#1 ON THE PRESENT STATE OF AMERICA PART ONE
(An excerpt from the book “Uncommon Sense,” available here. )
To convince oneself that our present situation in America is anything but dire and dangerous is to engage the mind in an act of pure fantasy. Many in government, in offices both elected and unelected, are at present conducting themselves in the tyrannical manner of kings and emperors. King George III, the very king we went to war with to win our independence, was guilty of lesser crimes than our present government!
And yet many of our American brothers and sisters feel no animosity towards such amoral and despotic behavior. In fact, they defend it. So it was also in 1776, when some of our brethren took the side of England and King George. But while our Founding Fathers had no recourse but war to free themselves of tyranny, we are protected by our Constitution. But what use is our Constitution, that document which by design exists to protect us from the tyrannical whims of our Government, if we do not ourselves understand it? What use is the law if the law is not followed or enforced? Moreover, if the Constitution is meant to constrain our politicians and limit their power, who is to stop them when they act unrestrained and abuse it?
Our Constitution is unique in all the world because it asserts that our rights come from our Creator, not from our Government. In other nations throughout the world, both past and present, it is the government who granted the Citizens rights. In the United States “we the people” have unalienable rights and “we the people” hold the power. And yet how can it be that we have no power and our Government wields all the power? They have seized it. Worse, through deception, they have convinced us to hand it over to them. But when a thing is given away, is it not the more difficult to ask for it back? Does the possessor of such a gift not then clench such a thing with a tighter grasp and become the more attached? And does not the giver of such a gift lose their feeling of entitlement over such a thing? Do we, who handed over the gift, not become more inclined over time to come to terms with the loss and accept it? Do we not tell ourselves, “I suppose they can keep it,” or “it would be uncomfortable or difficult to ask for it back,” or “I can live without it.”? But the gift we have given our Government is not a worn sweater or lawnmower, it is freedom itself! We must be emboldened by the value of the thing we have given away and demand it back, because we have given away life itself!
But this analogy falls short. It fails to capture the full extent of what has transpired, or the deceit employed in the process. To speak of offering a gift to our Government is to assume we intended to part with such a thing. No, we gave them a loan. And the loan was not given out of any perception or recognition in our hearts and minds of our Government’s need. We did not approach them like a neighbor and propose it. No, they came to us, with flailing arms and raised voices, and demanded it. We heard their distress and were moved by their appeals to our kind hearts and good nature. We were told their need of our most sacred of possessions was a matter of life and death. How could we decline a neighbor in such dire circumstance? But such was the gravity of their demand that while our hearts may have been moved, our minds were more hesitant to follow. And so they told us their need was only temporary. They told us that in but a short time, even weeks, the loan would be returned. And so like a kind neighbor, we parted with our freedom, unaware of the deceit which had taken place.
We find ourselves now in a position of desperation. We gave our freedom not to a neighbor in need, but to a thief, under false pretense. We have been robbed of our liberty. That which we were told would be temporary, now has no end. Are we such ignorant fools to believe we will ever get it back? To believe this is to deny reality. To defend the thief is an exercise of insanity.
Not only has our freedom not been returned, but our Government has the audacity to demand even more. More of what? What more do we have to give? Our lives and businesses have been destroyed. Our jobs have disappeared. Our families suffer and many of our homes lay in ruin. And now our Government, the thief, comes to us again with empty hands and not only tells us it is too soon to return our freedom but tells us we have not given them enough!
Yet some of you still defend the theft. You take the side of the thief. Many of you remain of good intention. It is your good heart, which leads the way. But the heart is easily manipulated and deceived. The mind along with reason cannot be discarded. Common sense cannot be thrown by the wayside and replaced by fear. Feelings cannot supplant fact and sound judgement.
Many of you, who advocate for our present state of imprisonment, do so out of compassion. You believe it is the right thing to do, the necessary thing to do. Your advocacy of such tyranny is founded in a greater sense of morality. After all, life is precious, and every American can find common ground in this belief.
Not one decent American wishes harm on another. And every decent American feels grief upon hearing news of the untimely passing of a fellow American. If we can agree on this ground, can we not also agree that those who have died not from the virus, but from other illnesses or tragic accidents are also deserving of our attention and sympathies?
Perhaps the coming vaccine will prove an adequate weapon against the virus. Perhaps it will result in our victory over the disease. But at present there is no such cure, and the ceding of our liberty came long before the guarantee of such a vaccine. Many of these tyrants assure us that even with the vaccine, such tyranny must be accepted as the “new normal.”
How many Americans are killed in car accidents each year? And over a period of many years? Hundreds of thousands, even millions if we add together enough years. There does exist a cure to prevent these deaths. A ban on the driving of automobiles would save ten of thousands of lives a year. “But we need cars,” you might say. Or also, "The value of the car outweighs the danger it presents.” And I say to you, “What is more valuable than freedom?!”
Nearly a year ago in March we were told that if we did not cede our freedom more than 2 million American lives would be lost to the virus. Our Government and “medical experts” told us the death rate would exceed 3 percent. So we locked down. Weeks turned into months. Masks at first deemed useless props, then became mandated attire in many states. Indoor dining was banned, then limited, and in the states ruled by despots, now banned again. And what was the result of these actions?
We saved lives, some of you will say. Fine, how many? This we can never know. But at present we know how many have been lost. The calculation of the total is disingenuous but is said to be nearly 250,000. But this is hardly the greatest health emergency in America: Heart disease is responsible for the deaths of over 600,000 Americans each year; cancer for another 600,000; and unintentional injuries for 167,127. These are the numbers from our own Government. And yet despite the many deadly diseases, which plague our human race, before this year the majority of Americans carried on with their lives without fear of death or bodily harm, or in spite of it. Our Government made no spectacle of the deadliness of heart disease, or cancer, or unintentional injuries, nor did they move to ban fast food restaurants, or cigarettes, to save our lives. Nor did they update us in real time, hour by hour, and day after day, with both state and national totals of motor accidents and deaths. Such behavior would be deemed idiotic, or fear mongering; a pointless exercise that would have been met with derision by the American people. “So what?” we’d say. “Such is life. Death is certain, when it comes for us is the only uncertainty.”
And now it has been learned that the virus was in America as early as December. For three months it spread without any knowledge or suspicion. We continued on with our lives, despite its presence. But in March, when its presence was officially declared, it suddenly became the greatest threat ever known to mankind. It is the most outrageous over-reaction in modern history and proof of the deceit.
What is that some of you say? “But COVID 19 was new and unprecedented!” Yes this is true. And in March, even those who are today the greatest opponents of lockdowns were reasonable. Back in March even I, myself, made no complaint. Because it was to be temporary and the extent of its danger was yet unknown!
So often we look to precedent to make up our minds and determine our thoughts. We look to it for guidance and direction. But precedent can be both useful and dangerous; useful if the precedent is good and right, and dangerous if it is bad and wrong. Precedent is too often that which stifles argument and careful consideration. It supplants our own thoughts, as if that which happened before must happen
forevermore. The decision made once must now be the decision made for all time. And so I thank God there is no precedent for this. We must carefully consider what is taking place, and make our own determinations. We are free from the bonds of precedent.
What once seemed reasonable is today wholly unreasonable. In the course of our history over one million brave Americans have died for the cause of America’s freedom. Today, the contraction of a virus and the unlikely threat it poses to the average American’s life is reason enough for many to give it away!
Our Founding Fathers defied the precedent of their time and defied the tyrant King who ruled over them. They supplanted the precedent of the longstanding belief that our rights came from man kings with the new precedent that our rights instead come from our Creator. Our countrymen charged into bullets and artillery fire at Normandy for the cause of America’s liberty. And today? Are we such cowards that we choose to hide and cower in fear of a virus? Is our constitution now so weak that we would rather surrender our liberty than fight? It is a disgrace! What reason guides the jogger, who runs through an empty neighborhood wearing a mask over their face?! Masks are not a symbol of respect and caution, but of fear and oppression!
I’m cruel some of you might say. I’ll tell you what is cruel. While Governors across this nation issue unconstitutional mandates to control who we can see, when we can see them, and how many and for how long we can see them in our very own homes, they violate the very rules they impose on us. California Governor Gavin Newsom mandates his subjects in California wear masks outdoors, closes indoor dining at restaurants, and demands Californians cancel Thanksgiving and Christmas with their families, while he enjoys a private maskless birthday dinner inside one of most expensive restaurants in the world with twelve people. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gets her hair done at a salon the American citizen is forbidden from entering. The Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer mandates some of the strictest social distancing guidelines in the country while she protests in the street with hundreds of people. “Let them eat cake,” they say to us. And what was the fate of Marie Antoinette, the Queen of France, who is said to have uttered such words? She was met with the scorn of a nation, while our would be rulers are met with the applause of heroes. But they are not heroes, they are despots! Have we no dignity? Where is our rage?
How can it be that such staunch advocates of the most extreme lockdown measures in the country are so quick to violate the very mandates they impose on “we the people?” They are hypocrites. How can it also be that those who continue to explain to us how dangerous the virus is have no fear of the virus themselves? They are liars.
Even as I write these words, the situation worsens and what freedom is left is taken away. In California the despot Gavin Newsom has now whimsically imposed a curfew on his subjects. Californians must stay in their homes between 10 PM and 5 AM. What madness is this? Is the virus now some vampire-like beast, which only infects its victims in the dead of night? If this were a comedy film I would laugh myself out of my seat. But it isn’t satire. It is real life, it is happening now, and the genre is horror.
But to what purpose is such a laughable mandate? To save lives. What can’t be done or taken away or mandated for such a noble cause? In 2018 over 30,000 Americans died of the flu. In the year prior more than 61,000 died. How many deaths from influenza could we have prevented if we only imposed a nationwide curfew between the hours of 10PM and 5AM?
These Governors treat us like cadavers, dismembering and violating our rights, however they please. And as long as we lay on the table like cadavers, lifeless and without objection, they have no reason to stop. But we are not cadavers! We are the living. And we must fight back!
And yet while hope remains for many of us, what hope is there for the sick who have already died in their homes rather than seek medical care for fear of catching the virus? What hope is there for the countless others who have perished from other ailments and disease, whose surgeries and treatments have been canceled or postponed, to prevent the spread of the virus? We sacrificed the lives of the already sick to save the lives of those who were not yet sick! What perverted ideology is this? “Covid lives matter”
should be their asinine rallying cry. Because it is as if no other cause of death carries any importance and death from covid is weighted at ten, twenty, or even a thousand times that of any other cause of death.
And what hope is there for those who have already taken their own lives as a consequence of their loss of their freedom? Yet for some, these victims of the virus are given no thought. Their lives seem to be of little concern. They are like prisoners of war; abandoned and left to fend for themselves. They died as slaves rather than freemen.
It is the citizen advocate of such continued lockdown measures who is also cruel. Because while many of you have continued to work and money has been deposited into your accounts, there are many others who have lost their jobs. These lockdowns aren’t mere inconveniences for these Americans, the so called “non essential” men and women of America. They have been ruined! What do you say to them? And to those who have lost their own businesses, who labored six or seven days a week for ten, twenty, or thirty years to see their hard work and livelihood destroyed in a few months? What do you say to these Americans? “I’m sorry, but you aren’t essential?” This is yet another loathsome exercise in discrimination, the very evil which for decades has contributed to our present crisis. But it is these individuals to whom you should turn your attention. These are your American brothers and sisters. Do you consider their suffering when you advocate for continued lockdowns? Do you feel no empathy?
As famine and scarcity engulfed our country, the non essential American was left to starve outside the castle walls. Those of you whose income went unaffected, were brought into the royal court and knighted “essential” by our rulers. Yet those left outside were left to wallow in the mud. Not long ago you stood among them. Are you so quick to turn your back on them now? Is your ego so inflated by your newly bestowed title that you now view them with the same contempt as our royal court? Because your present situation and prospects are good, and you have been spared, means nothing for the man or woman whose prospects are gone. They have been sacrificed! Get up from your seat in the royal dining hall, walk away from the feast, and gaze out the window at your fellow man, who starves.
We live in a new dark age, in which reason and enlightenment have been replaced by ignorance and destruction. Under the auspices of a virus and “saving lives,” tyrants have stolen our freedom. But reason and common sense must prevail.
New York has a population of 19 million. The citizens there are slaves. They have been under some of the strictest lockdown measures in the country and 30,000 Americans have died from the virus. And in Florida, with a comparable population of 21 million, 18,000 Americans have died. Yet in Florida the citizens are free, with no lockdown measures in place.
In Texas, with a population of 29 million, where men are also said to be free, 20,000 Americans have died. And in California, where 39 million Americans lock themselves behind closed doors between the hours of 10PM and 5AM, 18,000 Americans have also died. What can we learn from this? Nothing. Only that men die who are both free and unfree. These are not the words of apathy. They are mere facts.
When a sick patient enters the emergency room, do the doctors and nurses not carefully examine every symptom? It would be an act of negligence for such a professional to provide treatment for only one symptom without considering the whole. And if the diagnosis is wrong or the treatment prescribed proves more deadly than the disease itself, what then? Should the course of action remain the same? But more importantly, even the patient has the freedom to accept or refuse treatment!
As I said, in the state of California, with a population of 39 million, 18,000 are reported dead from the virus. But 39,982,000 live! If you discovered an infection in one finger would you then cut off the entire hand? No, you would treat the finger. And even if you discovered the finger could not be saved, would you then cut off your arm? And yet this is the prescription we are prescribed by our tyrant kings. They are doctors with fake diplomas, practicing medicine without license. They are frauds. They may dress themselves in scrubs, but their intent is harm, not healing.
Other supporters of such continued lockdowns will say, “the emergency clause grants them this right.” Perhaps for a short while. But the Constitutional arguments for the legality of the seizure of our rights are
no longer valid. “Follow the science,” is the rallying cry in support of such draconian measures. If we follow the science we discover that the virus poses no dangerous threat to nearly every American. What is the precedent in the future? Is the seizure of our liberty now subject to the whims and opinions of those in government who would decide for us what is best for our safety and health? What is to stop them from seizing what is not theirs to seize in the future under the guise of emergency and public health?
Furthermore, the emergency clause does not usurp our Constitutional right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” What we loaned them does not belong to them. And they will keep it until we take it back. This issue is not Republican or Democrat. It is American. When did the subject of freedom in America become a controversial or contested issue, subject to debate? When did the defense of freedom become a divisive opinion, dividing us along party lines? Freedom is not controversial. It is the cause of America. If we cannot find common ground here, then what common ground exists to be found?
Yet all these arguments are superfluous. Because there is only one which must be made. Our freedom is like oxygen. It is that which sustains each and every one of us. It does not belong to one man or another. For any man to seize, or stifle it from another, is to commit a violation against the most fundamental right of mankind—that of life. And when such a man as this seeks to suffocate and deprive us of this life sustaining element, is the body’s instinct not to fight? The killer at present forces our heads below water. Not to fight back is to accept our death. It is the most unnatural of acts and defies our very nature!
But while some at present seem willing to accept their death at the hands of their murderer, others are engaged in the act of suicide. They hold their own heads below water, and resist the body’s instinct to rise to the surface and gasp for air. It is the actions of these Americans which is most alarming and puzzling of all. Because through training or indoctrination, they have overridden their own instincts, and convinced themselves that death is somehow better than life itself.
For those who wish to live in continued fear of the virus, so be it. It is your God given right to remain in your home, wear a mask in your car, and socially distance from your parents or children today and forever more. But it is also another’s right to leave their home as they please, jog maskless through the empty streets, and spend Thanksgiving and Christmas with whomever they please. Just as a non smoker cannot be forced to smoke, the smoker cannot be forced not to smoke. It is for each and every American to decide how they wish to live their life. It is neither your place, nor mine, nor our Governments place or right to force one’s decision on another.
Because you live in fear of the virus does not mean another must live in fear of the virus. This is the charter of America. This is freedom. To demand otherwise and scorn your fellow American for choosing one or the other is unequivocally un-American. To compel your fellow American into choosing one or the other is unconstitutional. It is this disrespect, disregard, and disagreement, which has led us to our present crisis.
(Excerpt from “Uncommon Sense.”)