Liberty: It's still possible

There are basically two ways societies can be governed.

The American concept, from which we are rapidly drifting away, was to have a constitution that limited government power and guaranteed individual liberty, providing a generally enlightened, moral people with a strong Judeo-Christian worldview the opportunity to live free and govern themselves.
The only other alternative is government as master of the people. It requires government force, to one extent or another, to police the behavior and conduct of people.

I thought about this following the latest mass shooting at Fort Hood.

A military base is like a microcosm of a police state.

The rules of conduct and behavior on a military base are different from American civilian society. That's why, for instance, soldiers at Fort Hood were not permitted to exercise their Second Amendment rights to bear arms. Personnel on the base were at the mercy of military police to protect them, just as citizens of a police state are at the mercy of the government to keep them from harm.

Most of us don't like the idea of living in a police state. We don't like the surveillance. We don't like the restrictions on our freedom. We don't like the eavesdropping. We don't like losing control over our lives. We don't like censorship.

Yet, many in our society don't understand that restrictions on bearing arms is the first and most vital step toward living in a police state.

Many folks are fooled into thinking a government monopoly on force is not the very antithesis of a free society. They believe that government can be a benevolent force for good even though there are no ultimate checks or balances on its power, as America's founding fathers intended. They even believe that fewer guns equals fewer crimes of violence, despite the overwhelming statistical evidence to the contrary.

Once again, the microcosm of Fort Hood demonstrated the folly of such thinking.

This was, after all, a military base.

No doubt those behind the 1993 Clinton administration plan to disarm personnel on U.S. military bases thought nobody in their right mind would attack one. Since that decision, hundreds of soldiers and civilian workers on domestic U.S. military bases have been killed or wounded. Prior to that decision, there were no recorded mass shootings.

Likewise, a police state in which the government maintains a monopoly on armed force can't and won't protect people from such attacks. Police states are always built on the false precept of safety and security when in fact they deny safety and security as well as liberty.

When was the last time you heard of an incident in which police stopped a potential crime before it happened? It's the exception, not the rule. Police generally respond to crimes in progress or crimes that have already taken place. It's too late to stop an act of violence from being perpetrated. It's simply a matter of meting out punishment for a crime of violence that has already occurred – and even that is an uneven process at best.

But even worse is the fact that police states in which government maintains a monopoly on armed force frequently, if not inevitably, lead to more violence.

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The disarming of the public preceded every single genocide of the 20th century – from Armenia, to the Soviet Union, to China, to Pol Pot.

With that kind of evidence on the table, why do so many people continue to fall for the lie of gun bans and firearm confiscation and incremental restrictions toward those goals?

The answer is found in my definition of the self-governing society. Self-governing societies require an enlightened and moral people capable of making good choices, informed decisions, judging right from wrong.

That's why America is losing its freedom.

Increasingly, we no longer have a society capable of self-government.

That's the real problem. If people can't see for themselves the extreme danger of allowing government to maintain a monopoly on force, they likely can't tell right from wrong either. They will believe any lie. They are only suited to being subjects of government authority.

So what's the solution?

There are only two choices for those who want to live free:

to rebuild the kind of society America was intended to be;
or to build a new one from scratch on the ashes of the old.We don't have the option America's founders had – to venture to a new world with a vision for creating a free society independent of the old way of thinking.

It seems impossible sometimes, doesn't it?

But that's because we're not calling on the power our founders called upon in making their dream a reality.

Jesus said: "With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible."

Do you believe that?

If so, what are you doing about it?

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