As a nation of free men, we will live forever or die by suicide.
I’ve thought about that sentence thousands of times since I first read it. To me, it’s optimistic (America can live forever), while also being a warning (the real threat to America is from Americans). It highlights the never-ending struggle between freedom and tyranny. In essence, it’s everything that’s important about America.
Likewise, this famous quote has always stuck with me:
If you can keep it.
But keep it FROM WHOM?
Not from foreign invaders or conquering armies. Not from far-off kings and their tyrannical orders. Not even from crazy guys in horned helmets.
From the government.
The AMERICAN government.
The founders knew that the greatest threat to the freedom of Americans was ALWAYS going to be the American government. That’s why they gathered together and thought about all the ways that governments have ruined the lives of their people — then set out to create a set of rules that ensured those things couldn’t happen here.
For generations, America was the shining beacon on the hill — the place where you could be free to peruse your own personal happiness. And that freedom led to massive accumulation of wealth. Not because America has magic dirt, (Midwest growing soil being the exception!) but because America was the place where the incentives were set up to maximize human flourishing. In America, the individual was placed ABOVE the state. This was a revolutionary idea when human history was filled with all-powerful kings and emperors telling their subjects to obey or else. And since America’s founding, millions of people have taken advantage of the protections provided by the Constitution to pursue their own happiness in the Land of the Free.
IF YOU CAN KEEP IT.
But all organizations want to grow, and government is no different. The American government almost immediately started attacking the Constitution — no surprise considering the document was designed to LIMIT GOVERNMENT, not the people.
You don’t have the right to free speech because the Constitution says that you do. You have the right to free speech because you are a free person — it is the GOVERNMENT that is restricted from impeding on that right. The founders knew that tyrannical governments often (by necessity) restrict the speech of their subjects, thus they specifically stated the American government could not do this.
But the state is nothing if not persistent. Over the years, government has successfully attacked the safeguards that were supposed to keep government in check and away from the rights of Americans to live their lives as they choose.
To me, the most vital of these safeguards is one of the most simple:
Once the money is fake, the entire economy is certain to follow as the government and the bankers collude to print the wealth out from under us. With fake money, we’re always able to find cash for wars (even wars we’re not in!) while shamefully failing the people we sent off to fight in those wars. But undermining this part of the Constitution is only the beginning.
Wickard v. Filburn opened the gates to federal regulation of nearly anything when the Supreme Court ruled that Roscoe Filburn could be fined for growing wheat on his own land to feed his own animals because he “impacted” interstate commerce.
Kelo v. City of New London established “eminent domain”, meaning government can force you off your property if it pinky swears it has a good reason (meaning more taxes) to do so. Even worse — and typical of government — the place where Susette Kelo’s house once stood remains empty.
The USA PATRIOT Act, passed during peak 9/11 hysteria, was used over 100x more often for drug dealers than for terrorism cases during the initial years of the program. (And I wouldn’t bet it’s gotten any better since.) The National Defense Authorization Act authorized indefinite detention of Americans, in violation of Americans’ Sixth Amendment rights.
All these cases — and many more besides — slowly erode the foundation of America as a place where the individual reigns supreme over the state. The balance of power has flipped, and now we’re in a place where the government acts as the tyrants of old, declaring the power to close your business or put your children in masks or shut down energy production.
The release of the Twitter Files show the American government was DEEPLY entwined in censorship decisions of social media companies. As taxpayers, we literally paid FBI agents to be Twitter’s Hall Monitors and tattle on the legal speech of American citizens. Then the taxpayers paid AGAIN when the FBI handed over millions of dollars for the service.
And while this was going on, the agency knowingly lied to the American people about Russiagate, setting up a confrontation with a nuclear power over incredibly corrupt Ukraine. (A conversation that was also censored) But the entire time, the election interference was coming from inside the house.
The inversion of the ideals of America are so complete that New York City Mayor Eric Adams claims “Big Brother is protecting you” with surveillance equipment around the city.
And as we stray further from the ideals of the Constitution and government takes a bigger role in the lives of Americans, those lives inevitably get worse. This is the death by suicide that Lincoln spoke of. Death — not of the place called “America” on the map (for now) — but the ideals that made America the envy of the world in the first place.
The American Constitution is something I would be willing to die for, and I'm not even an American. The greatest work in human history.
Give me liberty, or give me death.
The greatest danger to America is not just any Americans but ignorant Americans.
Our founders had the advantage of seeing government invested in a single person (the monarchy). They understood that those who hunger for power are the ones we should never trust with it. In a way, the fact that slavery existed when the US was founded helped wisen them up even more. If you remove the rose-colored glasses of the history books, many in the north elite were anti-slavery *not* because they found anything particularly egregious in the exploitation of black bodies, or any bodies really. Just look at how they treated northern factory workers, particularly children. They had no problem running many of them through textile machines. Many of those in the debates over slavery were primarily concerned with gaining an upper hand financially. If they could destroy the "free labor" in the South, they would destroy the edge the old-money south had. Economics has always been seen (whether it is or not) something of a zero-sum game ironically among those who have the most in our society. But the fight over slavery demonstrated to them early on the way one group would maneuver to increase their own power and wealthy by abusing lawmaking to impoverish another group. (Which is not to say good hearted abolitionists were not in abundance, but just like those who exploit the "climate crisis" or "sensitivity training," the ones who make the most money aren't the true believers but the opportunists.) For that reason, we got the blessing of a decentralized system with strong states rights, at least at the beginning.
But two hundred years later, people have forgotten that government is made up of opportunists who would really rather not make an honest living, opportunists (whether we're talking about a monarchy, a ruling elite class, or a bunch of bureaucrats) who see the masses as resources, burdens, and obstacles, and for that reason you can trust them with nothing. That was obvious when there was a king. It was obvious when northern industrialists were trying to deprive the southern plantation owners of their source of labor. And now it's being done in the guise of supporting the "democracy" in Ukraine or "managing the pandemic" or battling the "climate crisis." At every turn, the elite and the behemoth bureaucracy suck more and more autonomy and wealth out of the "peasants" and the "peasants" keep asking for more. It's frankly disturbing.