“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
No group of people anywhere can ever hope to hold on to their liberty for long unless they were willing to die for it. Where did you get the idea that your liberty would come without a price?
I got the idea from my parents and grandparents, as well as knowing the history of my ancestors. *None* of my ancestors had to shoot other Americans to keep their liberty intact - only people from other nations. (Germans in two wars, Red Chinese and North Koreans in another.) THAT was the price I was taught to be ready to make.
This is what I learned from my father, grandfather, and great-grandfather directly. They’d all been in American wars overseas. They all hated what they had seen of war; it wasn’t noble, just cruel, random, dehumanizing. They all believed that the brotherhood found in battle could be more easily found in peace inf men were of good will towards each other, instead of giving in to impulses to hate. They never wanted any of their children to have to engage in war.
And each had gone to fight believing that they were doing it so that their children would never have to pick up a gun to win a political argument.
The one direct ancestor I have who was involved in the Civil War was my great-great-grandfather, who lived in NJ and wasn’t in the Union Army. He was however one of the many farmers in the NJ/Pennsylvania area who was brought into the post-Gettysburg landscape on an emergency basis to bury the corpses of men fallen on both sides. (There were more corpses than the locals could bury and their putrefaction was poisoning the watertables.)
He stayed to watch Lincoln give the Gettysburg Address and was so completely moved by the man’s sincere request for civic harmony, rather than war, as a way to resolve differences. He grew a beard, got a stovepipe hat (still in the family), and became an itinerant preacher in NW NJ, preaching Methodism and peace until his death in his 80s.
So THAT is where I got that idea.
By the way, Jefferson made that comment about the “tree of Liberty” in regards to his views of the rebels in Shays’ Rebellion. We know how that turned out. Raising arms against the forces of the Federal government - no matter how liberty-inspired that impulse may be - has NEVER resulted in anything good for the rebels. Do You truly believe that it would be any different now?
So I turn the question back to you. Where did you get the idea that shooting your fellow citizens is the only way to guarantee liberty, something we all want, no matter whether Democrat or Republican?