If future generations are to know liberty, then today is the day when those who call themselves "conservatives" must come together around the set of enduring ideas of liberty of 1776 and 1787!
Another set of counterfeit ideas now threaten to return America and the world to the darkness of tyranny and oppression.
Current events have triggered a very public, citizen, involvement in a battle of ideas which has been going on for decades! The problem is that, until now, most Americans went about their business and ignored it.
Today, they are engaged and beginning to learn the difference between two conflicting ideas about freedom and coercive government control. America's Founders identified the conflicting ideas as liberty versus tyranny. By Lincoln's time, he had a clear understanding of it and said this: "The world has never had a good definition of the word 'liberty.' And the American people just now are much in want of one. We all declare for liberty; but in using the same word we do not mean the same thing . . . . The shepherd drives the wolf from the sheep's throat, for which the sheep thanks the shepherd as his liberator, while the wolf denounces him for the same act . . . . Plainly, the sheep and the wolf are not agreed upon a definition of liberty."
But Lincoln could distinguish between real liberty and a counterfeit idea. Of the American idea, Lincoln declared:
"Most governments have been based practically, on the denial of the rights of men. Ours began by affirming those rights . . . . [These opposing ideas] are the two principles that have stood face to face from the beginning of time; and will ever continue to struggle . . . . It [denial of individual Creator-endowed rights] is the same principle in whatever shape it develops itself. . . it is the same tyrannical principle."
Of the Founding principle, Lincoln said: ". . . it is no child's play to save the principles of Jefferson from total overthrow in this nation. . . .The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society . . . And yet, they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. . . All honor to Jefferson - to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast, and capacity to introduce in a . . . revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicable to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that today, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling-block to the very harbingers [initiators of threatening change] of reappearing tyranny and oppression."
Yes, the battle of ideas is re-engaged in America today, in a manner not seen for decades.
American citizens are utilizing the new technologies that make possible close examination of the Founders' ideas in many collections online such as those at Liberty USA Foundation, WallBuilders, and in new books, such as Mark Levin's "Liberty and Tyranny." They are returning to the Founders' own explanation of their Constitution in THE FEDERALIST and to 1987's Bicentennial Year volumes such as "Our Ageless Constitution." See
Just as in Lincoln's day, those who try to fool the people into believing their definition of liberty is authentic are being exposed for the charlatans they are--mere men who wish to gain power over the lives of millions.
They are being exposed by the "self-evident truths" "embalmed" in that revolutionary document described by Lincoln.
They can read the Founders' intent that ours is not a government's Constitution to limit people. Rather, it is "We, the People's" Constitution to be used, according to Jefferson, to "bind them (government) down by the chains of the Constitution."
What we are seeing now is a battle between forces who have one charismatic, but mere mortal (Krauthammer's description of Obama), man out there carrying the water for changing that concept in the minds of citizens who, they thought, had been dumbed down by decades of neglect and censorship of the ideas of liberty.
Providence may have outwitted them by allowing the development of technologies that make the Founders' ideas a powerful tool in the new battle
I am currently reading “The Original Argument” by Glenn Beck and Joshua Charles. I am re-igniting old brain cells and remembering how truly exceptional America really is. I am also about half-way through “America By Heart” by Sarah Palin, and just finished “Demonic” by Ann Coulter. All extremely good books! I do not particularly like Ann Coulter, however, she hit the ball out of the park with this book. It will explain a great deal about the “mob” mentality of the liberal/progressive movement in this country.
It is obvious that our educational system has failed miserably for our children. Liberal teachers don’t believe in what these incredible men fought and stood for. The Constitution is a beautiful document, perfected throughout the years to what WE THE PEOPLE now are. Patrick Henry wrote “The Constitution is NOT an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government, lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.”
NOTE to those of you who have macular degeneration, I just got a Nook Color, which is a backlit electronic reader. After many years of not being able to read a normal book, I am enjoying the written word once more. It is an incredible piece of technology. The books are very reasonable, and I would strongly suggest you purchase the Nook and Nook Books directly through Barnes & Noble.