Analyst's note: This is an "absolutely must read" thought piece. I've read Will's article three times now, and agree that he has, in just a few words, identified a fourth and most significant threat to our nation. Please read on to learn what he has discovered that threatens our national security. His findings may surprise you.
"At the end of last year, I wrote an article entitled: Continued Threats to Our Constitutional Republic. In that article I concluded:
Our elected leaders take an oath to protect and defend our Constitutional Republic against all enemies foreign and domestic. It is time for them, the 112th Congress and the President, to be Statesmen, not politically correct politicians, and protect us from ALL our enemies — the Socialist, the Progressives and the Islamic Jihadists (Muslim extremists) who are seeking to destroy our Constitutional Republic from within and without. Those who:
Like George Soros and his ilk, favor “one world government” with their oligarchy as the rulers.
Prefer a Welfare Socialist State rather than our Divinely inspired Constitutional Republic with government as the ruler rather than We the People.
Favor a worldwide Theocracy of Islam under Sharia Law with a caliph as ruler.
If any of these enemies of our Constitutional Republic is allowed to be successful, they will extinguish the “light of freedom” not only for ourselves and our posterity but for the entire world!
As great as these threats are, after careful thought and consideration, I have come to the conclusion that there is an even greater threat to our Constitutional Republic. An internal threat that makes dwarfs of these “political” threats.
A review of voting statistics from 1960 through 2008 reveals a symptom of the disease that infects us, as a nation, and is threatening our very survival. In “off year” elections, we, as a nation, have averaged 36.9% turnout at the polls. In presidential election years, the average is only 50.9%. This equates to an overall election average of 44.2%.
How is it that free men and women value their suffrage so little? Throughout the Middle East these past two weeks millions have taken to the street to have free and open elections. Yet here in this country, where they exist, less than half the voters find their way to the polls.
Ponder in your mind a soldier at Valley Forge, as he holds his musket in his hands, barefoot in the snow, starved from lack of food, emotionally scarred and lonely from an eternity away from his family surrounded by nothing but the death and carnage of war.
He stands though, with fire in his eyes and victory on his breath. He looks at us now in anger and disgust and tells us this…
I gave you a birthright of freedom born in the Constitution and now your children graduate too illiterate to read it. I fought in the snow barefoot to give you the freedom to vote and you stay at home because it rains. I left my family destitute to give you the freedom of speech and you remain silent on critical issues, because it might be bad for business. I orphaned my children to give you a Republic to serve you and you have allowed the government to steal it through the guise of democracy.
There must be some cause, some good reason, why the Patriots of 1776 were so eager for liberty then, and We the People are so eager for the chains of slavery today.
About the time our original thirteen states adopted their new constitution in 1787, Alexander Tyler, a Scottish history professor at the University of Edinburgh, had this to say about a democracy:
A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always vote for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship.
The average age of the world’s greatest civilizations from the beginning of history, has been about 200 years. During those 200 years, those nations always progressed through the following sequence:
From bondage to spiritual faith;
From spiritual faith to great courage;
From courage to liberty;
From liberty to abundance;
From abundance to complacency;
From complacency to apathy;
From apathy to dependence;
From dependence back into bondage’
“In questions of power then,” wrote Jefferson, “let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the Constitution.” For much too long, We the People, as individuals and as a nation, have allowed through complacency our elected representatives to remove the “chains of the Constitution” set there to bind them from mischief and to protect our liberties in a Constitutional Republic. Worse than that, we have allowed them through apathy to convert them into “chains of slavery” for us in the name of “social-justice.” It was Jefferson who also said, “If we can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under pretense of caring for them, they will be happy.” Have we not, for the last 100 years, allowed the government through our complacency and apathy to do precisely that as they have changed our Constitutional Republic into a democracy !
Well did Thomas Paine say, “What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.”
Consider the following two statements. The first is by Rev. Martin Niemüller, a German Lutheran pastor, who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1938. “In Germany, the Nazis first came for the communists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist. Then they came for the Jews, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew. Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist. Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant. Then they came for me, and by that time there was no one left to speak for me.”
Fred Albury has quipped, “When they took the 4th Amendment away, I was quiet because I didn’t deal drugs. When they took the 6th Amendment away, I was quiet because I had never been arrested. When they took the 2nd Amendment away, I was quiet because I didn’t own a gun. Now they’ve taken away the 1st Amendment, and all I can do is be quiet.”
We as patriots have often heard that eternal vigilance is the price of freedom. It is interesting to me that the earliest statement that reflects this sentiment was made by John Philpot Curran in a speech upon the Right of Election in 1790. He said:
It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.
Right is right even if no one is doing it. Wrong is wrong even if everyone is doing it. Our unalienable rights of life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and the private ownership of property are granted by God and can be abridged by the government only as “We the People” will allow it. In the words of Daniel Webster, “God grants liberty only to those who love it, and are always ready to guard and defend it.”
After Alexis de Tocqueville visited America, he wrote, “I sought for the greatness and genius of America in her commodious harbors and her ample rivers, and it was not there; in her fertile fields and boundless prairies, and it was not there; in her rich mines and her vast world commerce, and it was not there. Not until I went to the churches of America and heard her pulpits aflame with righteousness did I understand the secret of her genius and power. America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, America will cease to be great.”
So you see my fellow Americans — Apathy is the greatest threat to America’s freedom! Whether by ignorance or neglect by those who understand, it is the same. In the economy of God, Freedom belongs only to those who believe in it the most. Those who, like the Founding Fathers, are willing to pledge their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor to its attainment and its preservation."
