Inquisition 21
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Threats to liberty
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The greatest threat to the West comes not from Islamic fundamentalists but from its own repressive absolutist doctrines and systems of control.
Samuel Adams on liberty
In a Boston Gazette essay in the 1770s, titled Internal Dangers to Individual Liberty, Samuel Adams, one of the signatories to the Declaration of Independence wrote, “It is a tremendously important and never-ending problem for the self-governing American people to be not only adequately informed but ever alert and vigorously active in forestalling whenever possible, and combating whenever necessary, any and all threats to Individual Liberty and to its supporting system of constitutionally limited government.
“In this connection, it is essential to keep in mind that the greatest danger lies in the subtle and gradual, or piecemeal, approach of danger -- by which the foundations are gradually eroded rather than by open and outright assault; accompanied by harsh attacks upon all who seek to alert the people to such danger whenever it threatens.”
In a later essay titled Candidus, he continues: “If the liberties of America are ever compleatly ruined, of which in my opinion there is now the utmost danger, it will in all probability be the consequence of a mistaken notion of prudence, which leads men to acquiesce in measures of the most destructive tendency for the sake of present ease - - -.
“The liberties of our country, the freedom of our civil constitution, are worth defending at all hazards: and it is our duty to defend them against all attacks. We have received them as a fair inheritance from our worthy ancestors. They purchased them for us with toil and danger and expense of treasure and blood; and transmitted them to us with care and diligence. It will bring an everlasting mark of infamy upon the present generation, enlightened as it is, if we should suffer them to be wrested from us by violence without a struggle; or be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men. Of the latter we are in most danger at present. Let us therefore be aware of it. Let us contemplate our forefathers and posterity; and resolve to maintain the rights bequeathed to us from the former, for the sake of the latter. Instead of sitting down satisfied with the efforts we have already made, WHICH IS THE WISH OF OUR ENEMIES, the necessity of the times, more than ever, calls for our utmost circumspection, deliberation, fortitude and perseverance. Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom! It is a very serious consideration, which should deeply impress our minds, that millions yet unborn may be the miserable sharers in the event.
"The tragedy of American freedom, it is to be feared, is nearly compleated. A tyranny seems to be at the very door. It is to little purpose, then, to go about coolly to rehearse the gradual steps that have been taken, the means that have been used, and the instruments employed to encompass the ruin of the public liberty. We know them and we detest them. But what will this avail, if we have not courage and resolution to prevent the completion of their system?"
To repeat him – “If we should - - - be cheated out of them by the artifices of false and designing men.” From whom “we are in most danger at present.” And “Let us remember that if we suffer tamely a lawless attack upon our liberty, we encourage it, and involve others in our doom!” Which is what we have all done in allowing draconian social engineering laws, based on such ‘mistaken notions of prudence’ as socially and sexually appropriate behaviour, the protection of children and political correctness.
Samuel Adams went on to join fifty-five other men to sign the Declaration of Independence, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever.
Or any other pretence whatever.
In his 1850 book The Law, Frederick Bastiat warns of a normal progression of governments and societies from independence and liberty to socialism, and from there to totalitarianism, generally within less than a century. He sees the main cause as the insidious threat to liberty of the ‘power of public plunder’. The US is now such a publicly plundered state with socialistic control of citizens.
Threats to liberty
Samuel Adams on liberty
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