“Give me your tired, your poor,Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me,I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” -Emma Lazarus, “The New Colossus”, 1880.
Liberty for the people is resisted by authoritarians and those in power throughout the world. Most often liberty must be fought for, sometimes with violence, other times with persuasion, but never does it come naturally. Authoritarians can be found in families, churches, schools, businesses, governments, and communities always seeking to have their own way over the choices of others. Some are sociopaths with no conscience. Some are self-righteous moralists. Others may be driven by their own fears and their fears become a tyranny over others.
This book is about that quest for liberty in this world of authoritarians. It is not intended to be a book of history, but it does contain a great deal of history describing the many crossroads where liberty had chances to prevail but rarely did. Isn’t the Constitution supposed to protect our liberties? What about the President, Congress and Supreme Court? Aren’t they supposed to protect our liberty?
In the first section of the book, we look at what liberty is. Few people have given this much thought. Then we look at the steps the US founders went through in delivering a government that was designed to limit itself and protect the liberty of the people. We will delve into the issues of liberty as they are impacted by Democracy and the Constitution as well as our government institutions like the Presidency, the Supreme Court, and Congress in law making, etc.In the third section we examine how liberty and equality, faith, family, human nature, responsibility, compassion are at risk from attempts by authoritarians to control everything. People of faith, especially Christians, may find the chapter “Liberty and Faith” particularly interesting. After all, God is the author of liberty. Finally, we will review some choices and responsibilities we all have toward a revival of liberty in our land.
Liberty is our legacy. Liberty is the promise of America. Liberty is our highest national value.