Liberty versus Tyranny: Which Way, America?

The over-reaching policies of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, a trio manipulated by the puppeteers of the Far Left (including men like Soros), have triggered a very public expression of passion by millions of citizens in a battle of ideas--a battle which has been seething beneath the surface for decades! The problem has been that, until now, most Americans went about their business and ignored it, while some who called themselves "progressives" were working to undermine the very foundations of liberty.

Today, however, ordinary citizens are engaged under several banners (TEA Parties, Libertarians, Independents,) and as individuals, and they are beginning to learn about and articulate the difference between two conflicting ideas: invididual freedom vs. coercive government control. America's Founders identified the conflicting ideas as liberty versus tyranny.

Abraham Lincoln had a clear understanding of it and declared 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 online collections, such as those at the Liberty Fund Library, 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. On the one side is one charismatic, but mere mortal (Krauthammer), man (Obama) out there carrying the water for the behind-the-scenes powers who wish to "change" America from its founding philosophy of liberty. They believe they can dominate the minds of citizens who, they thought, had been dumbed down by decades of neglect and censorship of the ideas of liberty.

On the other side are millions of citizens who have been awakened, who have been aroused, and who are confidently asserting their Creator-endowed rights as the "ONLY Keepers" (see Justice Story).

Providence may have outwitted the those who "threaten reappearing tyranny and oppression," by allowing the development of technologies which make the Founders' ideas as available as today's newspaper, and a powerful tool in the new battle.

Thanks. Lincoln was clear in his defense of the principles of Jefferson as being those of liberty.

How ironic that the man who now attempts to drive the nation away from the "principles of Jefferson" launched his candidacy for president in the land of Lincoln.

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

"I deem [this one of] the essential principles of our government and consequently [one] which ought to shape its administration:... The honest payment of our debts and sacred preservation of the public faith." --Thomas Jefferson: 1st Inaugural, 1801. ME 3:322

"I sincerely believe... that the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:23

"[With the decline of society] begins, indeed, the bellum omnium in omnia [war of all against all], which some philosophers observing to be so general in this world, have mistaken it for the natural, instead of the abusive state of man. And the fore horse of this frightful team is public debt. Taxation follows that, and in its train wretchedness and oppression." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:40

"To preserve [the] independence [of the people,] we must not let our rulers load us with perpetual debt. We must make our election between economy and liberty, or profusion and servitude. If we run into such debts as that we must be taxed in our meat and in our drink, in our necessaries and our comforts, in our labors and our amusements, for our callings and our creeds, as the people of England are, our people, like them, must come to labor sixteen hours in the twenty-four, give the earnings of fifteen of these to the government for their debts and daily expenses, and the sixteenth being insufficient to afford us bread, we must live, as they now do, on oatmeal and potatoes, have no time to think, no means of calling the mismanagers to account, but be glad to obtain subsistence by hiring ourselves to rivet their chains on the necks of our fellow-sufferers." --Thomas Jefferson to Samuel Kercheval, 1816. ME 15:39

Speaking of debt - have you seen that new commercial that shows the Chinese playing us for the fools we've become over our debt? I saw part of it - and didn't get it TIVOed in time... From what I can tell dems are really angry about it... must be great.. Ping me if you find it - it's the kind of thing you'd enjoy. If I find it first, I'll ping you.

I have seen the commercial, but don't know where it is at present.

By the way, check out the very last phrase of the Jefferson quote you cited in your last post. Over the years, that part of his statement had not "clicked" until recent reports started showing that in this time of unemployment, the various government entities are the largest employers, and are paying the highest wages.

Jefferson saw a time when, if deficits and debt became so burdensome, we would be willing to hire "ourselves to rivet the chains on the necks of our fellow sufferers" in order to gain our own "subsistence."

Such an idea would have been unthinkable until now; however, each of us who, now, adds to the federal, state, or county payroll is doing just that--adding to the burden that others, even our grandchildren will have to bear in order for us to gain our "subsistence."

Many just see government employment as another way of making a living. It is not. Every government payroll dollar takes a dollar from the private sector, which is the only sector which creates the wealth of the nation.

Good point - and yeah, Jefferson was amazing. Lincoln commented - something to the effect that his generation wasn't as high a quality as the founding fathers' generation. It concerned him. We are blessed but effort must be made to keep that blessing going ...

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