As I watched the beginning of the Boston Red Sox game, the first
baseball game played in Boston since the tragic events of 4/15/2013, I
was flabbergasted by the propaganda that was taking place before my
eyes. Thousands of people applauding the police who had shut down their
city in an attempt to find one unarmed, wounded 19 year old. Thousands
of people applauding the martial law that had come to their city.
Thousands of people applauding the disintegration of The Bill of Rights
and welcoming the armed men who could remove entire families from their
homes at gun point without warrant and without, in my humble opinion,
just cause. All for one lonely, isolated teen accused, not proven, of
doing something evil and already judged guilty by the masses.
The scene was surreal. It reminded me of those other collectivist
nations of the past, where the populace lined the streets and joyously
applauded as their so called leaders who had brought martial law down
upon them paraded by. They welcomed the tyranny. They welcomed the evil.
It was only years after the fact, when the truth was able to come out,
that humanity understood the suffering that authoritarian collectivism
causes. Are we in the United States of America to tread down that same
path? Are we to wake up decades later to discover the mistakes we made,
or are we to learn from others and forego the suffering they went
through? Have we so easily forgotten what our ancestors knew? Is it so
easy to disregard what the founding fathers taught us? Will history
remember us as those who reached the pinnacle of human potential, or as
just another society who forgot history and so repeated it?
Can we remember what it was like before mankind took the first tenuous
steps toward a free society? It really wasn't that long ago that royal
families ruled all of Europe. They lived in opulence while the common
folks lived in squalor. While it is true that there are none alive today
that experienced such tyranny, enough people of empathy left record of
that time for us to imagine the horrors they saw and suffered through.
At first those who would be free agreed to give authority to a few elite
for their protection, but soon the elite were protecting them not from
outsiders who threatened physical harm, but from those within who
questioned the wisdom of the authorities. People feared the authorities
because authority wants fear to spread. Authority feeds on fear. Those
who question authority aren't a threat to the common folk, they are a
threat to the power structure.
We have more to fear from those who would lead us than we do from those
who would attack us from without. Those with power over us have more to
gain from terrorizing us than the outsider with no influence over our
society. When we are frightened we have a tendency to rally around our
so called leaders and abdicate our rights without challenge in the vain
hope that we will be protected. As this progresses it always ends the
same. Secrecy and corruption grow as power is centralized and the ruling
elite become greedier and more entrenched in their positions of power.
Freedom for all allows for more transparency. It allows for more
accountability. It allows for more personal responsibility, even in the
realm of security. It allows for a more open society. It allows for more
closely knit communities based on love and trust rather than doubt and
fear. In short, the principles of freedom and liberty allow for all that
most of us dream about. It even allows for more security, or at least
it allows for us all to choose the level of security we wish to have and
the level of risk we wish to take. I think that the fear generated by
recent events have clouded our thinking and caused us to forget the very
things we should be most conscious of, the very things the people of
the United States of America should hold most sacred.
We are supposed to be the land of the brave. We are not supposed to
tremble and cower in our locked down homes in fear every time some mad
bombers show up in our streets, let alone some misguided kids who, from
what I've been able to gather from mainstream sources, cooked up some
hair-brained scheme. The real terrorists are laughing at us. We are
supposed to be a fiercely independent nation of rugged individualists.
How did we come to be so dependent on the state for our security? How
did we come to be a nation of meekly obedient sheep who so easily defer
to the "authorities" whenever some small time troublemaker acts out? The
real terrorists are taking advantage of us. We are supposed to be a
nation of freedom loving people. How did we come to be a nation of
livestock begging to be tyrannized simply because we have discovered
that the world can be a dangerous place? How can we give up that which
is most precious to us when we are supposedly afraid to lose it? The
real terrorists will be happy to take it from us.
I feel for the people of Boston. I feel for those who lost their lives
and limbs and innocence on April 15th. It was a terrible tragedy, a
horrible thing to go through, but the reaction was worse. Will we go
after those who failed? Will anyone from law enforcement be fired? Will
anyone from law enforcement be implicated in the bombing and/or be held
accountable for negligence? I doubt it. They never are. Perhaps a more
important question is: why do these events always seem to take place
when some drill is going on? Maybe it's time to take a look at how these
drills are run. Maybe we should try to find out how terrorists seem to
know when they're going to happen. In a society with a more open
government the answers to these questions would more likely be
forthcoming.
We, as a society, seem to have forgotten what it means to be free and
independent. We have come to depend on the government power structure so
much that we have forgotten what it takes to find our own way in life.
We have forgotten the pride one gets from working hard to create a
better life for one's self and one's family. We have forgotten the
immense personal sense of satisfaction one gets from knowing that what
you've accomplished you've accomplished through your own efforts, not
through some government largess.
It's time we rediscovered what freedom is about. True freedom brings
peace. True freedom brings brotherhood. True freedom brings about
security. We have tried giving power to a few elite, and they have
failed. We have tried their centralization schemes and they have proved
catastrophic. It's time to decentralize. It's time to strip the federal
government down to its constitutional size. It's time to demand they
obey the law that is the Constitution of the United States. It's time to
stop cowering, step out and show that martial law is unnecessary no
matter the circumstances. If we don't honor freedom in the face of
terrorism, then history will not remember us as a free and independent
people, but the people of the future will instead shake their heads and
ask how we could not see what was coming and how it was we let the evil
grow.
If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.
Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help
me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews
if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.
Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman
Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman
Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti
The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti
The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti
The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti
The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti
The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti
No comments:
Post a Comment