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Thanks, Kaslin. As usual, Prager's "dream speech" ideas present a well-thought-out set of competing "visions."

As I posted yesterday, the contrast must be presented more starkly, for the immediate and long-term consequences are enormous, and time is short for a course correction.

We have the same choice which faced the colonists in 1776:

Liberty for ourselves and future generations

Or,

Slavery to coercive government power

This is the choice.

So-called "progressives" may frame the debate differently, they may use clever semantics to disguise and cloak the kind of "change" they advocate, and some may even fool themselves into believing that what they advocate is right.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." - C. S. Lewis

In the end, however, their philosophy relies on coercive power by some imperfect human beings over other likewise imperfect beings.

The ideas of 1776 and 1787 were based on another powerful idea.

“The same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe, the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.”- (John F. Kennedy - 1961 Inaugural)

"Ideas have consequences." - Weaver

One idea led to freedom, opportunity, productivity and plenty for more people than ever had been experienced in the history of civilization. That idea relied upon a Creator-people-government arrangement.

The "other" idea has failed in every society in which it has been implemented, because it relies on a government-over-people arrangement, with little or no regard or acknowledgement of the "Creator/Divine Providence/Supreme Judge of the World" affirmed in our Declaration of Independence from excessive government power.

"Tyranny is a poor provider. It knows neither how to accumulate, nor how to extract." -Edmund Burke