You Will Be Forced to Choose: Slave or Free

What did John Adams say about the Constitution and its suitability to govern mobs of evil men? Some thoughts on what it takes to be free in an age of self-imposed serfdom.

Americans will eventually be forced to decide if they wish to be free people or slaves.  Perhaps they will be slaves with good incomes and relatively decent standards of living, for a little while anyway, but slaves they shall be nonetheless if they don’t understand where our freedoms come from, and what it takes to live them out and hand them down to posterity.

I outlined how our founders viewed freedom in these very pages back in April, in an article you can find here.  An excerpt from that column:

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You see, freedom is not the norm in the world. If it were, then every people group would prosper under it, with a thriving economy, relative peace, property rights, and a healthy respect for one another’s independent human rights, such as those laid out in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution.  Freedom allows us to believe what we choose to believe, but also requires us to give room for others to do the same.  It does not mean we must respect their points of view, but generally, if someone can defend his or her points of view, I think much more highly of that individual than someone who is purely emotion driven.

Free people must understand why it is that Americans stand by freedom, and the rights afforded to free people.  It is no longer enough to simply scream about rights and freedoms without understanding that the source of those freedoms is what makes us unique among nations.

America’s founders believed the following:

God made man in his image, with “his image” meaning an imperishable spirit.

As created beings after God’s image, mankind has dignity.

Because man is created in dignity, he is afforded inalienable rights, or rights that cannot be taken away.

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While it is not my aim to be political in this journal, I must use a personal example to drive my point home today.  Late last month, when U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland boasted about the government’s prosecution and indefinite detention of January 6 prisoners, I had a few friends and colleagues forward me the article with the question of whether or not they should fear speaking out against election maladministration and potential cheating in the upcoming election.  I believe Garland was referring specifically to similar actions as occurred on January 6 in his remarks, but millions of Americans sense the threat to free speech not just in the far-flung corners of the world, like in Brazil, but right here at home, thanks largely in part to careless and malicious words like Garland’s.

It is not government that gives us rights or makes us free.  Our Constitution is supposed to protect us from overreach and tyranny and is the greatest example to date of a man-made construct slowing the advance of evil; that construct is beginning to crumble and fail, and with it, expose Americans to persecution that shouldn’t exist in this nation.  Last month, Surprise, Arizona, mayor Skip Hall had a woman arrested for supposedly violating meeting code by criticizing government employees.  The incident occurred in front of her minor child and was caught on tape, and has rightfully subjected Hall, a Vietnam veteran, to a maelstrom of hatred and vitriol.  I wrote him this in response:

The government does not determine if we are slave or free.  We do.  Government may not recognize the freedom of man as given by God, but we can. The woman he had arrested, Rebekah Massie, suffered major injustice at the hands of government when she was expressing her right to free speech (no, the government is not guaranteed kindness in return for our ability to speak to or at them), but rest assured, she was as free then as she will ever be because she chose to exercise her freedom. In a just world, she would face no consequence for it. In this unjust world, she shines as an example to millions who would rather go along to get along. 

The difficult thing that people don’t want to accept is that exercising those freedoms may be met with persecution.  You may be frog-marched out of the building for standing in front of a school board to criticize them for allowing your daughters to be crushed in athletic competition by men.  You may be targeted by a government agency, such as the IRS, because of your political affiliations and contributions.

The Constitution was not and is not capable of preventing evil.  Its intent was to restrain it and provide a safety net for those willing to stand up and act as free people do.  If you’re catching my drift here, you’ll find great wisdom in John Adams’s brilliant words about both subjects:

Our constitution was made only for a moral and religious people.  It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.

My good friend, brother in faith Steve Cassell, a liberty pastor, told me once, “Heroes do hard things.” I guess this is perhaps the most logical of truths, given that everyone would be a hero otherwise, and we know that isn’t the case. It is very hard to stare down the barrel of being cancelled. I would know, because I have been there and lost a six-figure career for gaining prominence in a controversial field. In the moment I was terminated, I had very little income guaranteed and was dealing with personal hell that further threatened my livelihood, but I was free, and when everyone decides to be free, consequences be damned, then free we shall be.

Spread courage in the face of tyranny and adversity. Trust me, it is contagious.