Big Storm Coming – Will Freedom Be Dashed Against the Rocks?

by Tina Grazier

The Pilgrims came to this land because they wanted freedom. They knew the journey would be long and their fate uncertain but their desire for freedom of conscience overwhelmed whatever fears they may have had. These brave souls faced danger risking everything so that they might worship as they pleased. Near the end of their journey it seemed they would perish in a stormy sea as their wooden ships dashed against the rocks:

“Landing of the Pilgrims,” by Felicia Dorothea Hemans

The breaking waves dashed high,
On a stern and rock-bound coast,
And the woods against a stormy sky
Their giant branches tossed;
And the heavy night hung dark
The hills and waters o’er,
When a band of exiles moored their bark
On the wild New England shore…

The Pilgrims were hearty folk that endured many hardships that colored and defined what would become their legacy and our freedom. Do we appreciate what has been bequeathed to us…lessons of perseverance and hard work, the traditions of self-reliance and charity, the values of thankfulness, honesty, and respect for others, and most of all our free republic!

Today a great number of Americans seem not to have learned the value of freedom. In the year 2012 America exists as a country weakened by neediness and indifference. It is a nation disfigured by transformational forces that would supplant liberty with collective dependence on the perceived superiority of an authoritative government. This represents a powerful change in the people; a storm that threatens to bash the good ship America against the rocks and put a fateful end to our nation as we have loved her.

The irony of the situation cannot be denied.

Have you noticed the severity and intensity of the winds of change that threaten our freedoms? Consider this declaration…the potential fate of our nation:

In the collective, that which was yours now belongs to the state which shall, having full and final authority, decide what you may have and how you shall live.

Is that not basic to what our leaders today are saying? They tell us we must share our wealth. They insist that redistribution is necessary for fundamental fairness. They hide behind, rather than stand upon the words that have always had meaning in our republic; words like opportunity and investment. When citizens are limited, when we are no longer able to decide our own fates…where our wealth will be invested, how we choose to think and speak, we are not living in the America of unalienable rights that were established in The Declaration of Independence.

Good citizens, we have erred in our responsibilities to our posterity.

We have chosen men and women to lead us who do not love freedom and who do not respect individual effort. Our President and his supporters and our Congress have no regard for our heritage. They do not admire and will not defend the Constitution, except as it suits as a means to an end. Many believe the concept of individual rights is old fashioned. They cannot be counted on to uphold laws that protect our individual freedoms and rights of speech, religion, property, or the right to keep and bear arms. These leaders seek power to circumvent our rights and alter how opportunity and the pursuit of happiness will be secured. They believe this paradigm of state controlled redistribution is necessary to usher in an era of socialist democracy, the basis for President Obama’s “fundamental transformation of America”.

Surely this is just a temporary condition or happenstance in our short history! Surely the people will see what is being done and rise up. Surely they will not go along with the destruction of their liberties nor will they suffer the chains of oppressive government…

I wish I could say I felt more hopeful but the signs do not bode well for the future unless we find a way to turn our ship of liberty away from the storm. Too many citizens today are unmindful of their liberties and heritage. The principles and importance of liberty must be taught if they are to be appreciated and in this respect we have failed generations of children both in our homes and in our schools. We are likewise failing many of those who immigrate to our country.

A recent Wall Street Journal article, “How Free Speech Died on Campus,” describes a university atmosphere that is divisive, politically correct, and determined to intimidate and silence certain voices, shame particular groups of students, and blunt independent thought. The university has become an indoctrination center for social engineering and Marxist principles:

At Yale University, you can be prevented from putting an F. Scott Fitzgerald quote on your T-shirt. At Tufts, you can be censured for quoting certain passages from the Quran. Welcome to the most authoritarian institution in America: the modern university–“a bizarre, parallel dimension,” as Greg Lukianoff, president of the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, calls it.

Mr. Lukianoff, a 38-year-old Stanford Law grad, has spent the past decade fighting free-speech battles on college campuses. The latest was last week at Fordham University, where President Joseph McShane scolded College Republicans for the sin of inviting Ann Coulter to speak.

When did this bizarre transformation of our universities and colleges happen? How did we let it happen?

A few universities offer alternatives that better reflect American principles and stand in stark contrast to the conditions at Yale. Hillsdale College is one that exemplifies the spirit of America:

Independence is an important theme at Hillsdale. Upon its founding in 1844, it was the nation’s first college to prohibit discrimination based on race, sex, or religion in its charter. Ever since, the institution has not taken a penny from the federal government. When some students received federal loans in the 1970s, Hillsdale quickly reacted by maintaining independence and rejecting government quotas. Even given the absence of government funding, Hillsdale remains a great value because it continually provides privately funded financial aid packages.

Hillsdale provides students with a well-rounded education that focuses on liberty. Students learn what liberty means and the moral conditions of its preservation. They develop the skills to be productive citizens and the character to be good ones. The mission statement sums up the college well. It reads: “The College considers itself a trustee of modern man’s intellectual and spiritual inheritance from the Judeo-Christian faith and Greco-Roman culture, a heritage finding its clearest expression in the American experiment of self-government under law.”

We would be wise to sing the praises of educators such as these…the preservation of our nation and the light of freedom may depend on it!

In December of 1862, just prior to his signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, Abraham Lincoln sent a letter to Congress in which he wrote:

“…in giving freedom to the slave, we preserve freedom for the free, honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth.”

After overcoming incredible obstacles and the sacrifice and blood of many men in the name of liberty are we about to “meanly lose” the “last best hope” for freedom in the world…in a cruel world overrun with oppressive and dangerous governments and dictators?

It is my hope that as we give thanks today for hardships overcome and blessings shared, as we pause to be mindful of the abundance our liberty has secured, we will also consider the good fortune that freedom alone bestows, by the grace of God, and vow to pass it on to future generations. I say this not to be religious, but out of respect for the principles that inspired our founding and to acknowledge that the source of our good fortune came through the religious Pilgrims as they vowed to establish a society based on the basic truths and disciplines found in their Bibles. Surely they passed on the principles of liberty, after all they had fled religious persecution. The certainty of their commitment would later be put to parchment to be delivered back across the seas:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The right to live free was not merely an agreement among men but a basic truth established by God, the highest authority, that no human being has the power to deny.

My prayer for America on this day of thanksgiving is simple…let freedom ring!

We at Post Scripts wish all of you a very Happy Thanksgiving.