What we want is an Informed Patriotism.

03/24/12

Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government. And freedom has never been so fragile, so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.

This quote from Ronald Reagan's speech in 1964 could have been written yesterday. But just what does his statement really mean to us? How will this affect anything at all? Many will say it was just pretty words in a campaign, but I believe it was a stern warning to the American people that our very freedom, and our God given rights are at risk.

Many of us remember that government used to work from a center-right position, and that good leadership meant compromises and some give and take at the negotiating table. This was a mirage, and an illusion mostly created out of the progressive movement.

Every compromise was in fact our surrender of another freedom, another liberty. Placing more rules and restriction of a free people. It was all labeled as a new “protection”, or to insure “fairness”. The result was 100's of thousands of new laws and regulations. These regulations and laws have a stranglehold on the American Dream.

Now it's time to reverse course, the time is late, and the need is urgent.

It is incumbent of us to solve the countries problems. It won't be government that fixes our problems, it will be American Patriots that inform themselves, and make sure they are self reliant. I can not express strongly enough how important it is for you to get informed, get involved, and prepare for no government assistance for anything.

We have become a nation of government dependent groups, groups that clamor for the table scraps of the federal and state government. We have to have a license or permit to even walk in a park it seems. All the while Washington is voting on more new laws, the executive agencies pass hundreds of new rules and regulations without our consent and with no oversight.

The corruption in our federal government has indeed raised itself to a police state, TSA at every airport, new databases collect personal information on American Citizens, public cameras spy on our day to day activity. The federal government is heading fast to a form of Tyranny we have not seen since King George.

What we want is an informed Patriotism.

Mr. Reagan said that as well,   then let's look back further at the words of Thomas Jefferson who said,

“I know of no safe depository of the ultimate powers of the society but the people themselves; and if we think them not enlightened enough to exercise their control with a wholesome discretion, the remedy is not to take it from them but to inform their discretion.

We have allowed ourselves to become distracted, apathetic, and ignorant about many issues. Public education has been a dismal failure in teaching the importance of our civic responsibility. Graduates, know very little of our history or our heritage, our faith is challenged every time we enter a government building. The list of grievances is long, and it's beyond the point explained in the Declaration of Independence.

“Prudence indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, wile evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the form which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government and to provide new guards for their security...”

Such Despotism exists even today, and we have the means to change the guards of our liberty, It's called an election.

We have slept for a hundred years, much like Rip Van Winkle, now we must wake, and post guards to protect our liberty, we must make ourselves informed, and pass our knowledge on to neighbors and friends.

I'm not a really smart person, but I will pledge to you my very best effort. I am preparing to launch a monthly journal dedicated to this effort in an attempt to reach out to all of our countrymen that are not on the Internet, to “Light a brushfire in the mind” as Jefferson would say.

Patrick Henry once wrote, “These are the times that try men's souls.” for the near future, those times are now.

Look for the first issue of “The Advanced Citizenship Journal” in the next month or so. For more information, Contact Richard Gates.