Our Lives, Our Fortunes, and Our Sacred Honor

Some time ago, prior to the 2008 presidential election, I wrote an article for my gun club news letter about how people “…don’t talk like that anymore…” to illustrate how the elitist mentality so prevalent with today’s politicians keeps them from remembering the spirit of patriotism that founded this country. What I was referring to in that article, was how our Founding Fathers, in the language of their day, so eloquently expressed their love of freedom and their frustration toward a monarchy (elitist) government that was oppressive and tyrannical. This is an update to that article to represent the increased sense of urgency that I feel towards restoring our country, and to once again illustrate the need to return to what our Founding Fathers created for us when they declared their independence from an oppressive government.

In one particular scene in the movie “Hidden Treasure,” the character played by Nicholas Cage is reading aloud a passage from the Declaration of Independence, specifically the passage that reads:

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security.”

He then remarks that:

“...nobody talks like that anymore…”

Not only does no one use language like that to describe their feelings toward liberty and freedom, but until recently, I didn’t run into many people who even talk about these ideals in the same way that our Founding Fathers did. In fact, in one of the online discussion forums in which I regularly participate, one person even made the statement that the language used in our founding documents is obsolete. Fortunately, in this past year of extremely troubling and trying times, a good number of people have woken up, and I now see a strong resurgence in the feelings that our Founding Fathers held so dear. The tea parties, the 9.12 projects, and various web sites such as GrassFire.Org and ResistNet.Com have brought many like-minded people together to finally speak out against what we perceive as the accelerated effort to destroy our liberty.

With our establishment as a nation being more than 230 years old now, things like liberty and freedom just don’t seem to be a major concern for our politicians anymore. Many of the elite in power have deemed those concepts obsolete and unnecessary. And the every day Joe Sixpac who is still asleep and walking around with that glazed over “sheeple” look has taken those things for granted or just plain doesn’t care – as long as the government promises to care for him. I think many folks are caught up worrying about health care, wars, crime, and the rising prices of gas and food. With all these issues, people today don’t really think that they have time to worry about the principles of declaring independence from another country, or even the basic notions of liberty and freedom that were the driving force for our Founding Fathers. After all, we have been independent from another country’s reign for over 230 years now.

The concern that I have with many of these current attitudes is that on the part of Joe Sixpac, it represents an overall sense of complacency toward the ideals upon which this county was built. And on the part of the powerful elite, is the overall attitude that they think they know what is best for us, and that we are too stupid to take care of ourselves. More appropriately, they think they can use this to fool us into willingly relinquishing our freedom so that they can be our perceived guardians, while in reality, they simply desire to become a more powerful ruling class. I am deeply concerned because unless more people continue to wake up, our current generation of voters will be willing to trade more of our liberties and freedoms for promises of “change,” saving the planet, and universal health care instead of looking for ways for us to be energy independent and secure. I think too many people are looking at the short term gratifications, without regard to the negative effects that trading certain liberties has on our security.

What further gives me pause to be greatly concerned, is that when I read the reasons in the Declaration of Independence that our Founding Fathers gave for breaking away from the cloak of tyranny that oppressed them, and I make a list of what our current government is doing to us, the number of things in those two lists match more and more every day. In this past year, the accelerated pace at which the current administration and Congress have rammed things down the throats of the American people has been staggering. Never before have I experienced such a deterioration of our rights, and an increase in potential threats to our liberty as I see today.

I hope that as we approach the 2010 mid-term election in November, Americans everywhere can take pause to be reminded of the principles that our Founding Fathers used to build this country. I hope that we can choose the candidates who best represent those principles while preserving our liberties and freedom. And when these new people are elected, I hope that they seriously think about the obligation that all American citizens have to “…preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Our country, now more than ever, needs to be restored and “re-founded,” and not transformed or changed.

To that end, and in an effort to achieve this cause, I will commit to you, my fellow Americans, a willingness to resist the erosion of our liberty and to restore our country’s founding principles. I do so by restating the words of our Founding Fathers: And for the support of [the return to] this Declaration, with a firm reliance on divine Providence, I pledge my life, my fortune, and my sacred honor.

Who will join me in this pledge?