh consequences of the position I hold. In fact, it's precisely because I wish to avoid the worst that I urge dramatic action within the system now, before things get any further out of hand than they already have. The Declaration of Independence speaks to this directly:

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed.”

Remember, we are less than four weeks into unchecked Democratic power that will last at least two years, and Babylon-on-the-Potomac is already completely out of control, running roughshod over every limit on government and destroying every last vestige of capitalism. We need to stop being preoccupied with frivolities like American Idol, and start occupying ourselves with the serious business of preserving America.

To quote Patrick Henry:

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!”

If we wish to avoid having to make such an all-or-nothing choice, then we must act before the stakes rise to that level. We must not be complacent, just as Henry urged the Virginia colonists to whom he spoke. The longer we wait, the higher the price will be that we will have to pay in order to keep the Republic for our posterity.

I close with more of Reagan's “A Time For Choosing”:

You and I are told increasingly that we have to choose between a left or right, but I would like to suggest that there is no such thing as a left or right. There is only an up or down – up to a man's age-old dream, the ultimate in individual freedom consistent with law and order – or down to the ant heap of totalitarianism, and regardless of their sincerity, their humanitarian motives, those who would trade our freedom for security have embarked on this downward course.  [...]

You and I have a rendezvous with destiny. We will preserve for our children this, the last best hope of man on Earth, or we will sentence them to take the last step into a thousand years of darkness.” 

© 2009 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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