Our trip to Yorktown took us back some 150 years to the era of the American Revolution. The fall weather was perfect and we ate lunch by the water’s edge at exactly the time of year that Washington, with the help of the French, had Cornwallis and the British army he commanded under siege in the very town where we sat. This made it all the more interesting to imagine all the deadly action that was unfolding on that precise location exactly 228 years ago.
We know that the colonists were deeply divided between those who vowed to have “liberty or death” and the loyalists who did everything within their power — despite his tyranny — to keep the colonies under the security provided by the rule of King George, who controlled the awesome British army and navy.
Then, as now, those two competing interests — liberty and security — were locked in a furious contest whose outcome was far from certain at the time, and today that contest continues. On one side stand those hardy, intrepid souls who prize what they see as their God-given liberty and the freedom by His grace to take on the challenges of life for themselves; on the other are those who yearn for big government to stand between them and the vicissitudes of life.
Believing that they were being aided by Divine Providence, Washington and his men persisted under the most cruel and daunting of conditions. And they prevailed. They “brought forth … a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” And not equal in that all have the same amount of things, but equal in their right as God’s creations to make their own choices and seek their own opportunities. The America for which those patriots bled and died has been a magnet, a beacon of hope ever since for all those around the world who yearn for liberty more than security.
Still just as the loyalists of the colonial period were content to live in subjugation to King George and the security — such as it was — that this entailed, so today, there are far too many in America who would tip the scales towards ever larger government, despite its curtailment of freedom, in hopes having the state make their future less harsh, problem-laden, and froth with uncertainty.
Sadly, they have not reckoned with the realities that led Jefferson to declare to James Madison (1787 – ME 6:391): “I am not a friend to a very energetic government. It is always oppressive.” [emphasis mine] Perhaps it is because they have not studied the clear lessons of history that “government big enough to supply everything you need, is big enough to take everything you have.”
Perhaps they cannot be bothered to care.
But some of us care deeply. We desire — no, like those early patriots, we insist on — a land where our children and grandchildren can enjoy the intoxicating taste of freedom.