Two quotes…

for your consideration. The first is from William Pitt the Younger, when Parliament was considering a bill to reform the East India Company. It was argued that the bill was necessary to save the company from bankruptcy. Pitt responded,

“Necessity was the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It was the argument of tyrants; it was the creed of slaves.”

Years later, F A Hayek would express a similar thought, though he would phrase it differently.

‘Emergencies’ have always been the pretext on which the safeguards of individual liberty have been eroded.

Regardless of the emergency, and regardless of its severity, it seems almost inevitable that some people will make the attempt to “fix” things, always at the cost of just a little more liberty. I submit the same thing is true now. Is the current pandemic bad? Of course. Pandemics are, almost by definition, not good or even neutral events. But here’s the deal: the world is not ending and the sky is not falling. Those who insist it is are either deceived or simply lying to you. Regardless of the issue, the challenge will always be how to deal with that challenge while preserving liberty. Not “preserving most of our liberty,” mind you but “preserving liberty.” As an American, I will go so far as to suggest that the preservation of our liberty is far more important than the preservation of some much vaunted place on the world stage. Those things can go hand-in-hand, to some extent, but liberty must always be the primary concern.

Related to the above is this: there are those who will tell you that America’s only hope is for us to reelect the current POTUS. There are those from the other side who will tell you our only hope is to elect someone else. Allow me to suggest both of those are lies. Our hope as a nation is not dependent so much upon who we elect as it is upon us. If we wish to remain free, we must elect those who will pass laws consistent with freedom, and hold them immediately politically accountable if they do otherwise, regardless of what else they may promise, even if they deliver on those other promises. Pork is a poor substitute for freedom.

If we wish to remain free, we must be committed to the principles that once made us free. We must reject authoritarians of any stripe. It is a challenge. I pray we are equal to it.