The mass media have not adequately covered the increasing numbers of flash mobs and their assaults on innocent victims. All across the globe from the bullet-riddled Arab Spring to Great Britain to Madison, Wisconsin plus Cleveland, Philadelphia and more, violent mobs are terrorizing neighborhoods, cities and entire nations. I am old enough to remember the turbulent ‘60’s here in the United States. Violent anti-Vietnam war demonstrations and racially-charged uprisings seemed to occur with alarming regularity. The assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK had the effect of pouring gasoline on the glowing embers of discontent. The intervening half-century of statist growth has nourished the sense that government provides the essentials of life, but government provision requires confiscation from others and therein lays the tension that we note today.
We are balanced on the cusp of collapse…social collapse, financial collapse, and moral collapse. Our insatiable hedonistic appetites have allowed government to consistently over-promise and under-deliver. Our unquenchable desire for Nanny State solutions to our self-created problems have conditioned us to look to the government for remedies despite its pathetic record of incompetency and inefficiency. Our fruitless quest to escape personal responsibility has motivated us to transfer our freedom and our accountability to a bloated bureaucratic system that consistently worsens the problems and limits our liberty. Profligate spending by governments at all levels, by addle-headed citizens who MUST have it all, and union demands for owning the pie of prosperity have all been major contributors to our decline. Mythical magical “hate crimes” have mysteriously appeared in the pantheon of actionable behavior as police, prosecutors and juries have suddenly acquired the ability to read minds and totally comprehend aberrant human behavior then apply additional penalties to an already heinous crime. Diversity and multiculturalism are celebrated as the means for division rather than inclusion and integration. Governments grow larger, and our personal freedoms are fewer. Government’s means and justifications for observing and tracking citizens are proliferating. Chaos reigns, and confidence wanes.
With evidence of collapse on so many levels all around us it is difficult to focus our energies and our problem-solving skills on one particular area of concern. Each time we laser in on a perplexing issue, another one pops up to seize our attention. It’s like playing whack-a-mole when each swing is critical and dare not be off target. At some point our heads feel as if they’re mounted on swivels as the numerous moles continue to surface all around us. If you’re a regular reader of this column, you’re aware that the major premise of my writing (preaching) is that the fundamental issue that underlies all the chaos, all the madness and all the danger is the notion of our individual liberty. My greatest fear as we attempt to grasp the vexing problems that confront us is that the breakdown of society will lead to greater government control and further loss of our freedom. As the nation disintegrates, the people will clamor for order and predictability, and the governments at all levels will deliver. Remarkably, the people will turn to the greatest single cause of the chaos for remedies…..just as they….and we have done for our entire human history. It was the Nation of Israel who turned their backs on God that led to their Egyptian captivity, and they molded the golden calf after He led them out because they believed they had been abandoned in the Wilderness. We are just like them. When times get tougher, we’ll go back to the golden calf of government while forgetting how He has liberated us. We might forfeit our freedom for false security of despotic tyranny.
Liberty is the common denominator underlying each cusp-positioned, collapse-directed element of our national structure. Free people who can live their lives as they choose without harming others or their property will voluntarily seek a harmonious social order or withdraw into hermit status. Free people who do not have to support an overspending monstrosity of government will use the wealth developed by their labor, their skills and their creativity to invest, to innovate and to improve their communities. People who are free may be less inclined to beat the system or to outwit the “man.” The pressure to engage in immoral behavior to escape the strictures of an overbearing state apparatus and an “uptight” populace may lead to more awareness of the value of upright living.
Is liberty the cure-all for everything that ails us? Of course not, but it is the basic component and catalyst for forging a new beginning. Each person’s value will be determined by his or her contribution to the liberty of others. If you examine the Founding and Framing documents and the discussions that surround them, you will discover that liberty…the quest for liberty, the thirst for liberty…preceded independence, nation formation and political structure. Liberty was the foundation then, and if we wish to rebuild, restore or renew our nation, it must be the cornerstone again. Unless you believe the notion that freedom is much too quaint for the 21st Century….then we are doomed.
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