"Give me liberty, or give me death!" Most people are familiar with this quote , spoken by American orator and revolutionary Patrick Henry in 1775. It's a classic rallying cry, beloved by liberty-minded Americans and lovers of freedom around the world. But how many who quote Henry would really chose death over the chains of servitude?
When faced with Orwellian surveillance states, ever-expanding bureaucracies, ever-greater government encroachment into our lives, ever-higher taxation, and more and more laws against victimless 'crimes', what is our response? How many of us choose to be silent in the face of tyranny and cling to the paltry comforts the state still allows us?
It's understandable that so many are afraid to speak out and fight for their freedom. We see activists, whistleblowers, freethinkers, and journalists persecuted, spied on, hounded, locked up, and even disappeared for their work. But do we really think that if we don't rail against the encroachments of predatory corporatist states into our lives today, those governments won't be encroaching into our lives even more tomorrow, to the point where we may not even be allowed to protest?
I live in Canada, where freedom of speech does not exist for those with politically incorrect views, and new federal laws allow for people to be imprisoned for offending the delicate sensibilities of high-strung SJWs. More and more in my home country, people are being targeted by the state for their speech and persecuted for speaking out against our corrupt corporatist government. It's becoming an increasingly frightening country to live in, and it makes me wonder what the tipping points might be that would get people off their sofas, and out into the streets to stand up for their freedom.
I wonder if I myself would be willing to die for liberty. Having never had to fight for my life, and coming from a generation that's thankfully never been drafted into a war, it's hard to imagine what I would do. I like to believe that I would die to fight for what I believe in. Ultimately, the question becomes: Is liberty worth dying for? If it is, then a life sacrificed fighting for it would not be given in vain.
I'd answer that question with another question: What is life without liberty?
A life without liberty isn't much of a life. Without the freedom to make our own decisions and shape our own lives, we can never experience the fullness of what it means to be human. Within every creature is an innate desire for freedom and self-determination, and without sovereignty over ourselves, we are robbed of our dignity.
Dependency and government indoctrination breed helplessness, stupidity, corpulence, and mindless jingoism. Parasitic central planners, apparatchiks and social-engineers take tax dollars generated by people who work for a living and use the fruits of other people's labor to shape the world around them into a soulless, brutalist holding pen for livestock citizenry. They're not just making the world an uglier place, they're also waging a war on free will.
Without the freedom to own the fruits of our labor, to do as we please on our own property and conduct peaceful, voluntary economic interactions with our neighbors as we see fit, we can't say that we have liberty. However comfortable our lives may be, we are the slaves of tax-collectors, central bankers, monopolists and corporatists.
We live under nation states controlled by private central banks which create worthless fiat money out of thin air and charge interest on loaning it out to governments . Most of our tax dollars in any given nation go towards paying off this artificially created debt. Multinational corporations (who keep their money offshore and pay little to no tax) lobby governments to write regulations in ways which benefit them, and hurt their small-time competition, often giving them de-facto monopolies. It's one big system of debt slavery and robber baron control.
Of course, after rigging the economy to the benefit of themselves and their corporate cronies, the oligarchs who control the state are more than happy to have a few goodies handed out to the proles (on the taxpayer's dime of course). Welfare, 'free' monopolized healthcare( that isn't free in any way and is actually much more expensive than it needs to be), 'free' mandatory education, basic income etc. are all the rage, and the foundation-funded leftist 'intelligentsia' tells us that the fat cats don't want us to have them. The truth is, corporatist governments would rather pay people to stay at home than see those people out starting businesses, being productive, and taking market share away from the monopolists and crony capitalists. They know that as long as people can still have their beer, tv, etc. they'll shut up and sit idly by in a state of learned helplessness as their cages get ever smaller.
Well, I say enough! It's time to fight for our liberties. It's time to stop asking the state to grant us rights, and start asserting the rights which are naturally ours as free individuals. It's time to claim the self-determination which is rightfully ours. As long as we are not hurting others, we must be free to live, work, trade, and provide services to one another as we see fit. We must be free to reject the worthless fiat currencies and the debt enslavement schemes of central bankers.
I certainly don't advocate violence, though a day may come when we must fight physically as a matter of self-defense. Now is the time for speaking out, for mass civil disobedience, for educating ourselves and those around us on the message of liberty. It's time to rise up and say "I'm going to assert my own intrinsic rights as a human being, and I'm willing to fight against those who want to stop me from doing so."
"Give me Liberty or Give me Death!" Yes, death is preferable to a life lived in servitude.
