There is a quote which is anachronistically attributed to Thomas Jefferson but that he and the other founding fathers would doubtless have proudly claimed. “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” This quote mirrors such actual quotes as “when tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty” and that “rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.”

These quotes reflect the true and foundational ideology of our great nation and yet are unheard of in contemporary culture and politics. Only to a fringe and recluse minority of the American people do the sentiments of Thomas Paine still seem like Common Sense: “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one.”

Of course the world dominating cultural, economic, and military superpower that the United States is today cannot easily be made to “fear its people” and the minimalist republic of our founding is surely unlikely to ever return.

And yet our politicians and the revolving sphere of “entertainment” still capitalize on this latent reflex to rebel, our instinctive longing for liberty. Practically every movie involves some sort of rebel underdog, and every politician still uses “freedom” as their political tool. Every new Star Wars media will always be about rebellion, and every political movement will always be about the “freedoms” to choose, immigrate, smoke or have loud trucks. Of course, any war we fight is to keep us “free” and if you oppose any of these things you hate freedom!

Thomases Paine and Jefferson are surely cringing from their graves; not only have we given up and rolled over but we have ceded the very language of liberty as well. We, the inheritors of a revolution for less than a 2% tax are now happily complicit to unceasing government surveillance, curfews, mask mandates, regulation of every kind, and taxation 50 times more than what our founders overthrew the world’s greatest empire for.

ALL THIS IS BEFORE I BRING UP THE TSA!

Today when I drove home from the library I was pulled over by a police officer and I found myself shaking. I don’t shake in general, I’m not a shaky or fearful person. I wasn’t speeding, I wasn’t drinking, and yet I was scared. These police encounters are the only real interaction Americans have with their government. And in relation to this one touchable extension of our oppression, even law abiding citizens avoid them, dread seeing them behind them, they are scared of them. This is not the relationship we are supposed to have with our government.

When documents come out alleging that entire elements of our government and security apparatus are compromised by blackmail of their sexual predation on minors--does the government tremble at the “people” to whom they are accountable? Surely they make arrests? Surely they release all their evidence?

Nope, and why should they.

Our founders knew the nature of power; it is corrupting and it is evil if albeit necessary. They made a government that would choke itself to slow its growth, they tried to spread its power out systematically, but their ace in the hole was that the American people would simply never allow their government to do what they didn’t want. The idea was, when the government becomes too corrupt to vote back down you must resort to violence. i.e. “The tree of liberty must from time to time be watered with the blood of patriots and tyrants”

It is with great sadness that I suspect we are no longer that ace in the hole. In fact the vast majority of every political party “stands against all forms of political violence.” And so the American people have resigned themselves to irrelevance and quiet servitude, we will watch as our nation grows farther and farther from what it was, and what it could be.

And yet, the tree of liberty never truly dies for there is always plenty of drink with which to clench its thirst….

Now, I am not calling for Americans to storm DC, or to kill police officers or anything of the sort. I don’t think our country is entirely beyond the ballot–maybe I am a fool or a coward to say so. But there is a point at which the only hope is force. There is a point where the people must uphold their sacred duty enshrined in our declaration of independence. The day may come when the weight of our forefathers falls upon us and we must do as they promised…Would anyone stand, would you, would I?

“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”

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