On this, America's 238th birthday, Old Ben Franklin's famous observation that €Those who desire to give up freedom in order to gain security will not have, nor do they deserve, either one€ is worth remembering today as are the words of Thomas Paine: €Those who expect to reap the blessings of freedom, must, like men, undergo the fatigue of supporting it€ even though they are almost totally antithetical sentiments.
Franklin, the oldest member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence who is considered among the most brilliant of our Founding Fathers and Paine, the English-American author of the pamphlet €Common Sense€ without which €the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain€ (John Adams) were two of our nation's greatest patriots yet they had much different views on precisely what the newly-born United States of America was and should become.
Franklin, along with Thomas Jefferson, was one of our greatest early diplomats despite his engagements in a rather randy sex life and Paine who later would viciously criticize Washington for reasons unrelated to the American Revolution and ended life as a bitter, old man is not regarded kindly by many liberal-leftists today.
Franklin has gained favor among that tribe in recent years primarily because of the above quotation which they choose to interpret as a warning that valuing national and personal security and, by inference, privacy from governmental obtrusiveness, over freedom is a false quest whereas the rabble-rousing Paine was an exemplar of all that they despised namely, resistance to overreaching government and intrusion into our lives.
In 2014, America is confronted with unprecedented challenges to what the Founders pledged to oppose with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
Never before in our history has our country been faced with a president who has arrogantly and unconstitutionally seized the right to govern unilaterally, abrogated established law, and dared Congress to disagree with him by insolently daring it to €sue me€ for his multiple violations, as if he were not subject to the protective checks and balances written into the law of the land.
The most unfortunate reality in America today is that most of our citizenry are oblivious to history. Stupefied by a degraded culture emphasizing sex, survivors, and mind-numbing television sit-coms, they are ignorant of what happened in the last century in Russia, Germany, Viet Nam, and elsewhere.
Fat and satiated, most Americans are oblivious of the fact history invariably repeats itself, revel in their belief that it can't happen here, and don't know that great nations have an average life expectancy of 200 years.
Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and all other patriots would roll and twist in their graves at the thought of what America has done to itself.
Happy Birthday, America!
Franklin, the oldest member of the Continental Congress to sign the Declaration of Independence who is considered among the most brilliant of our Founding Fathers and Paine, the English-American author of the pamphlet €Common Sense€ without which €the sword of Washington would have been raised in vain€ (John Adams) were two of our nation's greatest patriots yet they had much different views on precisely what the newly-born United States of America was and should become.
Franklin, along with Thomas Jefferson, was one of our greatest early diplomats despite his engagements in a rather randy sex life and Paine who later would viciously criticize Washington for reasons unrelated to the American Revolution and ended life as a bitter, old man is not regarded kindly by many liberal-leftists today.
Franklin has gained favor among that tribe in recent years primarily because of the above quotation which they choose to interpret as a warning that valuing national and personal security and, by inference, privacy from governmental obtrusiveness, over freedom is a false quest whereas the rabble-rousing Paine was an exemplar of all that they despised namely, resistance to overreaching government and intrusion into our lives.
In 2014, America is confronted with unprecedented challenges to what the Founders pledged to oppose with their lives, their fortunes and their sacred honor.
Never before in our history has our country been faced with a president who has arrogantly and unconstitutionally seized the right to govern unilaterally, abrogated established law, and dared Congress to disagree with him by insolently daring it to €sue me€ for his multiple violations, as if he were not subject to the protective checks and balances written into the law of the land.
The most unfortunate reality in America today is that most of our citizenry are oblivious to history. Stupefied by a degraded culture emphasizing sex, survivors, and mind-numbing television sit-coms, they are ignorant of what happened in the last century in Russia, Germany, Viet Nam, and elsewhere.
Fat and satiated, most Americans are oblivious of the fact history invariably repeats itself, revel in their belief that it can't happen here, and don't know that great nations have an average life expectancy of 200 years.
Ben Franklin, Tom Paine, and all other patriots would roll and twist in their graves at the thought of what America has done to itself.
Happy Birthday, America!
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