Enemies of Freedom

SCRIPTURE:  Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. Micah 7:8 ESV

QUOTE: “Freedom is a fragile thing and it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. It is not ours by way of inheritance; it must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people.  And those in world history who have known freedom and then lost it have never known it again.” – Governor Ronald Reagan, 1967

THOUGHT: Many of us equate democracy with freedom. I know in my lifetime, I’ve always heard our form of government referred to as “democratic.” But then, I was born in 1961, an era to which many of our current problems can be traced.

Today, I just feel hoodwinked by my education, and more than a little ashamed of my illiteracy. I feel the warning shot of Reagan, issued while I was still a child, that freedom is ever only one generation away from extinction. I pray it’s not my generation.

So many of the founders warned of the perils of democracy as opposed to the rights of the republic. John Adams, a signer of the Declaration, said, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.” James Madison, who framed the Constitution, wrote in The Federalist, No. 10 that democracies “… have ever been found incompatible with personal security, or the rights of property; and have in general been as short in their lives as they are violent in their deaths.” Fisher Ames, a congressman from Massachusetts who served during the eight years George Washington was president, in an essay called The Mire of Democracy, wrote that the framers “intended our government should be a republic, which differs more widely from a democracy than a democracy from a despotism.”

I’m beginning to see a pattern here.

In 1931, the Duke of Northumberland wrote, “The adoption of Democracy as a form of Government by all European nations is fatal to good Government, to liberty, to law and order, to respect for authority, and to religion, and must eventually produce a state of chaos from which a new world tyranny will arise.” [emphasis mine] Check.

British writer G.K. Chesterton concluded: “You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.”

How ironic that some of the world’s most oppressive dictators have seen democracy as the pathway to communism. In 1939, a decade before the consolidation of his power, Mao said, “The democratic revolution is the necessary preparation for the socialist revolution, and the socialist revolution is the inevitable sequel to the democratic revolution.” Finally, Karl Marx himself in his Communist Manifesto said, “the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to win the battle of democracy.” But why? To “abolish private property”; to “wrest, by degrees, capital from the bourgeoisie”; to “centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State”; etc.

Imagine the God who comes to “proclaim liberty to the captives (Is. 61:1)” reading that. Imagine the liberty he came to offer saying, with Micah, Rejoice not over me, O my enemy; when I fall, I shall rise; when I sit in darkness, the Lord will be a light to me. Amen. Hallelujah.

SONG: Victory Boyd sings National Anthem to 2,500 after being cancelled by NFL for not being vaccinated. https://plandemicseries.com/victory-boyd-national-anthem/

PRAYER: Oh God, we’ve become so illiterate about the freedom handed us. Forgive us. When we sit in darkness, be a light to us! When we fall, help us reach for your hand and rise again.