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FOOLS AND FANATICS, a sentiment from the Greatest Generation.

The drumming beat of our fathers, some dead and some dying, a tocsin dirge, a rising motif that cannot withstand the torque and un-relinquished screw hold of Congress, harry Reid, and the planarian Pelosi. I ask my father and uncles all from WWII to lie down and mount the stairs to their white linen bedrooms but they drag their heels and leave bone traces on the solid parlor floor. Their hands are thin; their eyes are coldly bleary, no longer human: like the soldiers they were once in too many battles with Germans, Japanese.

All the skeletal soles of their feet like the feet of the Roman Gladiators found a few years ago in a mass grave in Turkey-Asia Minor are worn down by too many countless contests, life-long battles fought after they returned home victorious, mostly fought in US-made factories where they spent their lives. Places where they smoked all day, and everybody asked for a light.

‘Proud places to work,’ they mutter to themselves near the decaying newel at the base of the shaky stairs. But I can smell, touch, and taste their anger rising like fumes up the stairs and snaking around the ancient house, all built with their hands when those hands were strong once.

“The people never consented to abuse of power, or reserved to one state favors no other state could have,” they shouted as one voice, open and subliminal, banging out their disgust in a chaos of echoes ringing through the hallway. Other lives stirred in the non-vacant rooms upstairs. Other lives heard their husbands shouting and thought they were fighting old wartime enemies. Their wives upstairs were listening, some were already moaning.

Our fathers commanding “No” in the day; our mothers tearing their hair at night. A nation that lies to its citizens, deliberately divides its citizens; its leaders who seethe with disagreements, its leaders obsessed with disparity unable to discuss the Senate And House Healthcare bills…a President who promised us multiple times in his campaign last year that he would end earmarks and bribes, open Congressional discussions to the people with C-Span, who instead of creating 1,000,000 jobs initiates unheard of levels of secrecy, feeds the public lies and propaganda, leads no bi-partisan discussion anywhere in the nation.

My mother, our mothers: now too old to stop them. WWII brides unable to quiet their husbands who trample downstairs, and they cannot move from their beds upstairs. They are invalided. They lie in their beds in closed rooms behind me; I’m “trapped” on the landing, unable to move to them or to their husbands. I’m standing lost between them: floating in a “raft” nowhere to be seen, increasingly blamed for policies I didn’t make, for changes they feel I have non-existent defenses for: mounting defeats, personal losses, misery and sacrifice.

Our fathers howl below: “Congress shall make no law that destroys the principle of local self-government.” More comes: “They will empty the Treasury to buy off passage of the Senate Bill, and not an ‘iota of shame’ in any of them.” And then more: “Only small businesses will save us from ruin, but He’s killing them…and we know what “ruin” is. Just look at us!”

I can hear my mother in a room down the darkened hall: “I worked all my life and never expected this trial near my end,” and she moans and all her sisters in other closed rooms moan. But it’s worse for now the end is not in sight. ‘There’s plenty of pain to go around,’ is what Congress has been telling them, because none of these women can reach their husbands. Their men are downstairs across the river beyond the horizon in a winter campaign eternally fighting alone. These women share a newspaper once a day and the news is always terrible. They read about dying cities, broke cities, and bankrupt states, and it’s like the war stories of their husbands all over again.

The despondent souls of the men look past the skeletal mirrors of leaden-eyed despair. They briefly sigh, all they can give us, at the bottom of the stairs in a house where the paint cracks with age from these men who knew tears. They built our country after the War. We are their children who must repair this ancient house. It is our home after all, even though our mothers are specter-thin, our home stands its ground in a single state, and in that state legislature we can fight back a federal government that tries to seal us in a tomb.

“One fool, and one fanatic, fools and fanatics followed both,” our parents of the Greatest Generation attest sadly. Our mothers shout what Senator Lindsey Graham said in the papers: “We can do better as a nation.” My parents speak suddenly, softly, no, whisper: “You’re our sons and daughters. We led you right. We sent you to good schools. We taught you to fight. We paid our bills and our country likewise showed us the way. Bring it back home! Bring us home! Save us and it, should we ever come back again. It will be here, like we left it. Limit the Congress’ unlimited power, let them only keep their Enumerated Powers; and let’s shake Obama off his imaginary throne.” Then the quarrel, or whatever it was, grew weak and dull, hollow and silent.

Two presidents in a row: one fool and one fanatic, I thought. I listened and appreciated the murmur of those who were listening like me to the echoes in the old house. The house where I loved growing up: your house where your life too was like a play. Our nation’s house and the gathering of ghost leaders: “How much further are we going?” I asked no one in this house. Only the sound of the wood floor creaked beneath me — do I wake or sleep? Do we sleep or awake?

In my experience, the problem is that Goethe is correct: “None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.”

For whatever reason, (poor education, brainwashing, or just simple lack of understanding) most people I encounter think they ARE free.

Rob,

Here are a couple of things that I’ve sent or given to others to help them understand. The video made a huge impact on my kids.

http://philosophyofliberty.blogspot.com/

I also highly recommend Richard Maybury’s “Uncle Eric Series”. They’re easy to read and highly thought provoking for kids and adults alike. It was one of his books, “The Money Mystery”, that really opened my eyes on the (HUGE!!) economic component of Liberty.

http://www.bluestockingpress.com/uncle-eric-model.htm

But you know what? I’m not giving up, and your article has helped my morale and I’m going to forward it to a few other patriot friends.

It seems strange to me that freedom is such a difficult concept for people to understand. It is a sad commentary on what our nation has become.

I have heard people say, Show me where it says that you have the right in the Constitution. The Constitution does not exist to enumerate rights, it exists to protect them. Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence:

\"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

The Founders believed that rights existed independent of the Consitution, not because of it.

One tool you might find useful in examining freedom is a quote by Oliver W. Holmes:

\"The right to swing my fist ends where the other man\’s nose begins.\"

This may seem a strange sentence to hold so dear but it encapsulates what true freedom is. Freedom is anything you want it to be so long as it does not infringe on another man\’s freedom. Any law that goes beyond that is tyranny.