“For this reason I remind you to kindle afresh the gift of God which is in you through the laying on of my hands. For God has not given us a spirit of timidity, but of power and love and self-discipline”.
Patience in Persecution is the hallmark of great social transformers. At the beginning of a change or reform the patriot is an odd man, brave, hated and scorned. When his cause succeeds, the timid join him, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot.
It was Ronald Reagan who said, "The future doesn't belong to the faint-hearted. It belongs to the brave."
The problem confronting us people is that those who profess to favor freedom, yet deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground. They want rain without thunder and lightning. They want the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters. This struggle for a new voters register may be a moral one; or it may be a physical one; or it may be both moral and physical; but it must be a struggle. Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will.
To both the informed and uninformed, the greatest threat to mankind and civilization is the spread of the totalitarian philosophy. Its best ally is not the devotion of its followers but the confusion of its enemies. To fight it, we must understand it.
As a soldier I had witnessed and crossed many arid land, swamps, through biting cold, through fire and laid at the doorstep of death, but awful reality of life, is the danger and threat of losing your liberty through tyrants despots must be fought with great zeal and enthusiasm than with guns.
Our concerted efforts must address toward the ignorance of that one voter in a democracy that impairs the security of all.
Freedom and life is a daily IQ test. On the subject of liberty, it seems that most people are failing the test. It is up to those of us who can see what is right to make sure we do not give up the fight.
FREEDOM IS NOT FOR THE TIMID. An informed citizen is not easy to govern, because he or she knows how government works. The truth and reality is that an informed citizen is better than an educated fool. Of which abounds in our nation!
It was Thomas Jefferson who said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. ... God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion; what country can preserve its liberties if their rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms”.
Many have said and continue to say war is an ugly thing, but not the ugliest of things. The decayed and degraded state of moral and patriotic feeling that thinks that nothing is worth war is much worse. To those people who have nothing for which he is willing to fight, nothing which is more important than his own personal safety, is a miserable creature and has no chance of being free unless made and kept so by the exertions of better men than himself.
My problem with our public is that, it is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. Know that the credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena; whose face is marred by the dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions and spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best, knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who, at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly; so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory or defeat.
As a people we may prefer a free government, but if, from lack of concern, or carelessness, or cowardice, or want of public spirit, we are unequal to the exertions necessary for preserving it; if we will not fight for it when it is directly attacked; if we can be deluded by the artifices used to cheat them out of it; if by momentary discouragement, or temporary panic, or a fit of enthusiasm for an individual, we can be induced to lay our liberties at the feet even of a great man, or trust him with powers which enable him to subvert our institutions; in all these cases we are more or less unfit for liberty: and though it may be for our good to have had it even for a short time, we are unlikely in the long run to enjoy it.
In continuing, the whole of history attests that the centralization and concentration of power breed despotism. We bear in mind that the two enemies of the people are criminals and government, so let us tie the second down with the chains of the Constitution so the second will not become the legalized version of the first. It is our conformist attitude in tolerating imperfections which is the price we pay of freedom. We should free ourselves from our conformist outlook and oppose with manly firmness any invasions on the rights of the people.
The best guarantee to safeguard our freedom is to guard with jealous attention the public liberty. It must be are bounden duty to suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are ruined.
Definitely, there may be times when we are powerless to prevent injustice, but there must never be a time when we fail to protest, as it does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people's minds.
The greatest threat to our existence is our failure to realize or recognized that government is merely a servant -- merely a temporary servant; it cannot be its prerogative to determine what is right and what is wrong, and decide who is a patriot and who isn't. Its function is to obey orders, not originate them.
To end it all we should as a people know that “Vinegar in freedom tastes better than honey in slavery”. The nation which lies down on the pillow of political confidence will sooner or later end its political existence in a deadly lack of sympathy.