An Individualist Call to Political Arms
There is a motto engraved in marble outside the National Archives in Washington, where original copies of our founding documents are displayed. It says, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”. I wondered which of our Founders uttered such wisdom and found it’s origin in Bartlett’s online: http://www.bartleby.com/100/777.24.html “It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.—John Philpot Curran: Speech upon the Right of Election, 1790. (Speeches. Dublin, 1808.) This full context of the stone engraved motto in our capital city is worthy of serious consideration and application to the state of affairs in which we find ourselves. Large majorities of Americans are materially in better condition than at any time in our history. We have literally thousands of indolent diversions (the stupid box topping the list - it is probably safe to say more people watch sports on television than practice and play on a team). Even the poorest among us live better than the poor anywhere in the world. There are more second and third and fourth hand items available to poor folks, keeping only the laziest from having some base level of comfort. There are few people in America without electricity, transportation and food. American prosperity is unparalleled in the history of man. Common Americans enjoy more personal freedom and choices than anywhere on Earth. And yet, it seems a great number have chosen indolence over action. A toxic cloud of apathy and ignorance has blinded common sense in the people of this nation to the chains of servitude binding our national soul. Over the last 100 years the American citizen has become prey to the active. The 16th amendment to the Constitution (allowing income taxes) gave the state its first chains on the individual, albeit a light one at first. The socialist ‘progressive’ programs of the New Dealers followed, adding the golden chains of National retirement security and a new kind of aid to the poor, where what once was a gift of choice became a right to take by government force with a vote.