Don’t ask me why, but stealing immense amounts of our wealth so that politicians, bureaucrats and their cronies can live high doesn’t satisfy Leviathan. Nor is it content to rule every aspect of our lives. Even instilling fear, terrorizing us until we comply with its senseless dictates regardless of the harm to us and to our families, isn’t enough.
Leviathan also wants our love. Demands it, in fact, along with our loyalty and gratitude—as if it can compel that trio as easily as it does our obedience. Given its constant whining after our affections, you might confuse this enemy of all mankind with a jilted Romeo. And a vengeful one: the State usually punishes those who refuse it warm fuzzies.
We’ll hear a cacophony of such pleas this weekend from Leviathan’s American franchise. Today’s tyrants will justify their claims to our fealty because yesteryear’s patriots defied an administration far less despotic than ours. “But that’s absurd even for the State,” you say. And you’re right: the American Revolution completely refutes worldwide empire, signing statements, the NDAA, TSA, NSA, EPA, cops, local zoning, property taxes, and just about everything else Our Rulers at any level do. Yet the irrationality works. Watch the sheeple cheer their oppressors as the latter strut down Main Street during Smalltown, USSA’s parade on the Fourth of July. See taxpayers festoon their homes with bunting in their predators’ favorite colors. Hear civilians praise the hired killers murdering innocents overseas because such evil, rather than the Creator, endows Americans with certain inalienable rights.[amazon asin=0988203227&template=*lrc ad (right)]
We might fantasize that it was different during the golden period we’re commemorating now. And it was, to some extent. Revolutionary Americans—and a great many Englishmen—loved liberty passionately. They revered political and spiritual freedom as fervently as their descendants extol democracy; one of them, General Benedict Arnold, muses on his motivation for battling the British Empire in my novel, Abducting Arnold: “’Twas liberty he fought for, not the United States or Connecticut or independency or George Washington or anything but liberty, sweet liberty, a man’s right to live and think and speak as he chose, to decide for himself, to be free of government, of all its meddling and its brutal punishment of anyone disagreeing with its edicts.”
But other things haven’t changed. As the Revolution weakened Britain’s hold on its colonies, the American politicians exploiting that vacuum craved their victims’ devotion as much as Our Rulers currently do.
History ignores these politicians, known as Radical Patriots, and their party. But at the time, they were as potent as today’s Demopublicans—and just as totalitarian. Though their influence eventually spread throughout the country, they first grabbed power in Pennsylvania. There they set wages and prices, legislated morals (or tried to), and dispossessed “loyalists,” who were usually no more loyal to the British government than the Feds’ “terrorists” are dangerous. Coincidentally, I’m sure, such “loyalists” often owned estates their persecutors coveted and confiscated. But grand larceny didn’t exhaust the Radicals’ wickedness: they even executed a few dissidents.
In 1776, these thugs foisted a constitution on newly independent Pennsylvania. One character in Abducting Arnold describes the results to his niece (and the novel’s narrator), Clem:
…they held a convention and wrote out a new constitution for us, though we’d never asked for one. And what it says is—’course, I haven’t read it, no man of sound mind can. I tried, but your aunt begged me to stop for fear I’d take a fever. The men behind it, very few of them can read, and even the ones that can don’t know law. And they’re proud of that, Clem, proud of such ignorance! But the worst is, that constitution lets them do things His Majesty never would have dared.”
I felt sick. “Like what?”[amazon asin=0988203200&template=*lrc ad (right)]
“Well, just last Friday, their Assembly passed a ‘Test Act,’ and now anyone who won’t sign an oath of allegiance to their Patriot government, well, we’re traitors. We can’t travel without their permission—”
I felt sicker. “No!”
He nodded grimly. “Not unless you want to be considered a spy, and hang for it.”
“But that’s tyranny!”
“Ah, but wait, there’s more. Unless you sign, you can’t hold office, or vote, or sue for debts, though we can still be sued, I’ll warrant you. You tell me when His Majesty ever stole our liberties like that.”
Such bullying didn’t appease these antique autocrats any more than it does modern ones. Just like Obummer & Co., the Radical Patriots lusted for approval and acceptance, i.e., looooove. And on July 4, 1777, the Declaration’s first anniversary, they ordered Philadelphians to demonstrate that love. Clem reports:
…Patriots around the city gave parties, even if they only raised a glass of callibogus—and that mostly beer with the tiniest touch of rum—and whistled “Yankee Doodle.”
I attended no parties, but I did light candles in every window of my uncle’s house. So did hundreds of others until we had us a Grand Illumination.
’Course, some candles burned not to celebrate but to protect: the men my uncle’d mentioned prowled the streets that night, making free with any place lacking bright windows, and, once they’d finished there, the ones not bright enough to suit them. The reason didn’t matter, not whether folks were too poor to waste candles all night, or mayhap too tired or sick to sit up and tend them, or even, like my uncle, whether they’d fled Philadelphia for peace in the country. Those thieves helped themselves to whatever they wanted if a house went dark, for such must belong to Loyalists, they cried, and who could object to taxing Loyalists?
Until the next Revolution, Leviathan will continue to rob us while compelling our obedience—but we’re still and always free to hate the beast.
Read more about Radical Patriots and the American Revolution for liberty in Becky Akers’ historical thriller, Abducting Arnold.
