Losing Freedoms

Americans, as citizens in nearly all Western countries, are losing individual and personal freedoms to over-reaching governments populated by elected officials and bureaucrats who are more interested in expanding their power than doing what is best for the citizenry longterm. Mostly this inclination comes from the Left or so-called "progressives," but can be heard in the initiatives of the Right as well. This trend toward loss of freedom has been moving most of my lifetime, dating to the 1960s, but in the new millennia and especially with the experience of C-19, growth of government power and loss of individual freedom move to warp speed. This can be stopped, but it's going to take both a spiritual awakening rediscovering the values of the Judeo-Christian faith and a concerted political effort to vote Marxian, big government, anti-freedom officials and career "public servants" out of office. For more Christian commentary, check my website at rexmrogers.com.

Transcript

Does it feel like to you, an American citizen, that you are losing freedoms? Is the US setting aside freedoms we will not be able to restore?

Hi, I’m Rex Rogers and this is episode #153 of Discerning What Is Best, a podcast applying unchanging biblical principles in a rapidly changing world, and a Christian worldview to current issues and everyday life.

It seems to me that America, if not the West including Europe, is losing its freedoms at an exponential rate.

The free-fall of freedom has been in the works for most of my lifetime back into the 1960s but moved to warp speed just five years ago with the advent of COVID-19. This virus, no matter what its source, though even the mainstream media now admits it began in a lab in Wuhan, China, created an opportunity for government officials to seize power with one inane mandate after another, all in the name of public safety.

Now we know, and again even many mainstream media sources acknowledge, that masks accomplished very little, that vaccines were of limited utility, and keeping children home from months of schooling is a set-back they will endure for their generation. Most of these government mandates were unilaterally handed down from on high by executive powers: governors, state health officials, school boards, mayors, and more with limited or no actual constitutional authority to do so. Edicts were issued and the American public acquiesced.

They went farther. People were pushed to stay in their homes, churches were ordered – “ordered” I said – to not open, and when finally they did open, people were expected to sit in every-other-pew or not sing hymns or function only via online streaming. You’d be forgiven if you asked, whatever happened to the First Amendment?

But all this was only a spike in the curve of government overreach and the consequent loss of personal freedoms that has been our lot in the new millennia.

During COVID, we thought we saw the threshold of the violation of basic rights, but the pandemic was only a springboard. During the summer of 2020, the horribly named “Summer of love” that actually was a summer of Black Lives Matter riots and lawlessness in the wake of George Floyd’s death while in custody, then his subsequent deification by the Left and mainstream media.

Prosecutors stopped prosecuting, police became the enemy and were in many communities “defunded” followed since by significant drops in recruitment, coupled with significant increases in early retirements by law enforcement officers who have seen the writing on the wall – public officials no longer back them up,  no longer hold the criminal accountable even as they seem to believe victims have no rights at all.

“Non-prosecuting rogue prosecutors” – an oxymoronic mouthful that really does describe reality – are destroying the American legal system, minority communities, and peace and tranquility in cities across the country—and with it our freedoms.

We the citizens have elected these leftist ideologues to do their jobs enforcing the law, but they have independently decided to do what they think is best, which is nothing in the face of crime and violence.

Gun control advocates argue for removing all guns from society, even as criminals continue to acquire guns and use them against law-abiding citizens. Journalistic attacks on so-called “Assault rifles” have become a red herring masquerading as intelligent discussion about crime. Meanwhile, “an assault rifle is not really a thing. It’s a look.” It’s just a symbol of a lot of heated talk surrounding guns that does not address the real issues in the streets that result in more killings, like those, every weekend in Chicago.

Educrats in public education at all levels now think they know what’s best for children and youth. Certainly, parents are not to be trusted.

No, schools promote a host of morally degraded woke practices: drag queen story hours for children under 7 years of age, affirmation of all manner of gender ideology, including keeping any changes of pronouns, names, or other transitioning hidden from parents, sex education that is anything but age-appropriate taught in Kindergarten, race division and distrust supposedly to advance something called “antiracism,” teachers promoting leftist political activism that is anti-Israel and often antisemitic or blame America philosophies that destroys students’ confidence, much less patriotism, for their own homeland.

Social media has been coopted by government. No crisis is too small for government to exploit and to expand its power. Print and online media have descended into depravity, no longer focusing upon the best and highest of cultural achievements but the most debauched, not simply reporting these developments but propagandizing them, not only propagandizing them but championing them to teenagers and children. A one-time “focus on beauty and health morphed into a constant running celebration of sexual excess and abortion, with frequent criticism of men tossed in for good measure.” 

Pride Month is ubiquitously visible during the month of June. It is pushed by government agencies, even the US Armed Forces, local police forces, public schools, hospitals, retail businesses, entertainers or politicians making virtue-signaling comments, and otherwise forced upon almost every American citizen. Yet Pride Month has no legal standing.

What we’ve seen, though, is people losing their jobs for expressing different views, law enforcement being further defunded for noncompliance, people being “canceled,” meaning shunned or suppressed because they chose not to fly a pride flag or put a pride sticker on equipment or helmet. To ostensibly promote the freedom and acceptance of an immoral minority of the population, the majority is losing its freedom to disagree.

All this is only a part of the tectonic philosophic shifts underway in American culture, moving rapidly from an understanding of and respect for the traditional Judeo-Christian moral consensus that made education, law and order, economic progress, and civil tranquility possible in the first place, the same morality that birthed Western Civilization, energized discovery and free enterprise, held Americans accountable to their wrongdoing in slavery, Jim Crow, and discrimination, liberated science and gave education purpose, reinforced the famed Protestant Work Ethic, these traditional, time-tested values and verities have not only been rejected, but they are also being suppressed.

In the name of doing what’s right in our own eyes, truth is rendered relative and stripped of its power. In the name of equality, something called equity, has displaced blind justice in favor of weighted, identity politics wherein there is no justice, only chaos. In the name of diversity, we often get mediocrity.

In the name of antiracism, high schools and universities going retrograde on integration to hold separate Black and White commencements. In the name of freedom, freedoms are being taken away. Perhaps George Orwell was even more prescient than we thought.

The moment you think it can’t get worse, it does. It’s like there is no bottom to this madness.

To test this conclusion, one only needs to pay attention to what’s happening in Canada. What was once a free country is now a socialist, government dominated, left-leaning society. Or you can look at what’s happening in European cities – Berlin, Brussels, Paris, London, and more – every week. Vast numbers of illegal aliens marching in the streets, destroying property, chanting about sharia law or antisemitism, demanding free goods and services on top of the ample amount they’ve already been awarded, tearing down the country’s flag and raising Hamas flags, engaging in crimes against persons, including rapes, and screaming obscenities or harassing passers-by. This in cities once known for their refinement and culture.

Now do we despair? No, for like the Apostle Paul in Athens on Areopagus, we note the culture around us:

 “What therefore you worship as unknown, this I proclaim to you. And (God) made from one man every nation of mankind to live on all the face of the earth, having determined allotted periods and the boundaries of their dwelling place, that they should seek God, and perhaps feel their way toward him and find him.” (Acts 17:23-28). 

God placed us in year 2024. He knows the challenges of our culture, the loss of freedoms, the zeitgeist of our age.

It is our privilege to know and to share that “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17). It is our privilege and responsibility to communicate “you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (Jn 8:32). It is our privilege to proclaim, “so if the Son sets you free, you will be free indeed” (Jn 8:36).

There are three ways to turn this around:

1.    Ask God to send a spiritual awakening like he did in the 19th Century.

2.    Vote out of office every radical, anti-God, anti-liberty politician and fire every bureaucrat who embraces the same.

3.    That “for freedom Christ has set us free; stand firm” (Gal. 5:1).

Well, we’ll see you again soon. This podcast is about Discerning What Is Best. If you find this thought-provoking and helpful, follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Download an episode for your friends. For more Christian commentary, check my website, r-e-x-m as in Martin, that’s rexmrogers.com. 

And remember, it is for freedom that Christ has set us free. Stand firm.

© Rex M. Rogers – All Rights Reserved, 2024   

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