ArcaMax

"That God, which ever lives and loves,
One God, one law, one element,
And one far-off divine event
To which the whole creation moves."
-- Alfred Lord Tennyson (1809-1892)

When American colonists were oppressed by British governance, the word most frequently uttered in pamphlets, editorials and sermons was not "safety" or "taxes"; it was "freedom." Yet, two intolerable acts of Parliament so assaulted personal freedom that they broke the bonds with the mother country.

The first was the Stamp Act of 1765, which required colonists to have government stamps on all documents in every household. It was enforced by British agents who used general warrants, issued by a secret court in London, to rummage through colonists' possessions, ostensibly looking for stamps.

General warrants -- like those issued today by the secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in Washington, D.C. -- authorized government agents to search wherever they wished and seize whatever they found.

The second intolerable act was the Revenue Act of 1767, the proceeds from which the king used to pay the salaries of colonial officials and the king's clergy, thereby securing their loyalty.

The Stamp Act assaulted the right to privacy in the home, and the Revenue Act forced colonists to pay for a religious establishment. These two British laws caused many colonists to realize they needed to secede from Britain and form a new country, in which the government would protect freedom, not assault it. Ten years later, they did so and won the American Revolutionary War.

Today, the loss of freedom comes in many forms.

Sometimes it is direct, as when the government dictates the wearing of a mask and the reception of an experimental vaccine and punishes those who don't comply.

Sometimes it is subtle, as when the government borrows $4 trillion a year and, as a result, our money and assets lose much of their value and our descendants will be taxed heavily to repay the loans.

Sometimes it is secret, as when the government reads emails and text messages and follows the movements of cellphones, all without search warrants; or when it uses drones to kill people the government hates or fears, without a declaration of war or any due process.

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Copyright 2024 Creators Syndicate, Inc.