By Guest Column Jeff Head——Bio and Archives--August 31, 2009
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We stand at a pivotal crossroads in our nation's history
It is a crossroads that we as a people have been a long time coming to, with the pivotal events occurring mostly in the last hundred years, and now escalating much more rapidly in the last few months.
So-called progressives, socialists, marxists, and those seeking to ignore or discard fundamental republican and moral principle have pushed and pushed, have cajoled and cajoled, and have subverted our nation to this very point, calling the truth a lie as they have gone along. Many have fought them, but far too many have ignored the worsening condition, others have been bought and paid for through blackmail, bribes, or appeals to entitlement and vice, still others have been swayed, in the name of congeniality or "reason", to compromise, to have pleasant dialog, and to meet half way with those pushing for the end of our Constitutional Republic, our Free Market, and our way of life and liberty."Bad men cannot make good citizens. It is when a people forget God that tyrants forge their chains. A vitiated state of morals, a corrupted public conscience, is incompatible with freedom. No free government, or the blessings of liberty, can be preserved to any people but by a firm adherence to justice, moderation, temperance, frugality, and virtue; and by a frequent recurrence to fundamental principles." Patrick HenryAnd yet, despite the teachings and urgings of our founders to the contrary, here we are. Faced with existing and looming moral ruin and economic bankruptcy as the Free Market is dismantled before our eyes by wanton marxists who are dedicated precisely to that "fundamental change". They have no interest in the free market or maintaining it or helping it. They are interested in destroying it, along with our fundamental republican principles so they can build a marxist command economy on its ashes with themselves and their close supporters in charge. That is the truth of the situation we face. But events surrounding the current administration are opening a window of opportunity for all patriotic, traditional Americans who love life, liberty, and the opportunities those rights and the principles they are founded upon empower them with. The opportunity to work hard for and realize dreams and pass them on to their loved ones, or at the least bequeath them the same opportuinty in the same environment. Americans are waking up and they are not happy as they realize that their very liberty and their very opportunity to achieve and excel are being robbed from them. In this situation, we must remember that there are certain foundational principles and institutions that we can hold fast to, rally around, and draw other Americans to on our journey up the steep path away from the precipice. It does not require a "new" constitution. It does not require "new" amendments, it does not require losing any of our birth rights or the unalienable rights God in Heaven has given us and that our founders enumerated for us. What it requires is that we, as patriotic, God-fearing, liberty-loving Americans stand and assert our way of life, our constitution, and our rights...and that we do so firmly, without equivocation, and without compromise as regards those birth rights, those unalienable rights, or those fundamental principles. I will try and illustrate the nature of all this by drawing on experiences I have had in life. They were taught to me by my mother and father, who in turn learned it from their parents. Who in turn learned it from many God-fearing and faithful generations before them, and on my Dad's side stretching back into the original colonies in the 1600s.
First: I made a sacred vow and oath, when I came to Jesus Christ and was baptised in His name, to take His name upon me, to try and always have His countenance about me, and to obey His commandments and live as He would live. In so doing I repented of my former sins and self and He saved me spiritually and took me to be His own...and I now go through life constantly reminded of that vow, of that oath and covenant I made with God and Him, and constantly seeking to be more like Him, being lifted up by Him when I fall, and trying to help others do the same. This basic principle, repeated millions of times over in this country, is, in reality, why we are free. Americans who have taken this oath and made that covenant have done so in their hearts. There is no license that makes this possible...nor could there be a government issued license to control it...because the moment man and his government tried to intervene in that process, it would destroy it. The enemies of true liberty and our constitutional republic know this. As it is, Americans who have taken that oath and made that covenant are the most tolerant, most charitable, and most forgiving people as a whole on earth. That is why we are free, that is why others flock here to this environment of freedom based on moral principle. Our founders understood the clear and paramount nature of the religious and moral relationship in the Republic they were creating.So, these three oaths define what I fight and die for."We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net. Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other."- John Adams, Oct. 11, 1798Second: I have made a sacred vow before God and man to my wife, my sweetheart and darling of over 30 years. It is a sacred oath and vow that has bound us together, and has done so within the envrion and confines of that first oath and covenant we have each made. This oath, this covenant of marriage between us, has provided the environment, the frame of reference, and the life long (and for us, the eternal) commitment that allows us to weather every storm while bringing children into this world and raising them in an environment of love and faith. It has allowed us, despite whatever economic, emotional, career, or any other opposition or hardship to endure. Such an oath leads one to understand what it is in life that is worth working hard and sacrificing for. It allows us to establish very long term goals and objectives and sacrifice for one another, and for our children and their future, and for our grandchildren and their future. Such ties, such bonds are intrinsic to a healthy society that practices the morally-constrained liberty that our founders enumerated and vouchsafed for us...and which have been vouchsafed in the centuries since by the blood of patriots. Our enemies know this and have worked tirelessly to destroy the foundation for, and the very definition of this 2nd oath. They do not want strong nuclear families because strong nuclear families result in strong people who are committed to the death to the preservation of the environment that allows them to prosper...and our enemies want that environment destroyed so we can be more easily subjugated, or destroyed. Third: I have taken an oath to protect and defend the constitution of the United States against all enemies foreign and domestic, and to bear true faith and allegiance to the same. I took that oath freely and without any mental or other restraint or compulsion. Here's why. The constitution was written and put in place presicely to define a very limited government for a people who were free. A people bound by individual and personal moral constraint. Such a constitutional republic, with this specific, sacred, and inspired constitution came forth so that the environment of true liberty could be established which made it possible to make and exercise those first two oaths I have spoken of. The values and principles upon which the constitution rests and that were enumerated by the founders, are not "quaint", they are not "outdated". The principles are eternal and are as old as mankind. They found a fertile place for implementation in America in the late 18th century, and God in Heaven, as Patrick Henry said, helped fight their fights, raised up friends to help them, so this environment of liberty could be established. And it was established. And it has endured.
Those enlightened men knew human nature, they knew the human heart, and they knew the intricacies of individual and group dynamics. With all else that has changed in the intervening years, those principles and truths have not changed, and are just as applicable today as they were then.
"[I]f we and our posterity reject religious instruction and authority, violate the rules of eternal justice, trifle with the injunctions of morality, and recklessly destroy the political constitution which holds us together, no man can tell how sudden a catastrophe may overwhelm us, that shall bury all our glory in profound obscurity." Daniel WebsterAnd if we are true to those values and principles, we will not only remain that way, we will cast off the malaise, the darkness, the doomsayer attitudes of those who stand against these principles and we will overcome all enemies foreign and domestic, whatever the cost. The enemies of this nation, both foreign and domestic, must know that their push against these fundamental values and principles are at an end. We say the slide stops here. We say that the time has come for us to stand firm against their relentless push against liberty. We lean into their assault, and push their efforts back the other way and cast them off into the dark depths that are their home. If we do not unflinchingly face those who are seeking to subvert the fabric of our liberty directly and forthrightly now, and if we do not endeavor to pass these truths on to all those around us ... the time will come, as surely as night follows day, and as surely as our founders found, when our liberty will be under so grave a threat that we will be compelled to defeat the resulting tyranny (either foreign or domestic) by nothing short of the force of arms. We must let the enemies of liberty know that we are not only willing to fight, but prepared to do so and to do so with extreme prejudice in defense of our constitution and the principles and values that form its foundation. Those enemies must understand that their fate will be so awful if they attempt extra-constitutional or totalitarian methods of supressing our rights and liberties, that they will not dare to do so.
We are not weak if we make a proper use of those means which the God of nature hath placed in our power. The millions of people, armed in the holy cause of liberty, and in such a country as that which we possess, are invincible by any force which our enemy can send against us. Besides, sir, we shall not fight our battles alone. There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave. - Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775But if we choose wrong, we, or our children or grandchildren will live out the harsh warnings and lessons of history:
"Those people who will not be governed by God will be ruled by tyrants."- William PennAnd for those who think that it cannot happen here. History teaches and tells us differently. Wake up and look around. It already is. As Sophocles wrote well over 23 centuries ago :
"A general dissolution of the principles and manners will more surely overthrow the liberties of America than the whole force of the common enemy.... While the people are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but once they lose their virtue, they will be ready to surrender their liberties to the first external or internal invader." - Samuel Adams
Far-stretching, endless TimeIt is time to stand firm.
Brings forth all hidden things,
And buries that which once did shine.
The firm resolve falters, the sacred oath is shattered. And let none say, "It cannot happen here"
Jeff Head, Jeffhead.com is a 53 year-old father of five children who lives in Southwest Idaho. He and his wife of 31 years are the proud grandparents of three grandsons and three granddaughters. Mr. Head is a member of the Sons of the American Revolution and a member of the U.S. Naval Institute. He worked as a designer, manager, director, and consultant for over twenty-five years in the defense, nuclear power, and computer industries where he was involved in various engineering, support, and management capacities. Projects he has been involed with have included the A-7 attack aircraft program, the MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) program, the San Onofre Nucler Power Project, the South Texas Nucler Power Project, and the Theater High Altitude Air Defense System (THAADS). Jeff can be reached at:jefflhead@msn.com
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