The Conservative View: Freedom and Brick Walls

This week's Conservative View, by Adair County Commissioner Russell Turner.

The Conservative View
by Russell Turner

Freedom and Brick Walls

Like many people in this country I enjoy watching good movies. Whether they are westerns or modern day police shows the premise is essentially the same. Usually it involves a person or a group of persons that will do anything to gain power or wealth, usually those people are willing to use any means at their disposal to achieve those results. Then the heroes of the movie will have to use all of the courage that they can muster to put things back the way that they should be. Often the heroes will face all kinds of obstacles to do the right thing, far too often the biggest obstacle is apathy. Most of the characters would rather just go about their daily routine and not be bothered with the problems around them.

Many things can change in the world but human nature seems to evolve very little. The same desire that caused the ancient peoples to dominate other cultures such as the Roman Empire is still alive and well today. The 20th century experienced many examples of such behavior. Individuals such as Adolph Hitler, Mao Se Tung, Joseph Stalin, etc. were responsible for much of the suffering of that century. Whenever we read the history books it seems like these dictators came into power overnight, but very rarely does that happen. Usually the transformation comes about over an extended time. Most humans will rebel if their life is disrupted all of a sudden, but we have a bad habit of accepting the disruption if it happens gradually over a long period of time. When the Nazis came into power they would target one element of society at a time, while they were destroying that one element the other groups would say nothing and hope that they would be left alone. As the Nazis executed their plan, less and less groups were left to oppose them. The process is very simple; they simply divided and conquered.

In America today we are seeing more and more division and stratification of our people. Whenever you see people with political agendas using things such as race or class envy to divide our country, they are not doing us any good. We need to remember that freedom is like a brick wall. If we allow someone to nibble away at the foundation of those bricks the entire wall will fall. May we all learn the importance of protecting the foundation of our freedoms.

If you wish to contact Russell Turner, or want to subscribe to his email loop, email him at rdrepublican@windstream.net.