The Enemies of American Independence

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I am a veteran of the United States Army, having served 22 years as a commissioned officer. On July 31, 1982, at the University of Tennessee, I took an oath to "support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic." That oath does not have a statute of limitations. It is the same oath that I "took" as a Member of the United States House of Representatives. The funny thing about taking the oath in Congress was that I did not repeat the words. The words were spoken by the Speaker of the House. And here we are in our constitutional republic, potentially about to see individuals become Members of Congress who are enemies of American independence.

Yes, I said it, and I hope that it resonates across this country. We are seeing people being elected who have every intent to undermine the foundation of our nation, individual rights, freedoms, and liberty. It was back in October 2008 in Columbia, Missouri, when a skinny little U.S. senator who had no discernible accomplishments, besides giving speeches utilizing the rhythmic iambic pentameter rhetoric of Black pastors, asserted, "We are five days away from fundamentally transforming the United States of America." He was the same person who had espoused the belief that "we are all better when we spread the wealth around," and everyone simply dismissed his words. Matter of fact, if you questioned what he was saying, you were assailed as a racist. Barack Hussein Obama was channeling his best Marxist ideology, "from each according to his ability, to each according to their need." Obama would be reelected even after uttering the most disrespectful words to the indomitable individual entrepreneurial spirit of Americans, "if you've got a business, you didn't build that."

Because we failed to engage and confront the Marxist ideology that was going full bloom in America early, it is now openly thriving. This is the 250th year of our American independence, yet at the beginning of this year, a person who just became an American citizen eight years ago made this telling pronouncement in his inaugural speech as the incoming mayor of the cradle of the American free-market capitalist system. Zohran Mamdani said, "We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism."

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It was the rugged individualism and a hunger for individual liberty that drove the Sons of Liberty to make a stand against the greatest power the world knew at the time, Great Britain. It was a rugged individualism that inspired 77 men to take the field at Lexington against 700 British redcoats. It was rugged individualism that burned in the hearts of the men who crossed the frozen Delaware River, marched through the snow, some without shoes, and defeated the Hessians at Trenton, NJ, 250 years ago. It has been rugged individualism that has given rise to 56 men signing the document that established the greatest nation the world has ever known.

Last month, I made another trip to Normandy, France, for the 82nd remembrance of D-Day. When you stand on Omaha and Utah beaches, walk in Carentan, Sainte-Mère-Église, Saint-Martin-de-Varreville, and stand among the crosses of those at the Normandy American Cemetery, you experience rugged individualism. How dare some petulant 30-something Marxist who was given the opportunity here in this nation lecture us, Americans, about individualism?

The Declaration of Independence is unlike any other document that the world has ever seen. Its incredible premise is that the individual in America is sovereign because their rights—life, liberty, property (pursuit of happiness)—are endowed to them by the sovereign Judeo-Christian faith heritage God. Yes, America was founded upon that principle, the theory of natural rights from John Locke, whom Jefferson invokes when he states, "the laws of nature and Nature's God." Yet, just last fall, Virginia Senator Tim Kaine said in a Senate hearing that our rights do not come from God, but rather from government. The Declaration of Independence elevates the individual over the institution of government, and "that to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed."

Marxists and their Islamist allies do not seek to govern. They desire to rule. These philosophies are antithetical to Americanism. Their goals are to diminish the individual to a state of collectivism, subjugation, subservience, and submission. Therefore, they are, indeed, enemies of American independence, and the sooner we awake from the slumber and recalcitrance of openly affirming such, the sooner we will secure the future and legacy of our nation. Now is not the time for half measures or timidity when we face a domestic enemy that forcefully tells us its intention. The history of Marxist movements, along with Islamist movements, is deeply rooted in coercion, intimidation, threats, and ultimately violence. Here in America, we have witnessed the Marxist leftist assaults on federal buildings and federal law enforcement officers, because for them, it is by any means necessary, and their ends justify their means.

We have been warned about this in history by Taylor Caldwell from her writing "A Pillar of Iron":

A nation can survive its fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within. An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and carries his banner openly. But the traitor moves amongst those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the alleys, heard in the very halls of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor; he speaks in accents familiar to his victims, and he wears their face and their arguments, he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation, he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of the city, he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to fear."

The Marxist Leftists are no different from the Redcoats who, 251 years ago, were marching inland towards Concord, Massachusetts, to destroy a weapons and armaments factory. They knew that in order to reduce the colonists to being good subjects, they had to be disarmed. No different to today as we see the Marxists undermining our individual Second Amendment right, most recently in Illinois, where they are seeking to "ban" a certain firearm, the AR-15. Back then, the British were seeking to "ban" the musket. Every Leftist despot, dictator, and autocrat has begun their maniacal and evil reign with one thing: disarming the people, most recently, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela.

These so-called Democratic Socialists are nothing more than another iteration of Marxists, who embrace the subsidiary theories of socialism and communism. And being the "useful idiots," as Vladimir Lenin coined them, they have entered into an unholy alliance with Islamists whose history is also replete with violence and terror. If we put these two ideologies, Marxism and Islamism, together, consider the hundreds of millions of people they have killed.

They are the enemies of American independence. I, for one, will treat them as such, and so should you, unless your legacy is to pass on economic enslavement, dependence, and bondage to your children and grandchildren.

Remember the words of Sir Winston Churchill, " Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy." —Perth, Scotland, May 28, 1948. Churchill's quote came 100 years after Marx's Communist Manifesto.

Churchill also gave us this quote on Islamism from his 1899 writing, "The River War." Sadly, his prescience was removed from editions published after 1902. "How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist wherever the followers of the Prophet rule or live… The fact that in Mohammedan law every woman must belong to some man as his absolute property—either as a child, a wife, or a concubine—must delay the final extinction of slavery until the faith of Islam has ceased to be a great power among men… No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith."

If American independence, the beacon of liberty and freedom in the world, is to survive, we must courageously recognize the enemies of our sacred possession, individual rights, and reject the acolytes of collectivism and subjugation.

Steadfast and Loyal.

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