Although we are not using guns, we are now engaged in a great civil war.  Like the founders of our country we find ourselves battling an unresponsive self-styled elite which is intent of making us slaves to their will.  They have either forgotten or oppose the basic principles on which this country was founded.  Instead of liberty, they offer us false promises of security.  Instead of the opportunity to make our own way to success, they offer and, perhaps, force upon us the equality of the ant hill.  They see us as equal slave-laborers for their own glory.  But, we were never meant to be a collective of conformity to their will.  Our founders knew we are created with certain unalienable rights and one of the most important of these rights is liberty.

The self-styled elite manipulate language to deceive and confuse.  Even the word “liberty” in their use becomes a word for the collective, for the group, not the individual.  They claim liberty means things like freedom from fear, freedom from want, freedom from hearing things that displease.  Most their “freedoms” are about eliminating real decisions and enforcing conformity.  What they push is not freedom but conformity to their ideas.  For example, many who say they are pro-choice don’t really want women to know all the potential consequences of their decision.  The “elite” purposely prevent women from hearing other alternatives and push as hard as possible for them to get the abortion.  Why?  It is because what they want is to increase the number of abortions and line the pockets of the abortion providers, who then contribute to other morally bankrupt political collectivist causes near and dear to the heart of the “elite.”

Real freedom involves real choices which require both risk and hard work.  Real freedom involves self-discipline and responsibility. To be really free you must have choices with real consequences.  Even teenagers know this instinctively.  And, wise parents know that part of growing up is learning that our decisions and actions have consequences.  We need freedom from a government that wants to suppress our real freedom to make choices.  They want to tell us what we can eat, what we can drive, and how much money we are allowed to make.  They are mad with and mad for power.  Their attitude and efforts are the very definition of tyranny and oppression.  And now, and now they want to even make all our health decisions for us.  This is the ultimate “usurpation.”

“Usurpation?”  Gee that is an old-fashioned word.  It may be old-fashioned but it is also accurate.  The founders used this word in the Declaration.  Usurpation means taking away someone else’s authority, their right to make their own decisions, their competence to take care of themselves.  This is exactly what many in our government and bureaucracies today are doing to us.  They are usurping our authority over ourselves, our responsibility for ourselves.  They want us to be mindless drones in their giant utopian machine.  They are forging our shackles in Washington.  If we do not stop them we will see a new slavery, which will rob us both of our adulthood and our freedom. 

We are also fighting for virtue.  Gee, that sure is an old fashioned word too.  We must hold each other and our leaders to account for our moral failings.  Real freedom requires virtue and the self-discipline that comes from genuine virtue. For example, they tell us raising taxes to take care of the poor is the charitable thing to do. That is not charity. Forcing someone to support the unfortunate through the coercive force of government is not charity. It is not virtuous. It is, instead a form of theft. If I voluntarily give some of my money to help someone else that is charity and is a virtuous act. If someone else points a gun at me and takes my money, even if he intends to give it so someone in need, that person has committed the crime of theft. It is very interesting how little the Joe Biden’s of the world give to charity voluntarily. It is also very interesting how they equate forcing others to pay more in taxes with virtue. They do not know what real virtue is.

I am so tired of being lectured by these moral failures in government. And, boy do we have a lot of those in government today.  I do not care if the candidate has a D, an R, or any other letter after his or her name.  If that person cannot be trusted by his or her own family then why should we trust them?  But, let us not stop at infidelity.  Aren’t you tired of being lied to?  If they can’t tell the truth, if we prove them liars by their actions, we must remove them from office. 

Some of our opposition even tries to distort the very concepts of truth and lie.  Their definition depends on the circumstances.  If someone they agree with politically tells a bald faced lie they race to find ways to justify it but if someone on the other side is just mistaken about something, he or she is roundly abused for “lying.”  I am tired of that game and I hope you are too.  Are you tired of that old game?

Another game that is getting tiresome is their attempts to ruin people through assaulting the reputation and by bankrupting them through frivolous lawsuits. The perfect example of this is what they have done to Sarah Palin and her family. Not only is every move she makes and word she says twisted beyond recognition in an attempt to “get” her. They stoop to personal attacks on her children and husband. On top of that, since the election they have brought 15 bogus lawsuits about “ethical violations” against her and nearly bankrupted her family. All of the suits have been thrown out but look at the cost in time and money that she had to waste to defend her self and her family.

Our opponents are the opposite of virtuous. They are despicable moral bankrupts who will do anything to exalt themselves. They have little or no virtue.

Virtue was an old Roman word.  Virtue is what you have when you keep your promises no matter the consequences.  Virtue is when you stand by your principles and do the right thing even when abandoning your principles might benefit you financially or socially.  Virtue is when you stand by your principles in the face of threat and attack.  And virtue is what we should expect of ourselves and of those who serve us, the politicians and bureaucrats. 

Yes, I said serve us!  According to the Declaration the purpose of government is to secure our rights, to protect them and government must have our consent in order to govern.  They are supposed to be our servants, not our masters, and they have forgotten that. And, we seem to have forgotten that self-discipline and virtue are requirements for maintaining our God given right to freedom. We have sold our freedom for promises of goodies from a false god, the idol of government. We have been worshipping an idol and not the God who created us.  We have sought our blessings from government but government is not the source of blessings. 

Our blessing of liberty was given to us by God and government was instituted only to protect that blessing.  We Americans instituted this particular government, we set it up, and we let it grow out of control to usurp our authority.  Many of us Americans came to worship what our own hands had made and expect from it the blessing which only God and our own hard work can provide.  We must smash the idol of government in our hearts and return to the liberty God gave us.  Quit expecting so much from government.  We must clip its wings and take back the authority which has been usurped from us.  We must, as one of our states’ mottos says, “Live free or die!” Government can give none of us anything that it has not already taken from some of us. Don’t let the tyrants buy you with your own money!

July 4^th, 1776, with a continental colonial army in the field fighting for their rights as Englishmen, the Continental Congress prepared to sign the document that many felt might be their own death warrant.  Several grim and dark jokes seem to have been made about hanging in that chamber but the actual mood was very somber and serious. They did not commit themselves fully to a struggle for independence from the greatest empire the world had ever seen without counting the cost. This is, perhaps, why the final words of the Declaration of Independence, just above their signatures, read “And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm Reliance on the Protection of divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”

With those words they pledged themselves as a sacrifice for freedom. Some of them, indeed, lost their lives. Others, rich before the war, ended it penniless. Others to keep their honor sacred refused offers of the release of beloved family members from horrible and almost always fatal British prison ships in spite of their breaking hearts. They meant what they said. As the people of that day would have put it, they were in earnest.

Earlier in the Declaration they had referred to the “Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God.” It was more than a rhetorical flourish. These well educated men were very familiar with the background for such a formulation. Back in the 16^th century, the Protestant theologian John Calvin, in his Institutes of the Christian Religion (a very popular book in colonial America), had stipulated that “the law of God which we call the moral law, is nothing else than a testimony of natural law and of that conscience which God has engraved upon the minds of men.” Many of the men gathered on that solemn occasion were lawyers, steeped in English law and jurisprudence, and were, therefore, very familiar with the statement of the famed 17^th century English jurist Sir Edward Coke that “The law of nature is that which God at the time of creation of the nature of man infused into his heart” and with what the most popular law commentator of their own day, William Blackstone had written in his classic Commentaries on the Laws of England. Blackstone had written that “As man depends absolutely upon his maker for every thing, it is necessary that he should in all points conform to his maker’s will. This will of his maker is called the law of nature.”

Their self-evident truths and rights endowed by man’s Creator shows that they believed God was calling them to do what they did. With feeble steps of trembling faith, with reliance on one another and on the protection of God, they launched themselves into implacable war with an empire which had the world’s best army and the world’s best and largest navy. For them the “Providence” on which they depended was not merely simply the way things happened in the world. For them, providence, as John Calvin had earlier summarized, meant that God “as keeper of the keys” actually “governs all events.”

Samuel Adams, John’s relative who had formed the Sons of Liberty and was the mastermind of the first Tea Party, noted that the British had tried to make the state a god. He argued that Americans had seen through that folly. On analyzing the Declaration, he wrote “We have explored the temple of royalty, and found the idol we have bowed down to has eyes which see not, ears that hear not our prayers, and a heart like the nether millstone.” He claimed that through the Declaration and its emphasis on providence that “We have this day restored the Sovereign to whom alone men ought to be obedient.”

Samuel Adams dismissed the argument that Americans had to always obey the government in order to obey God. He felt the success of America had given it the responsibility to not give up. He wrote, “The hand of heaven appears to have led us on to be, perhaps, humble instruments and means in the great providential dispensation which is completing. We have fled the political Sodom; let us not look back, lest we perish and become a monument of infamy and derision to the world.”

The American pulpit took up this same theme. Before the war, many ministers had called the reverence and deference for the king a form of idolatry. Now they spoke boldly in favor of the cause of independence. In Philadelphia, George Duffield argued that America’s forefathers had fled Europe to escape tyranny and oppression and that freedom is God’s gift to us because we hated tyranny so. He gave thanks for God’s “adorable goodness” and said that Americans “were born the heirs of freedom.”

So, today it is time to throw off idolatry and reject the idea that government is our ultimate security and refuge. Government is made up of human beings and those human beings have all the failings and sins of human beings. Instead we must liberate ourselves from the clutches of a new and growing tyranny in this our most imperial of presidencies. We must refuse the state’s claim to become our new god. The state will prove a false and destructive god. We are the heirs of freedom, meant to make our own way. We are free to obey God or refuse but God never intended us to give his role to a mere president, or to a bureaucracy. It is time for us to cast down these false idols and realize that we must take responsibility for ourselves. We must quit expecting government to do everything for us and to solve every problem and remember that we have a birthright to fend for ourselves. God created us with the ability, right, and duty to make decisions for ourselves. Expecting government to take care of all our problems is selling our birth right for a one time offer of a bowl of soup. If we sell it, it will be hard to get it back.