Keep Right – Column by Ralph K. Ginorio
“These are the times that try men’s souls.” Thomas Paine states that those whose commitment is shallow will not stand up, even for their own freedom. Today, we must understand what is required of us if we are to remain free.
A safe and easy liberty is no liberty at all. Those who prize quiet over truth and security over freedom have utterly lost their perspective. Electing soft-spoken demagogues who cater to hypersensitive feelings and indulge unreasonable expectations of stability is nothing less than volunteering for slavery.
Yet, JD Vance’s debate performance is being praised because it eased the fears of excitably skittish Americans who were triggered by Donald J. Trump’s exuberant and unapologetic masculine style. This group of hysterically feminine voters are deluded; believing that they can fend off the many challenges of a dangerous world without being loud, brash, and aggressive.
Nothing worth having ever came without a fight. Nothing precious was ever brought into this world without pain. This is as true of children as it is of liberty. We must exorcize this seductive lie that our Republic can be preserved without strife and pain.
Freedom is only for the brave. A timid and compliant milquetoast may call himself free, but unless he has willingly stepped from safety into danger to serve the demands of conscience he is not really free. Freedom, genuine and actual, is the ability to conceive of truth, to speak truth, and to act truly; all without compromise.
No one who has every stood up for the truth of their own heart and soul has ever found it to be easy. To be true to one’s own conscience, an individual must be willing to disappoint those who love them who wish for them an easy life. A solitary person must reject the expectations of others and chart one’s own course. Refusing the anonymity of the herd, one must stand out in order to serve the dictates of conscience.
And, as Thomas Paine full well knew, a person of integrity must be willing to put in jeopardy one’s own ease, privacy, profit, popularity, security, safety, health, and even life itself. Unless a person loves the truth sufficiently so as to place it above all other considerations will that person be free.
Our American freedom does not exist in order to bring prosperity and comfort. That most US citizens lead lives with luxuries is merely a byproduct of freedom. Having unshackled the creative potential within every citizen, our American Republic has long offered opportunities to all of its citizens unimaginable in most other human societies both past and present.
Our freedom has a very different purpose. The world has its powers-that-be, each of whom desires expediency. These amoral powers want smooth sailing in order to maximize their profits and enhance their legitimacy. As they have created the status quo, these leaders in finance, politics, and administration are eager to preserve it. So it has always been.
However, the desire of bankers, elected officials, and bureaucrats for smooth sailing is often at variance with the dictates of personal conscience. Rather than expediency, conscience prizes integrity.
If we aspire to integrity we will inevitably think thoughts that will disrupt a corrupt status quo. In thinking such dangerous thoughts, a brave person will give them a bold and eloquent expression. And, of course, words without action are often useless. If a person has come to believe that he or she serves a higher good while the ways of the world merely perpetuate mediocrity, injustice, and evil, then he or she must become a reformer or a revolutionary.
The structures that govern human societies from before the Prophet Abraham’s time through the present have become very good at identifying thought-criminals, separating them from the mass of the credulous populace, and disappearing them. As Jerusalem was the city that, according to Jesus, routinely killed God’s prophets so it is that every human society destroys those who question and object to that society’s fundamental beliefs and practices.
Every social order is designed to grind down the person of conscience; to shut him up and make him comply. All societies have safety valves to allow most eccentric individuals to be laughed off as being proverbial village idiots. However, if a critic effectively challenges the status quo, it typically results in death. Either the innovator and his adherents are persecuted and killed, or the innovator’s ideas conquer the society by killing the old order. Or, there is war.
Some new ideas cannot harmonize with the old. One reason why our contemporary politics are so poisonous is that many Democrats have embraced socialism. Socialism has never worked to make the lives of human beings better. Western European social democracies still rely upon a free market to produce sufficient profits for their government programs.
More than this, in absolutely no fashion is any form of socialism compatible with the United States Constitution. Either socialism will triumph in America, or it will be killed off as a failed concept. I pray for the latter outcome.
Freedom exists so that every individual may seek truth without restraint and serve it without compromise. To have integrity is to expect persecution. To be a crusader is to prepare for war. To be free is to live in the arena of struggle.
Stop seeking an easy life. Stop expecting to reap the privileges of citizenship without shouldering its duties. Stop demanding salvation without being willing to face martyrdom.
If you crave freedom and serve conscience, be prepared to fight for your life.
