Here are some words and expressions I have heard people use when describing how they feel considering the situation we are currently in: “hopeless”, “broken”, “I can’t stop crying”, “faith is at an all time low” and “I’m not ready to accept that this is where my country is”.  These are the words of people who feel “like it’s over”.  But what exactly is over?

     It is very tempting to despair when you realize the freedoms we have lost and even easier to despair if you equate these freedoms with the authentic freedom God calls all of us to participate in. Let’s start with the freedoms you have either lost or are in imminent danger of losing at this very moment. 1. Free elections. After the presidential race and the Georgia Senate run-offs, is there really anything that can physically stop the party from harvesting ballots, fixing machines, and ceasing counting at late hours until the necessary amount to fix the election appear? Probably not. 2. Free speech. Before you tell me that private companies are the only ones barring free speech, consider the following: right now an “anti-hate” group in California is suing Apple for not removing Telegram from the Apple store. Big Tech can easily fund such “anti-hate” groups while also financing political candidates or using algorithms to block content, trend other content etc… to help swing elections in favor of the candidates they desire. Who appoints the judges? Big Tech will continue use its influence to angle the government in their attack of free speech. 3. Your right to bear arms. Joe Biden has promised an AR buy back program. One false flag event was enough to see Parler blown to bits, what will happen after the next mass shooting? 4. Your bodily autonomy. Many people already feel enslaved to some bizarre cult of the mask. How soon before you will be unable to fly in an airplane unless you have taken the vaccine?

     The same party that has spent 50 years maximizing Moloch worship now has all political power in your country. And unlike the days of the Soviet Union, there is no where for you to flee and no outside pressures from a foreign power to help alleviate the human rights violations you will experience. Additionally, the brown shirt kids that you saw burning down police precincts this past summer didn’t just go away. They lurk. No wonder so many people are in such a pit of despair.

     I am not. Why not? Well let’s examine freedom and figure out from there what we still have. True, any notion of freedom is rooted in the concept of not being restrained.  It is impossible to argue that I would be more free in handcuffs than if I were not.  This however is not a complete notion of freedom. Perhaps 75 years of relative “peace-time”, the technological revolution, the sexual revolution, and the attainment of lone superpower status and all the luxuries and excesses that come with it ripened us to confuse license with a complete notion of freedom.  And don’t get me wrong, all the freedoms I mentioned above are real human rights that correspond to human duties and to basic human goods. But maybe our sense of artificial peace and contentment with the superficial goods that are so easy to mistake for “freedoms” have made it that much easier for us to be blindsided as the Lockean Constitutional freedoms are taken from us.

     Freedom is not the power to choose between 25 different flavors of Oreos at the grocery store at one o’clock in the morning. In fact, lesson learned, when you get to that point in a society you are probably knocking on the door of having all of your rights denied of you. How does it go again? Good times make weak men and weak men create hard times? When you have an $800 computer in your pocket that makes your life so easy because you can conveniently check work emails 24/7… er wait a minute… turns out you were already someone else’s slave.  And when you feel like the same powers that blew up Parler are inescapable and it’s just too hard to give up gmail, your smartphone, or google apps, then you  just as well look for freedom in your newest television set (that listens to you), Netflix series, or one week get away form the hell that is your evil corporate purity testy woke dehumanizing workplace.  But hey, we Americans built something great, didn’t we?

     The fake human goods that we are surrounded by are the by-product of the mistaken notion of freedom that America naturally fell for.  It’s one part Moral Relativism and one part a desire to do whatever one wants without consequence.  Pope John Paul II loved to remind us of such folly when he frequently referred to the “Dictatorship of Relativism”.  He contrasted that to a true notion of freedom that means simply this: freedom is the ability to choose the good. After all, if one attempts to exercise “freedom” by doing whatever he wants, how free will he be when he eats a whole party pail of ice cream every day? He will be about as free as Diabetes lets him be.  In other words, he will be a true slave to his passions.  When one is a slave to his passions, he is simply asking to be a slave to other men.  Whereas, only when I practice self-control, live a life of temperance, and I become a true master of myself can I be a free man in the truest sense. When Saint Maximilian Kolbe volunteered to die in a starvation bunker in place of another man in Auschwitz, he may have been the most free man on the planet at that given moment. Through the aid of supernatural grace, he was free to choose the good.

     This afternoon I spoke with another concerned father at the park about the subject of freedom.  It was an awesome moment to share the freedom we have both experienced this past year as we gave up professional football for good. Seeing raised fists on banners throughout NFL stadiums demonstrated exactly who owns the NFL. With an about face against the dignity of our flag and anthem, a salute to all things "peaceful-protest" (including exact slogans with registered trademarks), and a piddly batch of fans while coaches are fined hundreds of thousands of dollars for not wearing masks, I am so happy to have come out from the yoke that such a cowardly organization of hallow men are saddled by. How pathetic. If I watched another game, I might consider myself a slave to the slaves. Enjoy your child’s game, your millions of dollars, your women, the drugs, the vanity and all the shackles that come with it.  I’ll take my modest canoe and my kids out to the lake while you guys do you.

     What other opportunities to seize freedom are out there right now? Considering the current situation, lots!  As I keep telling people, you can choose to despair right now over the tragedies that are occurring in the physical world, or you can embrace the extreme amounts of grace that are abound while you have plentiful opportunities to evangelize, boldly live your faith, and possibly face tremendous persecution.  As my favorite head coach used to say to us before big games, “You feel something in your stomach? You feel intimidated? You feel like you are about to get hurt? GOOD! That’s the feeling of being alive! Now go out there, live, and embrace it all like a man!” How comforting it is to know that we have the witness of thousands upon thousands of holy martyrs who have gone before us to deomnstrate how much freedom exists in even dying and embracing it all like a man.

     As the old hymn, “Faith of our Fathers” says, “Our Fathers chained in prisons dark, were still in heart and conscience free”.  We aren’t even in prisons dark, folks.  Go out and exercise your freedom.  Your freedom to do the good.  What a wonderful opportunity to take all of those fake goods that helped get us here and unshackle yourself from them too!  If your i-phone causes you to sin, (while simultaneously empowering the Big Tech masters) smash it with a hammer.  If your workplace says you will lose your job if you don’t get the vaccine, quit!  If you are one of those connoisseurs of all 25 flavors of Oreos, now might be a good time to stare at some images of starving children and to beg God to give you some liberating humility.  And if you still purchase items from the company that requires its employees to step out of the way as the robots roll by in the fulfillment centers (Amazon), then now might be the time to tell that monster, Jeff Bezos, that you are done wearing his fetters.

     You are not only a free man, but you have the opportunity to become more free than you ever imagined possible. Don’t blow this. May God protect you, keep you truly humble, and give you all the graces necessary to become the utmost master of yourself.

 

God bless,

Gadfly