“People never give up their liberties but under some delusion.”
-Edmund Burke, Irish statesman, economist, philosopher, and a contemporary of our Founders
I read this quote, and it stopped me in my tracks. We gave up a lot of our liberties over the past year. If Burke is correct, that begs the question: Are we under a delusion?
If you say that we were forced to give up our liberties because of a pandemic, I point to the first three words of the Constitution: “We the People.” The Constitution does not start with “We the Unelected Scholars, Bureaucrats, or Medical Professionals.” It doesn’t start with “We, the Elected Members of the Executive, Legislative, and Judicial Departments.” It begins with us, We the People.
If you say that the doctors know best, I say, let the best and brightest advise us. Let our elected representatives listen. But in the end, not one freedom should be taken away for an extended time. We go back to that old thing about power and money. Follow the money. Look for who is invested in power rather than in the power of our founding documents. Our forefathers were fed up with top-down leadership. They didn’t all agree on how to establish a self-governing nation, but they all agreed that We the People would be the freest if power was in the hands of We the People.
Are we deluded into thinking that people with power know best? Are we blinded into thinking that more money will solve our problems? Check out Saul Alinsky’s eight fundamentals to change from a free to a socialist society:
1. Health care. Control health care and you control the people.
2. Poverty. Increase the poverty level as high as possible; poor people are easier to control and will not fight back if you are providing everything for them to live.
3. Debt. Increase the debt to an unsustainable level. That way you are able to increase taxes, and this will produce more poverty.
4. Gun control. Remove the ability to defend themselves from the government. That way you can create a police state.
5. Welfare. Take control of every aspect of their lives (food, housing, and income).
6. Education. Take control of what people read and listen to. Take control of what children learn in school.
7. Religion. Remove the belief in God from the government and schools.
8. Class warfare. Divide the people into the wealthy and the poor. This will cause more discontent, and it will be easier to tax the wealthy with the support of the poor.
“Alinsky, Saul David, 1909-1972. Rules For Radicals: a Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals. New York: Vintage Books, 1972.”
Is Burke correct? Do you think we might be under a delusion to give up our liberties and forsake our role as a self-governed people? Or do we have a decision to make?
