We’re the Lucky Ones

Every once and a while, I get a strange feeling. I wish I’d been born in another era. Sometimes I feel like what I’m saying is simply foreign to what everyone wants to hear. Sometimes saying that state action is unjustified isn’t the greatest way to gain respect. Sometimes saying that violence isn’t the answer makes you some “radical”.

I can’t help but remember the words of Jeff Meyer’s in his speeches of encouragement. Remember the story of Esther and her conversations with Mordecai. “Who knows but for such a time as this you have been created.”

How true.

Right now, the libertarian point of view looks like the minority. It is. One side of the political spectrum wants to use the gun to force morality. They want to put homosexuals in cages, punish those who sell pornography in prison, they want to use violence to censor violence and language from cable that was voluntarily purchased.

They want to enforce morality through the barrel of a gun. So much for being like Jesus.

Then there’s the other side that thinks that centralized decisions are better than individual decisions. They want “universal health care” — to punish doctors and patients for voluntarily agreeing on a transaction of any sort. They support restricting business. They think the economy can be locked in chains and be forced to grow. Utter foolishness.

We’ve got a lot of work cut out for us. It’s uphill both ways. The libertarians don’t have a viable political party. The closest we have to a viable candidate is an old man who’s voice cracks when he talks. We’re going to lose this election.

But may God deal justly with us if we lose heart. Europe has nearly fallen to socialism, where the creators are looked upon as evil. Europe has fallen to totalitarianism, where the ability of self-defense is seen as evil — the individual is being suffocated.

America isn’t far behind.

It’s easy to lose heart, or look at envy those who have a candidate that they are rallying behind like he’s their savior. It would be easy to join a side, to abandon idealogy and go with one of the flows. It would be easy to join one of the two political subculture — to give up our political identity for the sake of at least limited popularity. But it would be wrong.

All these things considered, I still know without a doubt that if I could live at any other place or time of history, I wouldn’t. I’d choose America, 2007. I’d pick the place that is currently waging ideological war — where the people must choose whether they wish to live in a land of collectivism and control, or the land of liberty and individualism.

We’ve watched them fall, the UK, Australia, Canada. Gun bans, economic restrictions, collective thought, “capitalism is bad”, “business owners are selfish”. The world is collapsing around us, yet we have still to choose — we have not yet taken the final step.

The war is being waged around us, the stakes are everything. Freedom is on our shoulders, and our chances of victory are slim. It would be easy to feel sorry for ourselves, to feel down because we are outnumbered — to look down on the cause because the workers are so few.

It’s not everyone who gets to live in a civilization that is on the brink of tyranny and freedom. We’re the lucky ones, for we live in troubled times. We’re the lucky ones because we are privileged to carry the torch as the rest of society is engulfed in the darkness of their laws, their chains, their whips.

We’re lucky to live in the here-and-now — we get to write history. Let it never be said of us that we shut our eyes, that we looked the other way, that we consented through silence, through cowardice.

In the years to come, when children read their history books, I want them to see my name in bold — a dissenter — a troublemaker — a rebel — a “crazy” individual who espoused a concept he thought to be sacred and holy — one who lived his life in the cause of liberty.

What do you want them to read about you?