Liberty Without Vigilance

As Europe started to slide down the precipice of carnage that became World War I, the Foreign Secretary for Great Britain Edward Grey declared in what has become one of the most prophetic metaphors of all time; “The lamps are going out all over Europe”. Just recently, the historian and syndicated author Mark Steyn starkly noted that “Today, the lights are going out on liberty all over the Western world.”

So why is it that post-20^th century societies seemingly invite and appear ineffectual in preventing the elimination of their way of life?

The answer, the cause if you will, is traced to the individuals of those societies. As the noted Irish orator John Philpot Curran correctly pointed out, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty”.

But although this truism is a rather popular quote, it is not an entirely accurate representation of what Curran really said. To wit:

It is the common fate of the indolent to see their rights become a prey to the active. The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he break, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime and the punishment of his guilt.

Hence, we find our answer in the spotlight on the individuals that make up the society.

We’ve experienced right here on Marco Island how not only the indolent but all of us have become prey to the active. The struggles of the recent past showed us that there were but perhaps a handful of people that did anything continually, eternally vigil if you will, a few others that at least wrote consistently hellfire emails to the then version of the syndicate in power, and the rest complained on the way to the buffet. And just in the last two weeks we saw hundreds of emails of how the “can’t we just get along, kumbaya” crowd was taken for a ride by the special interest elites via behind the scene control of their stooges in the present governance. These transgressions on our liberties simply happened because the power brokers were active as the citizenry afforded sparse attention.

Make no mistake about what is in store for us locally if the syndicate continues its bent on commercialization at the expense of the residents. And make no mistake about what is in store for the entire country if the socialist agendas make it to the White House.

At both levels, many complain, very few do anything of substance. The requirement of eternal vigilance applies to all of us, namely universal vigilance, for without widespread omnipresent vigilance, we are then subsumed into servitude to the prevailing evil as punishment for the guilt. Sadly for some of us that are in fact eternally in a state of vigilance, it is an ill deserved punishment, dealt to us from guilt by association.

Every day in every community in what’s left of Western democracies the majority is the indolent – a majority living in the last vestiges of liberty they themselves created for having broken the covenant with God. Too few of the vigilant remain to take on the fight continually, into perpetuity, sans help, bludgeoned by the corrupt, bankrupt by the viral spread of amerikapitalism, and drowned by the power of the entrenched iron triangle.

And as we found in the very recent history of other countries, giving up a utopia is not something that is hard to do – actually, it is incredibly easy; simply do little, do nothing.

Sadly, we don’t need to look to other countries for examples on how our liberties have been eroded – we can simply look at our own towns in this country. From massive local projects undertaken on lies and subterfuge, to the political correctness doctrine where our right to free speech is gagged by threats emanated from the sludge which is the legal system, to the loss of private property rights through the prostitution of the eminent domain clause of the constitution.

Without universal vigilance, get ready for universal health care. And in Marco Island, without vigilance scrutinizing every move of the special interest-directed governance bent on inane follies such as procuring their own electric utility, consider the words of Edward Grey as the lights here go out – literally.