A self authored post in this 'dying' subreddit on the eve of the midterms. #Vote
There comes a time in the life of every free nation when the inheritance of liberty must be defended by those who have known nothing but its blessings. When the peace of generations is broken, when the armies of tyranny gather upon the horizon, and when the institutions of free government tremble beneath the weight of fear, a question is put before the living: whether the courage of their fathers has passed from the earth, or whether it yet resides within the hearts of their children.
History is replete with examples.
This question was asked upon the fields of France, when her armies were broken and her government submitted to a foreign conqueror. It was asked in the occupied cities of Europe, where the instruments of oppression sought to extinguish the very memory of freedom. It was asked behind the Iron Curtain, where nations were made captive and generations were born beneath the shadow of governments they had never chosen. And it is asked again upon the bloodied plains of Ukraine, where a free people stand against an invader who would deny them the right to determine their own destiny.
In every age, the tyrant has believed that the answer might be settled by force of arms. That a nation defeated is a nation subdued. That a government overthrown is a people conquered. That the destruction of an army marks the destruction of the cause for which it fought.
And in every age, the tyrant has mistaken the instruments of liberty for liberty itself.
For freedom does not reside in the walls of a parliament, nor in the chambers of a president, nor even in the armies that stand guard upon a nation's frontiers. These are its defenders, its expressions, and its necessary instruments. But freedom itself resides in the hearts of the people, in their determination to govern themselves, and in their conviction that no man possesses by birth, by conquest, or by decree the right to rule another without his consent.
A government may capitulate. An army may be defeated. A capital may fall. But a people who have once tasted freedom cannot easily be persuaded that servitude is their natural condition.
France did not cease to be France when her government surrendered in 1940. Her sons and daughters who carried on the struggle, who risked their lives in fields and factories, who concealed the persecuted and sabotaged the occupier, who fought beneath foreign skies and upon their native soil, were no less French than those who had once commanded her armies. They preserved, through years of peril and sacrifice, the living claim of their nation to freedom.
And when liberation came, it was not the authority of those who had submitted that endured, but the legitimacy of those who had refused.
Thus we are reminded that a nation is not merely the government which commands it. It is the people who constitute it, the history which binds them, and the liberties which they resolve to preserve.
Yet there is a danger against which no army, however powerful, can alone provide protection.
A democracy may be conquered from without, but it may also be surrendered from within. Its institutions may be weakened by those sworn to preserve them. Its citizens may exchange their liberties for promises of security, their judgment for the comfort of obedience, and their sovereignty for the ambitions of a single man.
And so we come to the present hour, when the Republic which our fathers established, which our forebears defended upon distant battlefields, and which generations have preserved through civil war, depression, and the struggle against tyranny, faces a test not merely upon its borders, but within its own government.
For what shall we say when a President, entrusted with the defense of the Constitution, treats the rights of citizens as obstacles to his ambition? When the powers of government are employed not as instruments of public trust, but as weapons against those who dissent? When loyalty to one man is demanded above fidelity to the law, and when those charged with checking his authority instead lend their offices to its enlargement?
Shall we say that the people must endure whatever their rulers impose, until the next presidential election shall come? Shall we concede that a mandate to govern is a license to disregard the liberties of the governed?
No.
For the Constitution established no king, and the Republic recognizes no sovereign but the people themselves.
The President is not the nation. His party is not the Republic. His will is not the law.
And those who confuse these things have forgotten the first principle of American liberty: that government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and that those powers are held in trust.
We therefore approach the midterm elections not merely as another contest between parties, nor as another opportunity to reward one faction and punish another, but as an occasion for the American people to exercise the sovereign authority upon which their government rests.
For there is a remedy against the abuse of power which free societies possess and tyrannies deny.
It is the ballot.
Before the patriot is called to the battlefield, he is called to the polling place. Before the defense of liberty demands the sacrifice of life, it demands the exercise of citizenship. Before a people may rightly declare that their institutions have failed them, they must employ the constitutional means entrusted to their care.
And in exercising this power, the patriot fulfills his highest obligation. For patriotism is not obedience to the government. It is fidelity to the nation.
When a President tramples upon the rights of his fellow citizens, when his administration disregards the restraints of constitutional government, and when his party in Congress shields him from accountability, the people possess both the right and the responsibility to withdraw their consent.
Let the Republican majorities that have sustained President Trump be replaced by representatives prepared to exercise the independent judgment and constitutional oversight their offices require.
Let the people's representatives be reminded that their duty is not to the President, but to the Constitution they have sworn to defend.
Let those who have placed party above country discover that the country is greater than their party.
We must never forget that democracy possesses a strength which tyranny cannot imitate: the capacity to correct its own course without the shedding of blood.
The tyrant fears the ballot because it permits the governed to dismiss the governor. The patriot cherishes it because it affirms that no officeholder is indispensable, no party is entitled to power, and no man stands above the judgment of his fellow citizens.
The tyrant fights for himself. He seeks dominion, obedience, and the perpetuation of his own power. Though he may speak of national greatness, he measures that greatness by the authority which he commands. He regards the nation as the instrument of his ambition, its people as the servants of his will, and their lives as possessions to be spent in the pursuit of his glory.
The patriot fights for something greater than himself.
He fights not that he may command his country, but that his country may remain free. He fights not that his name may be remembered, but that his children may live without fear. He asks no inheritance of power, no throne, no dominion over his fellow citizens. His ambition is that those who follow him may possess the same liberties which he has enjoyed, and that those yet unborn may inherit a nation no less free than the one entrusted to his keeping.
He loves his country not merely for its ideals, but its people. He loves them in their differences, in their imperfections, in their disagreements, and in their common humanity. He knows that a nation is not made worthy of devotion by the absence of faults, but by the presence of something greater than those faults: a shared inheritance, a common destiny, and the enduring right of its people to seek a better future together.
We are not descended from fearful men.
Our fathers and mothers endured hardships that we have never known. They stood against empires, against dictators, against the machinery of oppression, and against the despair which whispers that resistance is futile. They were not without fear. They were not without doubt. Yet they discovered, when the hour demanded it, that duty could prevail over fear, that conviction could outlast suffering, and that the love of country could call ordinary people to extraordinary sacrifice.
Their courage is not a relic of a vanished age. It is an inheritance awaiting its summons.
Those who have forgotten will remember.
Those who have grown complacent will awaken.
Those who have mistaken the comfort of peace for the permanence of liberty will learn again that freedom is neither an accident of history nor a gift bestowed by the powerful, but an inheritance maintained by the vigilance and sacrifice of free people.