Word has come to me that there are many people in the State of Utah who have taken it upon themselves to learn the ropes of what it is to be a citizen in a republic. You would think we’d pretty much have it down after over two hundred years of practice, but freedom is a funny thing. We, the People, are free to be lazy, apathetic, and we are free to forget. And by and large, we have forgotten.
Can you imagine if we were to hear of a group of North Korean citizens who were organizing to reacquaint themselves with what it means to be citizens in a communist country, as if they had forgotten? “Okay, let’s go down the list again of the rights we’ve had stripped away, shall we? Who would like to…? Gosh, you all look so hungry.”
Here in America, the Land of the Free, we’ve boiled our citizenship in this great republic down to this pathetic mantra: “I’m a good American – I pay my taxes.” Next time someone says that to you, ask them what the alternative would be to not filing their income tax returns. They’ll have no trouble reciting the well-known litany: fines, confiscation of private property, imprisonment.
“I’m a good American – I pay the government every year to keep my ass out of prison.”
Is this what we mean by “Freedom isn’t free”? It’s like saying you’re a good person because you gave some money to a guy – never mind that he was pointing a gun to your chest.
Citizens of Utah, appreciate what you will be doing this February 20th and 21st. You will be sending delegates from each of your “mini republics” to a Convention, modeled after the Federal Convention of 1787, and there your delegates will bring together their hearts and minds – they will discuss, they will debate, they will problem solve. Citizens from other states will be there to observe the process and to take what they have learned back to their own states to recreate what you are doing.
Many of us have read of such things, we have seen movies and plays that depict our Founding Era, we have heard the stories of a great republic. But there is no substitute for doing. And that is why I so envy each and every one of you who will be participating in this event.
There were many frustrations at the Convention in 1787. Many ideas from good-hearted, earnest men were shot down, feathers were ruffled, occasionally tempers flared. But all who were there agreed that, times being what they were, accomplishing something was better than accomplishing nothing. It was a humbling realization; nothing grandiose about it. Your exercise in Utah will not reach a state of perfection in any sense; nor will it transform this nation’s political awareness overnight. But the something you will accomplish will go a long way in a nation that has had nothing for so long.
How foolish we have been as a nation to pin our hopes on the person we send to the White House, or on the people we send to the Congress, as if they are to run this nation. Isn’t that our job? Don’t we send them to Washington to do our bidding instead of having millions of us show up every time there’s a vote? But after we vote them into office and send them on their way, we pick up the paper, we turn on CNN or NPR, and what do we do? We roll our eyes, or shake our fist, or sigh in disgust. We do everything but what we are supposed to do, and I have to admit that this has described me for most of my life until fairly recently.
Make no mistake, those people we roll our eyes at in Washington will “little note, nor long remember” what you do this February in Utah. They don’t care if we assemble; they don’t care if we debate. They don’t care what we discuss; they don’t care if we care. They don’t care if we march; they don’t care if we make the ten o’clock news.
Friends in Utah, there is only one thing the people in Washington and those in our state capitals do not want us to do, and it is the very thing our Founders took pains to set us up to do – govern.
We, the People of the United States, must stand up and take the place that has been prepared for us by those who understood so well the principles of liberty and its preservation. Utah, show us how it’s done; remind us; take us to school. May this be the beginning of a wake up call this nation will never forget; a wake up call that gets our full attention and gets We the People back to work – a wake up call that finally pulverizes that which the politicians have labored for generations to protect: America’s giant snooze button.
-- For more details on the Utah Convention of Liberty, visit http://groups.yahoo.com/group/UtahLiberty
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