A speech was given Wednesday before a joint session of Congress that was either praised as magnificent and unifying or denounced as a dark plan for excessive spending and the accumulation of power, depending upon which side of the political fence the person who offered the critique stands.
Of course, the tenor and substance of Biden’s speech will be dissected, studied and debated for days to come. The commentary, pro and con, will be filled with sound and fury fired by hot emotion and fierce loyalty or acrimony, again depending upon political fealty. And through it all members of the general public — the taxpaying people the sparring politicians and media talking heads are supposed to serve — will watch in ballooning confusion and concern, if not outright fear.
Yes, fear.
“When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”
The above is a quotation commonly misattributed to Thomas Jefferson. But whatever its source, the two sentences are profound in their simplicity.
If the politicians stopped their across-the-aisle verbal bloodletting and the posturing propagandists in the mainstream news media just — let’s be blunt — shut up for a few minutes and both groups of people, who have lost the faith of millions of Americans, just looked and listened they might discover an inconvenient truth: People across this great nation are scared.
Why? Because they see mounting evidence of people trying to push them down economic and governmental paths they don’t want to walk. Add to that the many “journalists” who seem all to willing to swallow without question the pabulum being fed to them by their elite masters and then tell the proletariat salvation is at hand.
For years now, the unwashed masses have heard more and more “leaders” speak of free pre-kindergarten, free community college, expanded Medicaid and more and now are seeing attempts to enact the freebies. They listen and watch and wonder how much this will cost them because anyone who has tried to balance a budget knows nothing is free. The operational expenses must be paid.
They witness defund the police movements and wonder if you handcuff or eliminate law enforcement, with what will it be replaced. Social workers? When in trouble most Americans want the biggest, toughest, armed-to-the-teeth cop a department can send coming to their aid, not a scrawny social worker with a clipboard.
They hear talk of packing the U.S. Supreme Court, ending the Senate filibuster, doing away with the Electoral College and nationalizing the country’s election system and wonder if the country they love is coming to an end. Ask anyone who lived in Cuba during or shortly after the rise of Fidel Castro or behind the Iron Curtain in Europe and if you’re not afraid now you will be. They’ve seen this movie.
In the meantime, soothing voices will tell you the above commentary is nonsense. But history teaches that such voices are plentiful just before the boot comes down on your neck and you are told what has been done was done for your own good, so be silent and comply.
Now is not the time to be silent. Now is the time to speak up, to insist attacks against your liberty be put to an end, to demand action by freedom-loving leaders who are awake, not just woke.