WHOSE SIDE ARE YOU ON?
What cannot be refuted, must be silenced.
That apparently is the attitude of the liberal and afraid. The minority who seek to dominate society through threat and intimidation, who have abandoned principle and decency in the name of arrogance and power.
Who have failed at their callings, yet sit in judgement of all, ever ready to cast the first and the second and the hundredth stone.
The blind leaders of the blind.
It’s true, the emperor has no clothes. But they’ll kill you if you say so. Or at least take your livelihood, and curse your name with all the bile and spite of their hearts.
And they will succeed if you let them. If you leave them unchallenged. If you silently bear their oppression, if you let them enslave you without making a stand. Today, tomorrow, and every day. This issue, the next issue, and every issue.
You either stand for freedom and decency, or you don’t. And they either stand for freedom and decency, or they don’t.
And by their fruits ye shall know them.
By their fruits you can judge them. Because you don’t get good fruit off a bad tree, and you don’t get bad fruit off a good tree.
And a man who turned a blind eye to pedophile priests is impeached as a moral arbiter. The leader of a church with dwindling membership and relevance – a shepherd who has scattered the flock – is nothing more than a funny collar and a title, a self-important relic out of touch with the leadership above and the worshippers below.
Ditto for all the wannabes, the social activists in the pulpit, who wouldn’t recognize God or Allah or the man in the moon if he walked up and shook their hand. They are not purveyors of religion, they are perverters of religion. They are avarice in clergy robes. In a society increasingly religious, they preside over congregations increasingly sparse. They worship the god of peace and justice instead of the God of faith and repentance. Theirs is a gospel of Marx not God, of politics not salvation.
They are Pharisees and Inquisitors.
They sit in positions of governmental power, demanding the dignity of office while failing in that office. Their neighborhoods rot and their schools seethe and all that grows and prospers under their touch is the tax levy. Higher, ever higher, while their community falls lower, ever lower.
They demand new and higher office while violence rages unchecked on their streets, when shootings and beatings and robberies and murders are the norm. They boast of leading the police department, yet refuse to accept its failings. They preach of peace and harmony but are unwilling to stop the violence that plagues those who do not share their prominence or privilege.
If you picked a school superintendent and packed a school board and still your students are denied a worthwhile education, if after a decade of power there has been no progress, if you have had your turn and only made things worse, what good are you?
What more power should you have? What is your true legacy? Are you in it for anything other than yourself and your confederates?
There is a rot in society, wrapped up in egotism and superiority, a philosophy that is anti-freedom and anti-goodness. A philosophy that comes out on the wrong side of good versus evil and truth versus error. A philosophy that is rejected by the American mainstream yet entrenched in the American structure of power.
It is liberalism and more. A stench of many names but one purpose, the degradation of goodness and liberty.
It’s on the network news and in the local paper, in the headquarters of both political parties, in the activists of every stripe who extort the power a democratic process or their own labors would never earn them.
It is tyranny wrapped up in a bow.
And it is all around us.
And that which it cannot refute, it seeks to silence. When the light of truth is shined upon it, it seeks to extinguish that light. And most often it wins.
So you must see it for what it is.
And you must see your part for what it is.
The sheep stand there and take it, the men stand up and fight. Today, tomorrow, and every day. This issue, the next issue, and every issue.
And when one falls, 10 more must stand to take his place. As the effort goes forward to destroy those people and institutions which stand against this evil, the silent majority must abandon its silence. New leaders and new institutions must develop and fight. The war cannot be abandoned because there are casualties. Fear is the tyrant’s best friend, whether he rules from a castle or a press conference, City Hall or the newsroom.
There can be no fear. There can be no reluctance. What’s right is right and what’s wrong is wrong.
And if you are not standing for the one you are facilitating the other.
Paul Revere’s warning was: The British are coming.
My warning is: They’re already here.
And what they cannot refute, they will silence. Unless we stand together. Unless we realize we’re all in this together, and what happens to one today, can happen to hundreds tomorrow.
As some other lovers of freedom once said: United we stand, divided we fall.
And that was never truer than today.
- by Bob Lonsberry © 2003
