“Liberty does not make men happy; it makes them men.” Manuel Azana, one-time Prime Minister of Spain, and staunch constitutionalist, said those words in 1935. They are still true of men and women, today. But for how long will we have our liberties?
April 19, 2013. Thousands of people cower in their homes. Some 4,000 heavily armed police officers, many in armored personnel carriers, resembling more an Army than a police force, patrol the streets. Large portions of a major American city are shut down for hours in an illegal, undeclared declaration of martial law.
The search for Suspect Two in the Boston Marathon bombing wasn’t just a victory for terrorism, it was a victory for the Nanny State.
People propagandized to believe that the government should take care of them were eager to hunker down like children ducking under the blankets when the Nanny cries, “boogyman!”
Where were the militiamen of June 17, 1775, who kept a loaded weapon by the door, who were experienced in its use, and who were ready to take it up in defense of themselves, their homes and families, and their liberty?
Where were the militiamen — citizen soldiers not part of a government army — who fought at every turn in this nation’s war for independence?
Where were the militiamen of whom the Second Amendment to the Constitution speaks? Where were they, and how different might things have been had they been there?
We have become a nation overrun by sheep: sheep who sit silently while the Nanny State grows in power, sheep who remain complacent as the Nanny State erodes our freedoms, sheep who elected the current Congress and administration because of promises to be taken care of, to be supported from cradle to grave.
These sheep collectively are the bellwether that is leading to its doom the grand experiment that is the Republic of the United States of America.
“It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.” Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda from 1933—1945 said this, and understood it.
So have and do those who would swaddle us in the comfortable blanket of the Nanny state.
The greatest difference between the rise of Germany’s National Socialism and the conditions that exist today may be that Goebbels didn’t have the power of the Internet and of social media.
Think of what contribution they made to the abortive, so-called “Arab Spring.” Think of what they are doing in the hands of unscrupulous politicians.
This is no longer about Red versus Blue, of Democrat versus Republican, of conservative versus liberal. It is about the life of this nation.
We must take back our government, and our nation.
Paul Lentz, curmudgeon
Peachtree City, Ga.
