It’s common during election seasons to hear politicians ask us whether we are better off than we were under the previous administration… but you never hear anyone ask if we are more free?

This is a bit odd, considering that freedom is supposed to be our nation’s most revered, preeminent principle. Liberty, along with life and the pursuit of happiness, was considered so vital that our founding fathers included it an essential right of all people in our Declaration of Independence. Furthermore, they asserted that “whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government…”.

So the authors of our Declaration of Independence, the framers of our Constitution considered freedom so critical and so essential, that they called it our right to alter or abolish any government that would change or diminish our liberty in any way!

These great men were engaged in nothing less than creating the blueprint for a government which would protect the freedom and rights of citizens against government’s historical tendency toward tyranny and oppression. One wonders how Jefferson, Madison and Adams would have responded to the massive blows freedom has sustained in the post 9/11, dystopian America.

Thomas Jefferson told us that “the greatest [calamity] which could befall [us would be] submission to a government of unlimited powers.” And surely, in our servile acquiescence to a government that has become more oppressive, uncontrollable and unresponsive to the will of the people, Jefferson would have seen the realization of his worst nightmare.

Jefferson recognized that “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.”  And as we face yet another election season – one which is likely to produce candidates chosen for us by the elite – it’s hard not to feel that, as a people, we have failed miserably at protecting and maintaining what Jefferson and the founding fathers put in place.

So how did this happen? Was it apathy – do the American people simply no longer care about their own freedom? Or is it something else?

Perhaps we’ve simply been lulled to sleep; hypnotized by years of propaganda designed to make us believe that our great system of government is incorruptible and infallible.

But that’s not what our founders believed. They knew all too well how difficult it would be to keep and maintain a government by and for the people. James Madison warned against the “abridgement of freedom from gradual and silent encroachments by those in power…” and that “the truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted.” But time and again we have naively put our trust in men – and women – who have failed miserably to protect the very rights and freedoms entrusted to us.

We live in an age where our money is controlled – not by congress, as specified in the constitution – but by a private bank, deceptively called the Federal Reserve. And in what can only have been an intentional omission, generations of Americans have been kept ignorant about the true nature of our system of banking and money. We have been made completely unaware that Jefferson considered this type of banking system “a greater threat to our liberties than standing armies,” and that “If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency… the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”

And today, just as Jefferson feared, the Banks and the Corporations they spawn have taken over our country. Though their unlimited campaign funding, their lobbyists, their political action committees, they have taken control of every level of our federal government; the congress, the senate, the oval office and the supreme court. We look in vain for candidates who might possibly protect and preserve our constitution, but find, as George Washington did, that “few men have virtue to withstand the highest bidder.”

We are told that we live today in a dangerous world… with faceless, stateless terrorists who represent a real and present danger. We have seen the Government cynically use this vague threat to dismantle our Bill of Rights: destroying our protections against unwarranted search and seizure, eliminating our right to due process, and revoking the Posse Comitatus Act, which since 1878 has prohibited the Federal Government’s from using the military against us.

All of these actions have supposedly been done in the name of making us more safe in an increasingly unsafe world. But this is an old tyrant’s trick, and as James Madison pointed out, “If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.” Or, as Plato said much earlier, “This and no other is the root from which a tyrant springs; when he first appears, he is a protector.”

For those of us who are watchful and aware, this obvious and incessant attack against freedom is disconcerting, but as we look around us we find the majority of our fellow citizens blithely unconcerned. But we should be concerned, we should horrified. “We are right to take alarm,” as Madison said, ” at the first experiment upon our liberties.”  It is up to each of us to fight for our rights and protect our freedoms for as John Adams said, “a constitution of government – once changed from freedom – can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost forever.”

So what should we do if our constitution has been betrayed, and our liberty is diminishing by the second. Thomas Paine said that “It is the responsibility of the Patriot to protect his country from its government.” Jefferson said that “the spirit of resistance to government is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive.”

Our founding fathers are speaking to us across the ages. They are telling us to be vigilant, to be ever watchful for the emergence of tyranny and oppression. They are warning us that corruption among the powerful is inevitable. They are reminding us that freedom is fragile, that our constitution is a miracle and that we are the best hope for liberty throughout the world.

All of us who have awakened from the ignorant, media-induced coma need to rise up and take action. We need to recognize the tactics being used to divide and conquer us. We need to recognize that the illusory, two-party system as it is currently practiced only creates dissension, or what George Washington characterized as: “The alternate domination of one faction over another… [which] leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism.”

We are being herded steadily, inevitably toward a state of subjugation to a government increasing oppressive, tyrannical and fascist. Our government has indeed become destructive to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, and as our forefathers did, we have the right – we have to duty – to alter or abolish it.

You can make a difference…

John Adams said that “It does not require a majority to prevail, but rather an irate, tireless minority keen to set brush fires in people’s minds.”

Be that irate, tireless minority. Light the brushfires. Fight!

We owe it to those great men who built this free country in a world of oppression.

We owe it to those who have fought against the the enemies of freedom throughout our history.

And we owe it to the future, and to a world that has looked to American’s as liberty’s protectors. We simply cannot stand idly by and watch as our rights and precious freedoms continue to slip through our careless fingers.