This op-ed will be hard-hitting…it’s time to tell the unvarnished truth. It is lengthy because I cannot shorten what needs to be said. If you care about Constitutional freedom, you will take the time. If your goal is to take America down the path of socialism, perhaps you might be interested in reading this, as well, to better understand your adversary.
Yes, although hard for me to believe, we are a divided nation. But, can you imagine living through the Civil War where brother fought against brother? Our ancestors somehow managed to get through that nightmare, Constitution intact; perhaps there is still hope we can do the same. I will lose friends with this message. So be it – such is the fallout of war (and a relatively small price to pay for principle).
Last March, Governor Andrew Cuomo (Democrat), said “if everything we do saves just one life, I'll be happy.” Without question, he was referring to saving “just one life” that he perceives would have otherwise been lost to King Corona. On the heels of Cuomo’s warm and fuzzy platitude (and right in line with the Dems’ hate-Trump-at-all-cost playbook), Joe Biden tweeted, in response to Trump’s desire to open up the economy, that “no one is expendable” and “no life is worth losing to add one more point to the Dow.”
No one is expendable? Really? Have you ever visited Arlington National Cemetery, Joe?
So, let’s start this journey with what should be an easy question to answer.
If you knew in advance that shutting down small businesses and sheltering-the-healthy-in-place would result in the loss of thirty million jobs, the destruction of family owned businesses, the loss of savings and retirement nest eggs, the psychological damage to children without a school to attend, friends to see and sports to enjoy, the likely demise of 300 universities over the next six years, a significant increase in suicide, domestic violence and child abuse, the destruction of family units and on and on - would you agree with Cuomo and Biden that such devastation would be a bargain if it saved just one person from a King Corona death?
If your answer to this fundamental question is “yes,” then you are not a credible person.
If your answer is “no,” that means that, by definition, you must at least be willing to explore what price Americans have been willing to accept (in terms of lives lost or living life in a straight jacket) in order to remain free, as difficult and unseemly as that task may be.
In the 1600s, our ancestors fled England, in large part, to seek the freedom to worship their God as they wished. They knew, as they willingly boarded the galleon ships of old that 50% of them would be buried at sea and that most of the deaths would be caused by contagious disease. The freedom they sought was apparently worth the risk to them and, thankfully, we benefitted from the freedom they earned for us.
“On December 19, 1777, 11,000 Continental Army regulars” (under the leadership of General George Washington) “marched into Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, to set up winter quarters during the Revolutionary War” – 2,000 of them died there – 500 from cold and starvation - 1,500 from influenza, typhoid and typhus. History.com (Sarah Pruitt). Although some deserted, those that remained and survived helped turn the Revolutionary War in favor of the Americans – in favor of freedom for generations to follow at their considerable expense. They believed their sacrifice was worth the risk.
6,800 Americans were killed in action in the Revolutionary War and 17,000 died of disease, including 8,000–12,000 who died while prisoners of war - in total, roughly 1% of the colonial population of 2.5 million. That would be comparable to losing 3.3 million today from King Corona (1% of 330 million).
Mark H. Dunkelman (History Net) tells of a hero of the Civil War Battle of Gettysburg, Union soldier Amos Humiston.
“He had not led a charge, nor captured an enemy flag, nor rescued a comrade under fire. Instead, his fame rested on his dying act of devotion and love…Found after the battle, in a secluded spot…near the intersection of Stratton and York Streets, the soldier bore nothing on his person to identify him. But clutched in his hand was an ambrotype photograph of three young children,” the image of his three little ones that he carried with him into death.
Amos believed that fighting for freedom – fighting to rid this nation of the scourge of slavery – was worth dying for – so did 436,000 additional Union soldiers who died – 290,000 from contagious disease and 146,000 from combat. That represented 2.3% of the population in the North. You do the math…it’s not that difficult.
10,000 Americans died on D-Day, 7,000 Americans died at Iwo Jima, 2,400 Americans died at Pearl Harbor…416,800 Americans lost their lives in WW2 fighting and dying for the freedoms that far too many have taken for granted.
It is abundantly clear: our ancestors paid a heavy price to preserve freedom for our generation. Those of you who don’t understand that (by failing to honor their sacrifice) are an ungrateful and selfish lot. You don’t deserve one ounce of their sacrifice, but you get it for free…it comes with your citizenship ticket.
As for King Corona, after considerable study, this is what I believe:
That the true number of King Corona deaths across America has been geometrically and falsely skewed in favor of the Democrat political agenda to get rid of President Trump at any cost to America and to Americans is blatantly obvious. At least some of them are honest about their disdain for this President and our country. Prior to King Corona’s arrival on our shores, Bill Maher wished for a recession to help secure Trump’s ouster. I personally know a number of life-long Democrats that are walking away from a Party that went down a very dark road long ago.
The odds of dying a King Corona-related death are miniscule - at or less likely than dying from the common flu.
Dr. Fauci’s opinions have been based upon wildly exaggerated numbers, again, to support a sinister political agenda.
Social distancing, sheltering-in-place and masking have not saved one life that would have been lost without following these procedures. In fact, in balance, all three edicts are unhealthy and have likely caused far more King Corona deaths than permitting everyday life, without drastic alteration, to develop a herd immunity early on would have caused. (Sweden’s numbers per capita are no worse than our own and Sweden did not shut down and quarantine…Sweden did not commit national suicide).
But for purposes of my message, below, I want you to assume that I am flat wrong. Go ahead and assume that King Fauci’s plan of crushing businesses, social distancing, sheltering-in-place and masking has saved lives. In fact, go ahead and assume that King Corona-related deaths would have been twice as high as even the inflated numbers being reported would have been had we gone to work.
Since we are exploring the price of freedom, the question remains: Was King Fauci’s plan worth it? Just under 100 years ago, freedom was worth over 400,000 lives.
Hey, Joe, if the “greatest generation” was of the “not one life is expendable” philosophy, where would we be today? Do you have so little respect for their sacrifice that you are willing to destroy the freedom they preserved for us for as little as one life?
In war, the ultimate purpose is not to kill soldiers…it is to bring the adversary to its knees – it is to achieve surrender and the sooner the better. And, how does an army do that? It destroys bridges, supply lines, communication centers and the electric grid. Why? To annihilate the enemy’s economy and, thereby, force surrender.
My dad was 10 years old on Pearl Harbor day. He often told me of those times. He lived on a farm outside of Delavan, Illinois, and would pull his wagon around from farm to farm collecting scrap iron for the cause. Men went off to fight (many of them lying about their age) and women went to work on assembly lines left vacant by their husbands. They were “all in it together.” Sound familiar?
Please imagine with me, if you will, that King Corona had not been introduced into these United States by negligence or even by a simple unavoidable accident. Imagine, instead, that we had been invaded by a dozen men in hazmat suits spraying 12 cannisters of King Corona in just one small berg in America…a true germ warfare invasion. Not such a stretch of the imagination, is it? Would our reaction to King Corona have been the same? Would we have shut down our economic engine? Would our healthy young “non-essential” workers have been ordered to cower in their homes in fear? Would we have surrendered to the foreign enemy? That is not the America I thought I knew.
In past wars, most of our citizenry had the luxury of going about their daily lives, working and going to ballgames…living the American dream…while our youth died for our right to live that dream. Such wars were conventional…such wars were not even on our soil where our non-warriors would be at risk of death by stray shrapnel. In this war against an invisible enemy, the front line is everywhere, or so it should be, but the healthy non-essential workers have been forced by their own government to surrender.
Of course, I support our front-line health care folks. I also support our front-line grocery clerks, garbage collectors, police, firemen and on and on. And, by the way, although some of them have died, I don’t see any frequency of death any higher than it is for anyone else in our society, inclusive of the sheltered folks. I believe the “greatest generation” would have thought that all healthy enough to work should be on the front line everywhere in this fight. In other words, their attitude would have been “we are all in this together.” They would have fought through their fears and kept our nation going to preserve freedom and the right to a shot at the American dream for our kids and our grandkids.
I am afraid we have been hoodwinked into being known as the home of the dependent and cowardly. I am not speaking of our military. They are as brave as ever. But this fight is not in the trenches of Europe…it is everywhere in this nation where freedom loving people reside.
We had best study what our reaction should be in the future to such an invasion. So far, we are teaching our enemies how easy it is to defeat us. As we know, North Korea and Iran have openly shouted “death to America” for generations. Just envision North Korea, Iran, Russia, China and all forms of terrorists plotting our demise around the war table. The discussion would go somewhat like this:
Why are we spending billions of dollars on conventional weapons of war or even nuclear capability when we can produce 12 cannisters of King Corona for, let’s say, one thousand dollars?
Why are we training tens of thousands of troops for war (or, in the case of China, almost two million) when all we need is 12 warriors tried and true to cross over America’s still penetrable southern border to spread it around?
Then, all we need do is wait. Wait while the richest nation in history destroys those riches themselves. Wait while even their healthy cower in their homes while our virus does its bidding, even though it kills so very few per capita.
Wait while they “freely” give up their freedom and shame those who won’t fall in line.
When Americans no longer care about freedom, when they are no longer willing to risk their very lives to preserve it, we walk in and take over…it’s that simple. We can defeat the world’s most powerful nation by sitting back and watching them defeat themselves.
So, even if we get a spike in the numbers this fall that is real, are we going to react like this again? Can we possibly lose more jobs and survive what is soon becoming the world’s most devastating depression in history?
All of the corruption in the FBI and in the House of Representatives designed to impeach President Trump and the continuing efforts to blame King Corona on Trump so as to defeat him in November have nothing to do with Trump per se. Everything else being identical, the shameful course the Dems have taken us down the last three-plus-years would never have occurred if President Trump had been a pro-choice President. If that had been the case, a successful impeachment would have put Mike Pence in the position of naming the next Supreme Court Justice? They never would have taken that chance.
All of the insidious attempts to bring this President down have been about one thing and one thing only. The Dems know that a Trump second term will result in at least one more Supreme Court seat going to a reverse-Roe-v.-Wade Justice. And if there is one thing the so-called moral high ground save-one-King-Corona-life-at-all-cost Dems want above all else, it is to preserve the right to kill as many babies as they can…almost 900,000 in America last year (down from 1,500,000 per year in the late 80s).
Nineteen states (all controlled by Democrats) now allow infanticide…the act of permitting a healthy born baby to die after an “informed” decision is made by the mother and her doctor.
The Dems are letting violent criminals out of prison while they imprison a hair stylist in Texas who committed the crime of making a living for her kids.
The Dems have taken God out of their platform and out of the House of Representatives.
California, Illinois, New York, Virginia and Michigan have imposed unconstitutional draconian measures against its citizens designed to grab as much power as possible while blaming all of this on Trump. The governors of these states are all tyrants and should be called out as such.
California, Illinois and New York are looking to the federal government to bail them out of debt their Democrat leaders have created from decades of mismanagement.
The list is just too long. At least at the national level, the Democrats, together with the main-stream media, represent the face of evil.
The importance of getting the November elections right (House, Senate and Presidency) cannot be overstated. If the Democrats prevail, I will write our nation’s obituary, for the freedoms we have taken for granted for so long will be dead the moment they take office; that is, if I would even get a chance to publish it, for freedom of speech could well be in jeopardy by then. The Democrats and their fawning media pals are greater enemies to this Republic than any nation state.
A local elected official recently said to me, “You know, Tad, you can’t have freedom without life.” That philosophy is misguided, for our ancestors believed “you can’t have life without freedom.”
We are in grave danger of losing both freedom and a life worth living. We are in danger of becoming a totalitarian state.
The disintegration of the Space Shuttle Challenger on January 28, 1986, proved a pivotal moment in Reagan's presidency. All seven astronauts aboard were killed. On the night of the disaster, Reagan delivered a speech in which he said: “The future doesn't belong to the fainthearted; it belongs to the brave...We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and slipped the surly bonds of Earth to touch the face of God.”
In 1964, well before becoming President, Reagan said, “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children’s children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.”
And, finally, Thomas Jefferson left us with this advice: “It is the duty of the patriot to protect his country from his government”…and…“Every generation needs a new revolution.”
Perhaps we are overdue.
Tad Armstrong is an Edwardsville (Illinois) lawyer, founder of ELL Constitution Clubs (www.ellconstitutionclubs.com), frequent talk show guest, op-ed writer and author of two books on the Constitution: "It's OK to Say 'God"' and “ONE.”