Fifteen Years Later: The 9-11 Attacks and the Silver Lining Found Within

Yesterday was of course the 15th anniversary of the attacks of 9-11. Like most people, I remember that day, that moment when I realized the nation was under attack like no other day in my life. I remember walking into a practically deserted Kroger supermarket near midnight to get some food as I hadn’t eaten much of anything all day and had nothing in the house. It was somber and no one really spoke other than some torpid greeting and a forced smile.

It was literally like the foundations of one’s being had been shaken. War was something you read about in history books… something FDR or LBJ talked about, not something you watched live on your TV on some random Tuesday morning in September. War was something that happened on battlefields in other countries in places where Americans often can’t pronounce or sometimes can’t find on a map, not in New York City and Washington, DC. We had won the Cold War and peace was overtaking the planet. The booming economy of the 1990’s was said to be the direct result of the “Peace Dividend” brought about by Ronald Reagan’s victory. How was something like this even possible?

On Monday America was a bustling marketplace of ideas and commerce combined with might and virtue that was leading the world into its post history phase, one where freedom and free trade and prosperity were things to be striven for, if not always achieved. On Tuesday America was on her knees having been sucker punched in the head and gut while leading the parade of nations towards prosperity. As is often the case with history, it sneaks up from behind and takes hold of your world and rips you from your path and puts you on hers.

Here, fifteen years later I can say that the attacks of 9-11 are one of the most defining moments of my life. Not because I lost any members of my family or any friends or even had my way of life changed significantly. No, the thing I lost was my innocence. For me, September 11th was like some macabre combination of discovering there is no Santa Claus, Easter Bunny or Tooth Fairy all on the same day that you discover that you’re adopted, your wife’s cheating on you with your best friend, your religion is actually a cult and your accountant has stolen all your money. Having grown up on living on military bases around the world and been in the Army myself, I had this illusion that the United States was surrounded by some force field of grace that protected it from such attacks. Of course that force field was made up of the soldiers, sailors, Marines and airmen who worked diligently to protect the country, but those were the machinations that went on behind the curtain while we citizens celebrated holidays, watched football and went about our daily lives.

After 9-11 that all changed. As the truth about the origin of the attacks became clear, as the realization that the United States was not unambiguously seen around the world as a force for good, it became necessary to do some introspection. And I did. And the result is probably not what Osama Bin Laden wanted… at least not with me.

I started writing my blog in 2009 soon after our socialist / fascist president, Barack Obama, began his quest to destroy the United States as the leader of the world. I was sufficiently motivated to do so largely because of 9-11. Why? Because 9-11 forced me to reexamine what I “knew” to be true about my country. I’d grown up saying the Pledge of Allegiance every morning in school, I’d grown up saluting or putting my hand on my heart whenever the National Anthem was played, I’d grown up reading about the United States twice saving the world from world wars that were started elsewhere. I’d grown up knowing that the United States was a force for good.

But having someone viciously attack your country’s two most important cities makes you wonder about that. Watching as millions of people around the world cheered that attack and support its motivations makes you wonder about that. Having millions of Americans agree with the basic premise behind the attacks – although in most cases not the attacks themselves – makes you wonder about America’s goodness.

For me that introspection forced me to question everything that I had believed my whole life… but the funny thing is, that introspection didn’t lead me to hate my country. It didn’t cause me to decide that America was in reality a dark force seeking to pillage and control the entire world. No, in fact, 9-11 forced me to examine the history and nature of the United States and as a result, while I recognize that she is indeed imperfect, it turns out that the United States has been the greatest force for good in all of human history. (Read Paul Johnson’s A History of the American People)

The American Constitution and the freedoms protected within, along with the theory of free markets championed by our founders have brought about more freedom and more prosperity than has ever existed. The history of man is largely one of war, bare sustenance if not abject poverty and of course, oppression. The United States has – as a part of, then the leader of the “West” – helped change that reality for billions of people around the world. The United States has indeed saved the world from two hot world wars, won another cold one, and provided a beacon of hope to people around the world. Millions of people have come to America seeking her freedoms and prosperity while tens of millions more are inspired to try and reproduce some aspects of our experiment in their own nations.

And so it goes that, thankfully, for myself and millions of others, the attacks of 9-11 did the exact opposite of what they were intended to do. They inspired many Americans to reexamine their history and rediscover the moral good that the United States stands for, the economic opportunity she stands for and the framework for freedom our Constitution supports. While I cannot be thankful for the events that occurred 15 years ago or for the carnage that has followed, I take joy in the fact that they reinvigorated a patriotism that had become mundane, they forced me to cherish not only our freedoms but the mechanisms by which they came to be and how they are secured.  And perhaps most of all they forced me to recognize that such freedoms, while granted by God, exist in a world of men and must be prized, protected and promoted in order to endure.  And I'm not alone.  That's what you call a silver lining...

King Leonidas, ISIS and the Culture War Barack Obama Refuses to See… Nevermind Fight

A week and a half ago fascist thugs of ISIS attacked Paris. Three days later President Obama addressed the world from Istanbul and said the attack was “an attack on all of humanity and the universal values we share.”

That is a wonderful sentiment, but like most things that come out of Barack Obama’s mouth, it’s wrong. There are not universal values.

Take freedom of speech. Across the planet, from China to Saudi Arabia to Russia to Venezuela, (and most places in between) nothing resembling freedom of speech such freedom exists. In the West, from Australia to England to Italy to Canada, freedom of speech ostensibly exists, but the restrictions continue to grow. Even here in the United States where freedom of speech is enshrined in our Constitution, it is under siege everywhere. On universities, the very places where ideas are supposed to be studied and debated, speech codes are suffocating liberty and mini fascists seek to limit your ability to say anything they disagree with. In everyday life criticizing anyone for anything opens one up for accusations of being racist or sexist or homophobic or some other form of intolerance.

Freedom of religion? One wonders how Coptic Christians in Egypt feel about freedom of Religion. Try wearing a crucifix in Saudi Arabia. How free do the followers of Falun Gong feel in China? Jews in Europe… Here in the United States Christians are under assault for refusing to participate in gay weddings while atheists seek to eliminate even the shadows of Christianity from the public square.

Freedom in general is not something found on most parts of the planet… Across the Muslim world women are slaves and getting raped is a crime for which one can be ostracized, jailed  or even killed. South America and Africa are rife with failed states where graft is the natural order of things and the populations are mired in poverty (real poverty… not what passes for poverty in the United States) while government officials and their connected cronies live in luxury. In China the government or government aligned corporations control virtually everything, even down to reproduction.

All in all, the values that Obama is suggesting are universal are nothing of the sort. Widespread notions of freedom of speech, freedom of religion and individual liberty simply don’t exist. The vast majority of people living on the planet today do not share or experience any of those values. There has never been a time in human history where a majority of people shared such values. Indeed it’s never even been close.

It is only with the rise of the West, where such freedoms and values were developed and flourished and codified, that the notion of “universal freedoms” could even be imagined. Such freedoms hit their apex with the writing of the United States Constitution. For the first time in human history there was a document that not only explicitly spelled out the rights of citizens that could not be impeded, but more importantly, explicitly limited the power of government to only those things it was specifically empowered to do by the citizens.

The reality is, the “universal freedoms” Barack Obama talks about simply don’t exist. They never have. But somehow he, along with the rest of the left pretend that they do, which is exactly why they seek to shift power away from the constitutionally constrained government of the United States to the unconstrained United Nations. They live in a fantasy world where if everyone would just put down their weapons and embrace one another that the world will suddenly be all right. They feel like if everyone simply kept the “fair share” of their income then magically the world become a nirvana in which every family enjoys a lifetime of Norman Rockwell dinners.

And that tells you exactly why ISIS is a problem and the West is in decline. Europeans, along with the left in America, willfully ignored what made the West a success in the first place… culture inspired by Christianity – although at times hindered by it as well, built on intellectual curiosity and empowered by individual liberty and freedom. The notions of freedom of religion and speech and private property as we know them today evolved in the West over a period of 800 years. They were not codified by an edict by a Pope or Martin Luther or Napoleon or Queen Victoria or even James Madison. These decidedly non-universal values came about as the result of a struggle between church and state and citizenry as well as between churches, states and citizens. Much bloodshed was spilled in the process of developing those values. They were hard fought for and won, and to the degree that they exist in other places around the world, for the most part they were brought there by westerners.

It is not so much that the West is collapsing because it’s being invaded (which it surely is) but rather rotting from within because it has spend the last half century protected in a cocoon of security provided by the American military. After rescuing much of the world from the Nazis and the Japanese in WWII, for more than half a century the United States has provided a bulwark against the Soviets and the Chinese and later the Russians. Under the protection of American power, the West - including the United States – deluded itself with the notion that peace was now the norm and that civilization had finally come to humanity. As such, it was possible to create vast social programs to nurture citizens from cradle to grave with little concern about fiscal or social responsibility. In addition, they opened their doors to allow millions of immigrants to enter their countries and enjoy those programs without ever being required to assimilate. Indeed, in many European countries assimilation could be almost impossible even if it were desired, which it rarely was.

Today we have the logical conclusion of the argument that no culture is superior to any other. Because Western culture is no better than any other, there is no basis to demand assimilation. Migrants by the millions move to the West and then seek to establish mini-me versions of the failed states and dysfunctional cultures they left behind… Indeed, across Europe there are movements under foot to implement Sharia law above national law while France, Britain and other nations are peppered with “No-Go” zones.

Given that it’s seen as racist or xenophobic to suggest that one’s culture is superior to another, it’s verboten to ask who put men on the moon, mapped the human genome or invented mobile phones. Such questions do not matter because all cultures are equal. And so it goes. As the self loathing West derides the very things that made it successful in the first place it finds itself under siege by those who are not only proud of their culture and values but are willing to both kill and die for them.

To see how this juxtaposition of passion and cultural apathy might play itself out, read or watch something about the Battle of Thermopylae. Observe how a small force of highly motivated and passionate fighters can have an impact exponentially larger than their numbers might suggest. King Leonidas and his men lose their lives and the battle… but the Greeks win the war. Unfortunately for America and the West, our impotent and incompetent leader is Barack Obama, who refuses to even see that we’re in the midst of a culture war, nevermind recognize that for the other side it’s literally a fight to the death. Let’s hope the next occupant of the Oval Office understands that America and the values she holds are not only, not universal, but they are exceptional, and indeed worthy of both praise and protection.

War and Liberty - The Enemy Within

Today, when people talk about winning World War II, they often talk about freedom defeating tyranny. That is mostly true as the United States, the UK, Canada and Australia were indeed democracies. But it was not tyranny we went to war against. Indeed one of the powers that helped defeat Hitler was itself a dictatorship that only declared war on Hitler after having been invaded.

Adolph Hitler didn’t suddenly become a dictator in 1939 or even 1941. He had been a dictator for years before war broke out. While he didn’t start out as such, soon after getting power legitimately in January of 1933, he became one. Mussolini similarly became dictator three years after coming to power legally in 1922. At the same time, in Japan Emperors had ruled without opposition for more than two generations. Dictatorship, as unseemly as it might be, is rarely a reason to go to war – however it can be a great motivator once war is declared.

We also hear people talk about WW II as a fight against evil. Again, while true, we did not go to war against evil. The Nazi’s came to power on a platform imbued with anti-Semitism and for most of the 30’s they were engaged in marginalizing, quarantining and murdering Jews and others who didn’t fit the profile of their superior Aryan “race”. In Asia the Japanese had been massacring Chinese for years, and in one of the most horrific events in modern history, they raped, mutilated and murdered hundreds of thousands of Chinese men, women and children in Nanking in 1937.

At the end of the day it was not tyranny that America went to war against, although our enemies certainly were tyrants. It was not evil America went to war against, although our enemies were certainly evil. No, it was aggression that America went to war against. Specifically, it was aggression directed towards us and secondarily against our allies. The United States did not engage in WW II until the Japanese attacked our forces at Pearl Harbor in 1941 – although the United States had been providing aid to the British and the Chinese for some time. And while Congress declared war on Japan the next day, it did not do so against Germany until after they had declared it on us.

Why does any of this matter? Because freedom matters. Because understanding that freedom’s not just preserved simply by defeating an enemy on the battlefield matters. While the Axis was indeed a threat to American liberty, German and Japanese atrocities made it easy to rally support against them. Rallying support for freedom against an enemy is much easier if that enemy is a viscous, ruthless killing machine. It’s far more difficult if the enemy of freedom is someone who’s ostensibly trying to help.

And that’s what makes 2014 different from 1941, or 1944 when D Day was launched 70 years ago this past Friday. During WW II the enemies of freedom were tyrants doing despicable, abhorrent things, and doing them largely over there. Eventually they targeted the United States and we engaged. Today, while there are enemies of freedom who do despicable, horrific things largely over there, the biggest enemies of freedom are over here and appear far less menacing. Indeed they couch their tyranny in the paternal pleas for “fairness” or equity or protecting the children. It’s hard to raise an army people who claim to be trying to help. But make no mistake, they are just as dangerous in the long run. This battle will not be fought with guns and bombs and the enemies of freedom aren't nearly as easy to identify as those flying the swastika or Rising Sun flags.

For Barack Obama and the rest of the big government cabal – which includes many Republicans – nothing less than American freedom is the enemy:

• Economic freedom is hard to maintain when they have regulated the American economy into virtual stagnation. Insufficient jobs and more government largesse leads to more people falling out of the workforce and becoming wards of the state. Today the Labor Force Participation Rate is at its lowest in almost 40 Years and fully half of Americans live in a home that receives government benefits.

• Intellectual freedom is difficult to maintain when government is snooping on your every move and listening to virtually every word you say. 

• Political freedom is hard to maintain when the government uses its police power to harass its enemies and allows unfettered entrance to those who do not share our values.

• Liberty itself becomes somewhat unrecognizable when virtually every element of your daily life is regulated by nameless faceless bureaucrats in Washington and beyond. They may not yet tell you when to get up, when to go to the bathroom and when to go to bed, but it’s only a matter of time as virtually every single thing you interact with every day is regulated. Who must live in your neighborhood. The type of plastic your alarm clock is made of. The amount of sugar in your cereal. The amount of water your toilet flushes. What kind of gas your car must use. The kind of car seat you must have for your kid. What you can give that kid for lunch. What they must learn in school. What your boss must pay you. What constitutes overtime. How many minorities your bank must lend to. Who can contribute how much to political campaigns. What people can say on the radio or TV. What the cable companies can charge you.  What information Google can collect. What a company can say on the label of a can of corn. The kind of refrigerant used in your refrigerator. The kind of light bulbs in your night stand. Not to mention the confiscatory tax rates and a tax code that even its enforcers can’t understand. There’s virtually nothing you do in any given day that does not require Uncle Sam’s stamp of approval at some point along the way.

In substituting for Rush Limbaugh last week Mark Belling wondered if the United States today could rally a force to defeat… well, anything. That’s a good question because it appears to be the case that the nation that rallied itself to defeat the greatest menace in human history is unable to recognize the threat to liberty right in its midst. Seventy five years ago the German and the Japanese conduct made them an easy target against whom to focus American attention and energy. Today, after a half century of the cancer of big government liberalism crippling American prosperity and eviscerating American freedom, perhaps it will be its flowering in the person of Barack Obama that will finally bring about its downfall. The soft tyranny of liberalism may not be as easy to recognize as the tyranny practiced by our enemies in WW II, but it is no less important to defeat. I hope Mark Belling will soon find himself pleasantly surprised.

Obamacare - What good is health insurance if you lose the freedom to live your life as you choose?

One of the many reasons conservatives dislike government overreach is because government is so often wrong about so much. And what’s worse, regardless of the magnitude of the government’s failures, citizens are stuck with the consequences of those policies, in most cases forever.

This is not a new phenomenon. This has been going on for decades. Upon its establishment in 1965 the House Ways and Means Committee estimated that the cost of Medicare would rise to $12 billion by 1990. Unfortunately for American taxpayers that prediction was off by a power of nine, coming in at $110 billion. And things haven’t gotten any better since then. By 2011 Medicare costs ballooned to over $550 billion, having grown by 8.3% in a year when inflation was 3.2%.

But of course Medicare is but one example. Medicaid had a similar experience. The same House committee estimated that Medicaid’s first-year costs would be $238 million. Instead it came in more like $1 billion. It was projected to cost $9 billion by 1990 and, surprise, it came in at $67 billion. By 2011 the federal share of the program tipped the scales at $299 billion!

Tellingly, before government set its claws into healthcare it tracked very close to overall inflation. Since 1965 however, healthcare costs have increased by 2.3 times the rate of general inflation. To put that in perspective, inflation would have made something that cost $100 dollars in 1965 cost $718 dollars in 2012. That’s a pretty big jump, but if that $100 dollar item had increased at the rate of healthcare inflation since government got involved it would cost 2.3 times as much, or $1,651. At the same time, healthcare costs went from 5.1% of GDP in 1960 to approximately 18% today.

This record of financial incompetence (nevermind operational incompetence and malfeasance) could never survive for five decades in the private sector. But in government, no problem, and it’s not just healthcare. Think of Solyndra. Think of General Motors. Ethanol mandates. School lunches. The fact of the matter is, bureaucrats sitting in the otherworldly universe of Washington have a long history of making decisions about which they are unqualified and ill-informed, and more importantly, disconnected from the consequences of those decisions.

Now however we are about to embark on a journey that will make even the economic disaster of Medicare look like child’s play. Of course we’re talking about Obamacare. Although there were many warnings that Obamacare would be a disaster of epic proportions before it became law, today, less than a year from its true implementation, we are seeing the actual consequences begin to materialize.

Millions of jobs will be lost, one small company at a time. People will have a difficult time finding a full time job. Healthcare premiums will be going up. There will be a doctor shortage. Obamacare will become a regulatory anvil around the neck of American prosperity. Luckily though the Obama administration is on the job seeking to ensure that it doesn't become a "third world experience". Which, it's looking like it just might become. And to put a cherry on top, with our practically no existent GDP growth, apparently we can look forward to China overtaking the United States by 2016.

As bad as those things are, it actually gets worse. Your individual liberty is simply going to disappear. Many employees are now going to have to begin reveling to employers their weight, body fat measures, cholesterol levels and more. Pharmacy giant CVS states that all its employees will now have to either quit smoking or enroll in an addiction program by 2014. That is of course because smokers generally have higher healthcare costs than do nonsmokers, and since CVS is paying for that healthcare, they get to make the rules. Don’t like it? Then quit.

But then it’s not only smokers who cost more. Fat people generally cost more than thin people. Does that mean that a company can dictate that employees must be Oreo or Doritos or Coke free by the end of the year or enroll in an addiction program? How about motorcycle riders? They are 5 times more likely to be involved in a traffic accident than are car drivers. Does that mean that companies can tell you what you what kind of vehicle you can drive? How about unmarried women having sex out of wedlock, particularly minority women, where 77% of black births and 53% of Hispanic births are to unwed mothers? Given that sick children inflict an increased financial & healthcare burden on unwed mothers than they do on married mothers, can a company demand that unmarried female employees purchase and utilize birth control? (If so, how would they ensure compliance with usage?) Sure, all of this sounds farfetched, but so too once did the idea of schools telling moms what they can put in their children’s lunchboxes, cities banning Happy Meals and soft drinks and companies actually firing employees for being smokers.

At the end of the day, Obamacare may very well be the last stake in the coffin of individual liberty and American prosperity. Think of it this way… through the tax code the government already exercises a tremendous amount of influence on your life by deciding how much of your money you can keep. It’s pretty personal, but it’s largely financial, even if it impacts much of the rest of your life. Through the EPA the government influences your life, although thankfully for most of us it’s at an arm’s length, via regulation of the companies we work for and the firms we buy from. With Obamacare that scant remaining barrier between government and individual choice will disappear. Government is indirectly harnessing employers to expand its power over every aspect of your life, including the most intimate parts of it. And you can be sure it will stay indirect for only so long. Once government mandates can decide what you can eat, how much you have to exercise, the kind of transportation you choose and how you have sex, what is left of liberty? Not much… Add to that the evisceration of the greatest economic engine the world has ever known and you wonder how long before it all comes crumbling down. Now where does one go to get insurance to protect against that?

Americans enjoy an orgy of fruit while the roots of Tree of Liberty are shredded...

Americans are busy people. In one respect we are no different than any other people on the planet… our primary needs are food, water and shelter. Beyond that however, Americans enjoy a life of leisure that virtually no one else on the planet enjoys. Not leisure measured in hours worked as the French, Germans and workers in virtually every other developed country work fewer hours per year than Americans do. No, what’s different is that leisure time in the United States has so many ways of being spent. Motocross. Shopping. Television. Amusement parks. Golf. Swimming. Skiiing. Football. Baseball. Horseback riding. Golf. Off track betting. Gymnastics. Theater. College classes. Karate. Star Trek conventions. Habitat for Humanity. BBQ competitions. Susan G Komen Race for the Cure. This is only a tiny fraction of the myriad ways Americans have at their disposal to entertain themselves or spend their leisure time.

If one were to compare the spectrum of activities available to the average American with the equivalent spectrum for any other country on the planet it wouldn’t take long to see an enormous difference. None of this came about by accident. The reason Americans have dozens of sports and thousands of activities to participate in from grade school to the senior center is because the nation has been so prosperous for so long and the nation has exemplified creativity for things both consequential and not. The result is a nation where most people have available a level of entertainment and leisure that would put to shame anything Louis the 16th or Marie Antoinette might have ever imagined.

One consequence of a life filled with a plethora of options is that Americans get very busy. So busy in fact that they forget to pay attention to things that are far more consequential than who got kicked off the island this week, how many Facebook friends they have, or will little Timmy’s self esteem be forever damaged if he doesn’t get picked to play this weekend. Of course I’m talking about civics, or more specifically, government. In a perfect world no one would have to pay attention to the government because it would run like a well oiled machine in the background and it wouldn't get in anyone’s way. Alas, even Ben Franklin knew such a perfect world did not exist: “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.”

Every two years the cacophony that is American life is made that much more dissonant by our elections. Most Americans, however, unfortunately, spend less time learning what’s really at stake in those elections than they do selecting teams for their March Madness brackets or deciding who they want to vote for on American Idol.

This might have been acceptable 100 years ago when the federal government was relatively small and had little discernible impact on the lives of most Americans. Today, when the octopus of the federal government controls virtually every aspect of our lives, it’s simply not. There is a tipping point in every endeavor in life, and the lifecycle of a Republic is no exception. Leaving the Constitutional Convention Benjamin Franklin was asked: “Doctor, what have we got—a Republic or a Monarchy?” He responded: “A Republic, if you can keep it.”

Two hundred and twenty years later we are on the verge of losing that Republic. The problem is simply that too many Americans have no idea what the danger is, and have little interest in finding out. They’ve spent so much of their lives enjoying the leisure and entertainment conditions our Republic has made possible that they have forgotten that the foundation of freedom and prosperity upon which those conditions are built are not ordained by God, not set in stone and are not guaranteed. Indeed, America with her freedoms and prosperity are far more fragile than most Americans recognize.

One simple example. Two weeks ago President Obama’s National Labor Relations Board sued Boeing for locating its new 787 Dreamliner plant in South Carolina, a right to work state. The NRLB is supporting the unions in Washington State where Boeing already employs tens of thousands of workers. The company made no secret of the fact that it chose South Carolina because it could not afford more of the five crippling strikes it had suffered over the last 20 years in Washington. At the most basic level, the federal government is claiming that it has the power to decide where a company can invest its own capital. If Uncle Sam can decide where and when a company can invest its money, they it can just as easily decide where a person spends his or her money, (say... unionized Kroger rather than non union Wal-Mart) where he or she can get a job, buy a house or what kind of a car they can buy. At some point doesn’t anybody begin to wonder if there are any limits on government at all?

Because there are so many instances of federal overreach, and their names sound so benign - American Recovery & Reinvestment Act - if conservatives were to point out every potential threat and the inherent dangers of a government that recognizes no limits on its power, they risk being labeled being political versions of the boy who cried wolf. Nothing could be farther from the truth. There is indeed a ravenous pack of wolves at the door of the American Republic and they are dressed in ill fitting donkey costumes. The problem is that most Americans are too illiterate in civics or too busy enjoying their lives to take the time to even look through the peephole.

The question is, can anyone shake the American people out of this political stupor long enough to recognize the danger they face? Will Americans rise to the occasion in 2012 or will they instead eat the fruit of the tree as its roots are cut.

To paraphrase Martin Niemöller:

First they raised the minimum wage and I cheered because I had a job…
Then they destroyed public education and I didn’t act because I sent my kid to private school…
Next they limited cable rates and I applauded because I saved $20 a month.
When they came for my light bulbs I didn’t react because it made me feel good to help the environment…
One day they said ethnicity was more important than ability for college acceptance but I said nothing because I’d already graduated…
They increased taxes on the rich and I didn’t care because I wasn’t rich.
Then they came for my gun, my car, my job and eventually all of my choices but there was no one left to stand with me because no one remembered what real liberty was or how it was supposed to be protected in the first place…