I Pledge My Life, My Fortune, My Sacred Honour

“Four score and seven years ago, our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men were created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated can long endure.”

The Gettysburg Address; one of the most important speeches that Abraham Lincoln ever gave. Read that paragraph again. I mean really read it. Understand what the 18^th President was saying. Lincoln, like many of our Commanders-in-Chief was fought on just about every policy he wanted put into legislation. The South, the Democrats, did not want to abolish slavery. Why, without those black workers the plantations would go bankrupt. Those people needed to be subjugated and enslaved to the privileged white plantation owners. After all, they were just n*****s, property, not even worth a decent thought.

Lincoln hated slavery, as did a lot of the Northern Republicans. In fact, the Founding Fathers weren’t that keen on slavery, either. Why did they own slaves then? A lot of them didn’t. The ones that did were just following the norm. The thought that the Founders did not believe that all men were created equal is just liberal propaganda today. The Founders were God-fearing, Christian men. The norms for 240 plus years ago would not be tolerated in today’s world. Just think, women took care of the house, the children, the cleaning, cooking, the mending; they weren’t allowed to vote, take care of business, most didn’t even have a voice in any decision-making at all.

Children were disciplined by the use of a switch from a willow tree, a belt pulled off a pair of trousers or a good backhand. They were not allowed to talk back, show any disrespect for their elders (whether those elders were related or not), forced to work alongside the men, and expected to follow the rules. If Father told them to do something, it wasn’t put off for a week, or a day, or an hour. It was done immediately.

Yes, things were different in Colonial times; they were different right up until almost the 21^st Century. Yes, civil rights were important in the 1950s and 60s and segregation was done away with. Women’s suffrage was taken care of on June 4, 1919, when the 19^th Amendment was passed with 2 votes over the required two-thirds majority. Children still respected their elders, families still sat down to eat together, common sense was still alive and well. Things were starting to change, though.

Women entered the workforce during WWII and became wage earners; their voices were becoming more important in decision-making when it came to the family finances. The sexual revolution of the 1960s brought about free love, promiscuous sex, and then, on Jan 22, 1973, the Supreme Court decided that Roe v Wade would become policy. Women could get a divorce whether the father wanted her to or not. Women were gaining more and more power in the world.

While the Confederation delegates were debating on a constitution for the new nation, there were a lot of arguments as to just how this new government should be set up. The delegates were divided on a lot of issues. One thing they all agreed upon was that the central government should be limited, regulated, controlled. Each man feared that an unchecked, centralized government would become a tyranny and overpower the people just as King George had done. A lot of them wanted a Bill of Rights added before the constitution was taken to the states to be ratified. The opponents to that stated if they did, it would be the government setting into law what should be put before the people. The Constitution of the United States was sent to the several States minus the Bill of Rights.

Each delegate wanted to make sure that the central government, the federal government, didn’t usurp the States powers. At one point, several of the delegates believed that the new country would go to civil war or become a monarchy if the new constitution wasn’t worded just right. As it turned out, the Constitution was ratified. James Wilson, a signatory on the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, also a Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, stated in a speech given on Oct 6, 1787, to the new Congress, “Regarding it then (regarding the new Constitution and government), in every point of view, with a candid and disinterested mind, I am bold to assert, that it is the best form of government which has ever been offered to the world.”

That was the government that the new nation adopted as their own; a government for and by the people. Then, less than a hundred years after that, it was eighty-seven years, we were in a civil war; brother against brother, American against American. Why? This war was not over slavery as has been taught over the years. It was fought because of State’s rights. The Southern States believed that the federal government was becoming too powerful and taking power from the states. Slavery was just something that Lincoln wanted to get rid of; needed to abolish before the war ended. That is why he worded his Gettysburg speech the way he did. “Testing whether this nation…could long endure.” We endured. We remained one nation, under God, indivisible; but at a huge price of blood.

Now, two hundred and forty-three years after we declared our freedom from a tyrannical dominion, now, a hundred and fifty-four years after the end of the Civil War, we are once again faced with the prospect of our Constitutional Republic failing. Can we endure? Are we able to once again beat back the oppressive and backward policies of socialism/communism that the Democrat Party is trying to force upon us? Will we persevere and keep the rights and privileges guaranteed to us by the most important document in world history since the Magna Carta? Or will we go peacefully into the night and fall to the will of those that abhor our freedoms?

Throughout our short history, it has always been the Democrats that wanted to keep power over people. First it was the blacks they wanted to keep in slavery, they wanted to keep segregation, they have wanted minorities to suffer so that they could give them a hand-out instead of a hand-up. Now, it is the Democrats that want to disarm the people, silence their opposition, enforce unconstitutional laws, tell us what we can eat, what we can earn, what we can save, where we can live. It has always been the Democrat Party that has legislated restrictive laws that go against the people’s freedoms. Usually in the name of safety; safety of children, the safety of motorists, safety people’s health. But what have they done, actually? Taken away our rights, little by little.

We are required by law to wear seat belts, for years we were forced to have health insurance whether we could afford it or not, children are forced into car seats until they are so tall, so old, so much weight; smokers are banned from public places; arguments between citizens are now fought in court, at huge expense; now, in California, it is illegal to use plastic straws. The 2020 Democrat candidates for President want to take from the rich and give to the illegals. The Constitution gives the federal government the power to collect and levy taxes for certain things. Government handouts are not on the list.

The Founders knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that a large, unchecked, government would become corrupt. That is why they set up the checks and balances of a three-branch federal government that was restricted in its power. The States retained more power than the federal government. Over the course of our short history, the States have relinquished many of their rights and responsibilities to the federal government. With an ever-growing population, especially with an open-border policy such as the Democrats want, the government will keep growing bigger and bigger and more powerful and more restrictive on the people while less restrictive on it. The Democrats are charging full steam ahead for that ever more powerful centralized government. Just read through the Green New Deal.

The Green New Deal has nothing to do with climate. It doesn’t matter what we, as one nation, do to stop climate change. Unless the entire world stops using fossil fuels and polluting the rivers, lakes and oceans, the air will never be pristine. Climate changes. The Earth has had six Ice Ages and several global warming cycles. This planet takes care of itself and nothing humanity does will change the cycles. What the GND is all about is fundamental economic and societal change. It is Marxism in modern terms. It is totalitarianism. It is government taking full control over the private sector, doing away with private ownership, redistribution of wealth (and not from the rich to give to the poor; it will be taken from all the citizens and given to the government), and power to an elite few. Socialism is for the people, not the Socialist.

The Founding Fathers warned us 243 years ago. They tried to protect us with the greatest form of government ever created. They also told us that if we didn’t keep fighting for it, if we became complacent, if we let our guard down, we would lose our freedoms. That is where we are right now, today. Presumption of innocence has been done away with. Freedom of speech has been done away with. Freedom of the press is done away with. The right to keep and bear arms is being stripped away through regulation. We have become complacent.

Can we endure? Will we keep what the Founders fought and died for? They pledged their lives, their fortunes, and their sacred honor to give us these freedoms that we have taken for granted for so long. Are you willing to pledge anything to keep those freedoms?