Coercion Vs. Free Choice: Driving America in the Right Direction
As humans age, it’s natural for us to have difficulty remembering little things. But it’s another thing to have us forget the big things, which should never be overlooked or taken for granted. Far too often, we forget our country was not merely gifted to us by old and tired aristocrats with big wallets and egos but hand-built from the ground up by a fearless generation of young and ambitious men and women with extraordinary courage and purpose.
These colonists worked, farmed, and built families using God’s resources, though not fully living but merely existing at the mercy of a coercive foreign power across the ocean. Together, they dreamt of one-day attaining independence for themselves and sovereignty for their home. What they endeavored to accomplish was probably widely considered unthinkable in a world when the sun never set on a mighty British Empire. However, still, they bet on themselves and their vision of a free and open society conceived in liberty, dedicated to the proposition that all were created equal in the eyes of Almighty God. Ultimately, on July 4th, 1776, they declared independence from the British crown, engaged in a bloody revolution, and the rest is history.
Today, we live in a world full of people who have marvelled at what that vision and those dreams of our courageous founders would ultimately become—a beacon of hope, optimism, and inspiration for all humanity for almost 250 years. Since that first revolution, America has grown leaps and bounds in ways our founders couldn’t fathom, but in doing so, it has overcome many trials and tribulations along the way. Thankfully, they wove that revolutionary and innately American spirit into the very essence of our citizenship, which has been present throughout history and harnessed by generations of Americans to defend our freedom and propel us through our darkest moments. All these years later, we see our country tested again, and this generation must also rise to the occasion.
Alexis de Tocqueville once said, “Amongst democratic nations, each generation is a new people.” While this is true, and every generation of Americans has a unique identity depending on the times they live and the challenges they face, we still all have the same obligations as the rightful heirs of the American Revolution. Every generation of American citizens is bound to one another and the collective effort to utilize the tools available to surmount the challenges of our time. Regardless of our differences, each of us plays a vital role in building a future worthy of America’s infinite potential for our children and their children. While change is the law of life, and no one era in history will ever be the same; still, there are specific tools that will always be wholly necessary if we face our problems head-on and move our society forward.
The timeless principles and ideals that founded our nation, and that innate revolutionary American spirit first demonstrated by our founders cannot be sacrificed nor forgotten and left behind. Now more than ever, all of us, especially Millennials and Gen Z’s, must understand this, given our country’s current chaos and disillusionment. In every corner of America today, many young men and women lack confidence in their nation and its future; now, in desperation, they look to the example of Marxist countries like China, Venezuela, and old Soviet Russia and the false assurances they offer.
You know America has hit rock bottom when its most vital citizens have begun to place their hopes and find comfort in the same kind of oppression our founders fought a revolution to escape. Unfortunately, the generation in power at the moment has not done a lot to articulate the truth to young Americans to spur confidence in our future. For far too long, we have allowed our elected officials at all levels of government to place the American people and our long-term problems on the back burner instead of serving us and generating badly needed long-term solutions. Therefore, they have been free to focus on enriching themselves rather than endeavoring to fulfill their job description and deliver for their constituents. It’s no wonder young Americans don’t have much confidence in their government when its leaders lack essential awareness of their problems and don’t make the required effort to connect with them. Under their watch, public service has eroded to become a sad joke in the minds of America’s youth. Hence, they look to coercive, authoritarian ideologies and the false hope and security they offer instead of the freedom we need to move forward, as their so-called leaders give them nothing. At this critical window of history, we must ask ourselves, will we let this vicious cycle continue and allow the balance of power in the world to shift away from freedom in this decade?
Throughout human history, so many prominent nations of the world have collapsed and folded at the mercy of worthless unproductive ideologies which give people false hope during tough times. The task at hand today is for us to act urgently and boldly to ensure the United States of America WILL be the exception. But to do so, the American people must come to comprehend the truth of all truths fully. Human beings have the same unlimited potential to draw from, so they can achieve, become, create and attain everything and anything we wish for ourselves and others. That is true for every human life on this planet. However, here in America, we have the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States. The God-given freedoms and individual liberty they recognize give us unique, direct access to that well, unlike anywhere on earth. With it, we can control our destiny by manifesting our dreams and ideas to construct a reality of our choice.
It’s also true that the sort of freedom like ours in America only comes once to a people and if we lose it here, there is nowhere else left on this earth for any one of us to find it again. Indeed, suppose we lose it in this decade. In that case, our society will go backward and return to where we began. Separate colonies of people, not living but merely existing at the mercy of some foreign power, in a dystopian nightmare, without freedom, and thus no access to the limitless potential at our fingertips to manifest our dreams and fulfill our potential. That is not the future our founders intended for the Republic; they fought a revolution to establish and pass it down to all of us. It’s not what countless generations of our brave and heroic American service people had in mind when they fought and sacrificed their lives in the name of freedom on the hills of Antietam, the beaches of Normandy, or the deserts in the Middle East. Indeed, it’s not what those around the world living in misery today under totalitarian regimes have in mind when they think of America’s future. They need it to serve as a beacon of hope and inspiration so they can one day achieve the freedom and independence we have had in this nation for almost 250 years.
The fact is that this country was established and then hand-built into the greatest superpower on earth by generations of Americans who knew what was at stake. They didn’t shrink from their duties; they dared to face their fears, surmount their problems, and seize the opportunities in front of them. Today, America’s youngest generations know nothing of all of this, and it is by no fault of their own. As a result, America is currently ill-equipped to deal with the uniquely complex challenges we face today because we possess very few leaders who equal these critical times.
Preserving our freedom, fixing our broken economy, closing the gaps between young and old, rich and poor, and inspiring all those floundering in America today without hope can only occur if we put aside our petty differences and work together. We must not live in the past because it is gone and never coming back. Together, we have to live in the present and decide where this country will go in the future and how we will make America a better place for all of our people. To truly move ahead, new leaders must seek to preserve and articulate our nation’s most timeless principles in a way young people can relate to and combine them with new solutions that equal the times. We need them to hope again, to believe in themselves, in freedom, and above all, in tomorrow again. Because today, we are living in one of the most crucial moments in the life of our country.
It is a time of great transition, as we watch a long and familiar era end and move fast into a brand new one. Once again, we will have to prove to a watching world that our Constitutional Republic and the freedoms it recognizes are the most resilient and resourceful approach to governance and the ONLY true path to lasting progress and prosperity for any sovereign nation. If we fail in this endeavor, then freedom will ultimately lose its balance of power in the world, and countries like Communist China will take the wheel and drive humanity in the wrong direction, to one of tyranny, totalitarianism, and mass misery. The issue we face today is not a struggle of capitalism vs. communism but coercion vs. free choice. Unfortunately, the former is now being sold to our people and others worldwide.
So what does coercion look like in the real world?It looks like ESG, Environmental Social Governance. It is the tool of the global elite who have designs on totalitarian power, modeled on the China social credit system already imposed on much of Chinese society and its citizens. Its perpetrators intend to implement this so-called new-world order, to maintain control over every aspect of human life, while enriching themselves in total economic dominance. The potential ramifications for the end of liberty and the destruction of freedom in America are very real, and get closer every day. Listen to what our friends at the Epoch Times have to say about the “grave new world” we face if China, or even worse actors, are allowed to impose their control over free society, and what coercion looks like in practice.
Suppose we continue to allow Communist China or any totalitarian nation to move forward in their goals. All citizens of America must know that the CCP endeavors to construct a future for the world built on the backs of modern-day enslaved people, not free-thinking men and women. If the world adopted that governance model, this planet would become a prison in which no rational-minded, goal-oriented human being would ever want to live. That is why we cannot allow Communist China to knock us off the top position as the world’s most influential nation. Not because we seek to rule the world but because our nation has set the highest, most unprecedented standard of living in the history of the world. Generations of Americans before us didn’t accomplish this with fear, intimidation, and coercion but with the blood, sweat, and tears of hard-working men and women, innovative ideas, and free enterprise. All of these things are a proven recipe for continuous progress and prosperity for our country, and it is the only one the rest of the world should look to emulate.
Young Americans must know that the citizens of China have it much differently than they do as Americans. The sinister CCP controls just about every aspect of Chinese citizens’ lives, maintaining complete and total authority over every part of the government, industry, commerce, and what is allowed to be said. This atmosphere has made it nearly impossible for everyday people to move up the ladder of society through hard work, dedication, and perseverance, as we can here in the United States. Those people might dream big dreams, but they don’t have the freedom to manifest them into reality as we can. In short, it is a model not conducive to progress in any sense of the world, for the nation or the people. Moving forward, we cannot allow a nightmare like the one forced upon the Chinese to become the reality of the American people, nor any human being on this earth of ours.
During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine said, “The cause of America is the cause of all mankind.” But today, the cause of humanity must be the cause of America and all of her people. The CCP needs to witness the resurgence of the United States of America as a serious and determined people, building the kind of society which can serve as an example to all those around the world who still wish to be free but might not have freedom as a viable opportunity at this time. That is why I ask you to join us as rightful heirs of that revolution, defenders of its spoils, and creators of the American future.
Together, we must drive America in the right direction and build a future that equals our unlimited potential, just like our predecessors.