Is It War?

Deborah Venable

01/04/10

 

You decide.  Is it a War On Terror or a War On Tyranny that we are fighting?

 

Others have postulated the concept of a war on tyranny before me, but it seems to have been prompted by the former administration’s declarations against tyranny in the world, and not so much concentrated on defining America’s internal struggles.  Indeed, Bush’s attempts to expand democracy in the world and lead America on a mission of “nation building” that would not only bolster this country’s image, but also offer the taste of freedom to people in bondage everywhere was ambitious to say the least.  For many commenting on this effort, the idea of shifting focus from a war on terror to a war on tyranny seemed to leave a bad taste in their mouths.

 

Let’s face it, though, there is no war on terror being waged now, or is there likely to be in the future.  Political correctness won’t allow us to get the descriptive verbiage right, much less define the enemy.  If “terror” were the only enemy we are fighting, the war would have been over almost immediately.

 

The face on the enemy in a war on terror is an inept, bungling, misguided, ruthless piece of human garbage.  He’ll trip himself up more times than not, and ignorance is the only thing that paves his path to success - other people’s ignorance.  One doesn’t have to war with terror – one only needs to defeat the human failing that allows it to exist.

 

The war on tyranny, however, is a much more formidable undertaking.  Defeat that enemy and terror has no foothold. 

 

The American colonists went kicking and screaming into battle against tyranny for the first time about 234 years ago.  As others have pointed out, they fought the American Revolution for perhaps much less provocation than modern American patriots have today, but they had a single face to paint on their enemy – the king of England, George III. 

 

He was an obvious tyrant and held the reins of the most powerful (and feared) nation on earth.  The colonists were not free to pursue their own happiness until they fought that war and broke those reins of power over them.  It was almost an impossible undertaking to fight such a war, and a modern type opinion poll taken at that time would have probably voted against it.

 

One of the best dramatic performances depicting America’s Revolutionary War occurred in the movie, “The Patriot” starring Mel Gibson as the fictional character, Benjamin Martin.  You may remember a scene early in the movie where Martin is called to the state house in Charleston where the decision is pending on whether or not to levy a tax to fund the war.  Because Martin is a widowed father with seven children as well as a war worn veteran of the French and Indian War, he has no intention of getting in the fight, so he addresses the meeting with a simple question: 

 

''Why should I trade a tyrant 3,000 miles away for 3,000 tyrants one mile away?''

 

Of course the levy passed and the war was fought, (with our fictional character playing the hero’s role all the way to the end) and with many more than 3,000 real heroes spilling their blood for our inheritance of freedom. 

 

That question, though, posed all these years later by a fictional character in a depiction of that war, remains unanswered.  Why, indeed, trade tyrants?  And is that what we have truly done? 

 

While we are busy putting a face on the enemy, what would that face look like if we come to the conclusion that this war on tyranny is a reality?  Some would say the politicians who are pushing unconstitutional legislation, trying to control every aspect of our lives and fortunes, would wear that face.  Others may proclaim that the tyrants we should be most concerned with are those leaders of regimes all over the world who see us as infidels, Satin, or meddlesome imperialists. 

 

America didn’t used to fear those outside forces – we merely chose to battle and defeat them.  Now, however, we no longer speak and act with one unified voice – rather we quake in our own indecisiveness.  Leaders and scholars in this country hold such tyrants in high regard, and praise them as good examples for mankind to follow! 

 

Is it war?  American soldiers are killing and being killed on foreign battlefields while the politicians that have sent them there proceed to tie their hands and saddle them with impossible rules of engagement and threats of punishment for not treating the enemy “fairly.”  Whatever happened to the old admonishment about fairness in love and war?

 

Civilian Americans are also fighting their own war with much the same constraints. 

 

I believe America is once more embroiled in a War On Tyranny.  That is to say that there are those inside our own government, within every institution of society, and within every community that would seek to wield absolute power over the so-called free society of individuals that make up America. 

 

It is a war of hideous consequence if individual sovereignty loses.  The biggest problem we face is educating the heretofore ill-educated bulk of the electorate to recognize and understand the term, “individual sovereignty.”  It’s tough to do in a declining moral society that does not accept that they may have a Creator to answer to one day and that the Founders relied on knowledge of and faith in that Creator as they set about to protect our unalienable rights in the government they set up.  Without the belief that we actually have these rights, sovereignty will be forfeited.

 

How can anyone believe in individual sovereignty and unalienable rights who also believe that any human or group of humans should exercise absolute power over others? 

 

Admiring or trading tyrants will not see us through this war on tyranny.  We have the right and duty to demand that our elected representatives are not tyrants.  As I see it, neither major political party nor any of the lesser splinter parties or proposed “new” parties will insure this.  We can keep trading one party for the other every election year, or voting in so-called “independents” (who always seem to choose one of the parties to caucus with anyway), watch them buy and sell their votes to the highest bidders, allow them to completely ignore their constituents to build their own “careers” or we can demand that they remember that they serve us – not the other way around. 

 

It is long past time to demand term limits.  This is an issue that will be hard to win, no doubt, because we are literally asking tyrants in Washington and state houses to slit their own throats – or it will certainly seem so to many of them.  This recent article examines the issue quite succinctly. 

 

I can’t say whether or not this will ever happen, but I can say with absolute certainty that if it doesn’t, America will never be free of tyrants in close proximity, and therefore, we will never be free. 

 

 

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