Is the battle to retain personal liberty in a free society a losing one?
The events discussed in this work and the regular, consistent, and systematic manner in which they have unfolded throughout our history would seem to cause a prudent student of these times to answer in the affirmative. And yet, because freedom springs naturally from every human heart, it would seem as well that the government could never fully eradicate it, via war or pestilence or totalitarian systems.
In America, the government’s swift brutality toward human freedom can deter even the brave. Jefferson himself predicted that in the long march of history, power and order would become concentrated in the government, and the personal liberty of individuals would be diminished.
In this book, I have attempted to demonstrate not the inevitability of Jefferson’s prediction, but the need for eternal vigilance—another warning he gave us. We have seen how each president who chose to do so was easily able to use the behaviors of his predecessors plus fear and loathing to justify his own extra-constitutional behavior.
That rewarded and unchecked behavior needs to stop and remain stopped. We are entitled to a government that stays within the confines of the Constitution, and the Constitution was written to keep the government off our backs and out of our homes and away from our telephones and computers and bank accounts, and to keep the government transparent. A secret government knows no bounds in its exercise of secret powers, and it will use secretly exercised powers to acquire more power.
We have seen and have had enough of this.
We need to see courage and understanding. I sincerely hope that this book will stimulate both a grasp of the magnitude of the problem and a resolution to solve it. The problem is a government that does not believe in any natural or constitutional or legal restraints upon itself. The solution is to have people in government who do believe in the Natural Law; and to have systems in place to change and diminish the government, not grow it.
Because freedom lies in our hearts, while we live, it lives. But it must do more than just lie there.