Freedoms Phoenix

Today, I salute those bravest of souls who unfailingly rise up, even in the face of incredible adversity, to demand their individual, God-given liberties against those who would oppress them with a glad heart. Yet in order to do so with lucid determination, one must first come to understand the impetus one might employ to justify the enslavement and oppression of their fellow man.  No matter the reason given, it is always done in order to control and secure the fruits of someone else’s labor for themselves. 

That is the REAL definition of slavery.

However, as a result of the errors of our past history, we have come to accept a more romanticized and lachrymose view of slavery than what it actually is.  The hard-and-fast definition that it is a state of absolute bondage is proving to be a fatal mistake.  In reality, slavery is something that occurs in varying degrees; degrees that are often minuscule and incremental.

Now that we understand what slavery really is, we can understand that Arizona State Senator and Neo-Nazi Ruel Pearce's SB 1070 is slavery.  Unending war is slavery.  Taxation is slavery.  Socialized healthcare is slavery.  TARP is slavery.  In each and every instance, someone's property is being forcibly taken in order to distribute that property to someone else. 

The reasons given for doing so by those "in power" always end up at the same end result, regardless of how beneficial those reasons may sound outwardly.  A perfect example of this is Mr. Pearce’s sadly hilarious email in which he refers to Ernest Hancock's assertion that his bill is a “back-door” to the REAL ID Act as "just short of a...terrorist attack" while the rest of the correspondence is literally soused with self-congratulatory rhetoric about the Declaration of Independence, his defense of the Constitution, and other such blathering nonsense.  In response to this, I think Sinclair Lewis said it best:

 

At this point, what we need to save ourselves and generations to come from perpetual bondage is nothing short of a ; a Love-o-lution as Ernie puts it.  But understand, revolution is another term that has been ill-defined and misunderstood.  The best definition I have seen was written by John Adams, the 2nd President of the United States, in a letter to Thomas Jefferson dated August 24th, 1815:

“What do we mean by the Revolution? The war? That was no part of the revolution; it was only an effect and consequence of it. The revolution was in the minds of the people…fifteen years before a drop of blood was shed.”

The “war” part of any revolution occurs when those in power attempt to hold on to their control over We The People at all costs, despite the fact that the social contract between the government and the people has been egregiously breached, thus making the relationship irrevocably fractured.