The erosion of these freedoms, that's the true evil—not death, not violence.
Picture it—Robert F. Kennedy Jr., hair slightly unkempt, standing like some modern-day oracle on a podium, proclaiming that our Constitution was crafted for a time of turmoil—real turmoil, mind you. The stuff of nightmares: malaria ripping through towns, smallpox nipping at every corner, and, just for good measure, a bloody skirmish with the King's men across the sea. Yet, here it stands—a nation forged in chaos, held together by a document no thicker than a pamphlet, but what a pamphlet it was! A sacred scroll for a people as wild as the frontier they conquered.
But wait, here's a moment of spine-tingling, cloak-and-dagger suspense for you. The year? 1861. Abraham Lincoln—oh, that tall, brooding man in the stovepipe hat, wading knee-deep in a civil war—decides that the law, the bedrock of liberty, the very fibers of justice, just might be... optional. Chief Justice Roger Taney, pencil-thin mustache twitching in fury, declares Lincoln's suspension of habeas corpus illegal. Oh, it's illegal, alright, and Taney is quick to whip out that Ex parte Merryman ruling, with all the vigor of a man wielding an ancient sword in a duel. Lincoln, a month prior, had locked dissenters away, no trial, no fuss, just the cold click of the cell door. Alas, Lincoln relented, justice was restored rather than ignored.
A sacred scroll for a people as wild as the frontier they conquered.
Does that sound familiar? Oh, it should! Just take a glance at the January 6th detainees—imprisoned, waiting, ticking off the days without a charge. The eerie shadow of that long-ago action crawls up from history, whispering through the bars of their cells.
And the free speech? Ha! Don't make me laugh. Today, they say we're free, but you can feel it in the air—the slow suffocation of thought, the jackbooted suppression of words by those federal agencies, the FBI, the IRS, the omnipresent shadow of the almighty government. Social media platforms, once the modern agora, silenced none other than President Trump himself. And while you, dear shopkeeper, shuttered your livelihood during a pandemic, Gavin Newsom's slick grin flashed in large gatherings, as if to say, "Rules? What rules?"
Election Day looms, a storm on the horizon, and yet, as we watch the clouds gather, can we not see? The division, the splitting of people like atoms, creating an energy that powers the authoritarian machine. They profit from it, you know, the puppet masters pulling the strings, thriving on the noise, the rancor, the outrage.
The left, the right—it's all just camouflage for a darker, more sinister truth: authoritarians are the real players here. And they have global buddies—oh yes, Russia, China, Iran—those bedfellows who wish for nothing more than a United States too busy tearing itself apart to stand tall.
You see, free speech, that unruly beast, that first right enshrined in the Constitution, that's the foundation. Take that away, and what are we? Just another cog in the international machine, no different from any other lackluster regime.
Today, they call it "hate speech," "misinformation," "disinformation"—terms wielded like daggers to cut down dissent. Bigotry rebranded, dressed up in 21st-century finery, but still the same beast. And gender, oh gender—how many do they have now? Twenty? Fifty? Two genders, that's what the animals have, and last I checked, we were part of the animal kingdom.
Yet, there's a way to slay the dragon of bigotry—and it's not by silencing it. No, no, no. We must let it scream, let it howl, let it be ugly. Only then can it be confronted, challenged, debated, and—dare I say it?—defeated. To mute it is to let it fester in the dark, growing in silence.
If America is to remain the land of the bold, the land of innovation, the land where the best ideas rise to the top like floaters in a commode, then we must remain loud, brash, argumentative. We must "agree to disagree," as the classic liberals said, allowing the cacophony of voices to shape our future. After all, you don't see China innovating. No, they steal from us! Our precious technological advancements, our fruits of freedom, plucked from the tree while their math and science students ace their tests. But innovation—true innovation—comes from freedom, from messy, loud, glorious debate.
We must ignore the authoritarians among us, those petty dictators with rainbow colored hair and face tattoos with degrees in gender studies, re-education and activism, who tell us what's "best" for us and for kids. They deserve neither our respect nor our submission.
True innovation—comes from freedom, from messy, loud, glorious debate.
As the tides of political passion rise, it is our duty to remember one thing: it's the immigrants, albeit law abiding immigrants, those fresh souls seeking refuge through the front door into our strange land, who tell us, "You don't know how good you've got it." The irony, the beautiful, tragic irony. The very freedoms we forget to cherish, they know all too well. They come here not because we're flawless, but because we're free.
So, picture this: a land where your hard-earned money isn't siphoned off by bureaucrats, where you can say whatever the hell you want, where failure isn't a life sentence, but a chance to reinvent, rebuild, and strike out again for success. That's the promise of the West, the promise of America.
The erosion of these freedoms, that's the true evil—not death, not violence. No, the real horror is to live in a world where your voice is nothing but a whisper. Give me liberty or... give me liberty! Because I'd rather be penniless and free than living large under the thumb of authoritarians.
