Many credit Thomas Jefferson with saying, “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.” I suspect that whoever made the statement must have borne witness to a society that failed to sustain freedom by failing to remain alert—or what the left might mistakenly refer to as “woke.”
An unconscious generation. Citizens who blindly placed far too much trust in their government leadership. Or, as historian Neil Howe puts it, a society that has grown “individually focused” but “collectively adrift.”
The common results, as history demonstrates, are political regimes that exploit moments of collective unconsciousness to dominate the culture and suppress freedoms. Most importantly, they make life impossible for political opponents, making the concept of a multi-party system with free and fair elections all but imaginary. A spectacle. Nothing more than an illusion of liberty.
While the names have changed, history’s one-party state playbook remains the same. Employ a powerful spectacle. Indoctrinate society. Exclude all opponents. Dominate the culture.
That’s exactly what the Nazis did in the 1930s and 1940s. Seizing power, they managed to convince German families that the Nazi regime had the power to lift them from poverty, remove all barriers that threatened a thriving society, and restore the nation’s pride that was lost in World War I.
People were enthralled by the moving speeches of the Third Reich’s leader, Adolf Hitler. They were captivated and distracted by inundating propaganda and entertainment, buoyed by a new social and political movement, woefully ignorant to the mass government influence and indoctrination of children and youth, and asleep at the wheel to an unprecedented horror that would find its place among history’s genocides: the Holocaust.
By the time World War II put an end to that fateful nightmare, Germany found itself awake to a world of destruction and sorrow. A painful reminder of history’s grave lesson—the price of apathy isn’t liberty but tyranny.
The Soviet Union learned the same lesson under the reign of one of history’s most tyrannical leaders: Joseph Stalin. He twisted the truth in an effort to pass controversial and suppressive policies, indoctrinated his citizens, buried the culture in “progressive” dogma., and brutally took any political opponents, whether they were candidates or parties, out of the political sphere altogether.
Stalin employed all means necessary to seize, control, and sustain power. The results were disastrous—the Soviet famine of 1932, judicial executions, and the murder of some millions of innocents. They too learned the grave lesson of collective apathy.
Few would compare California’s left-wing party to the likes of Nazi Germany or Stalin’s leadership of the Soviet Union. However, at the same time, no resident of California can deny that, with every new and controversial law, there’s a sense that California’s far-left wing continues to enlarge the hand of government in our lives. There’s a collective awareness of that growing influence on our culture, our norms, and our values.
On paper, California’s Democratic Party is just one of many on the ballot in every election cycle. In reality, at 46.8 percent of registered voters, the party dominates California’s legislature and the governorship and dictates the major decisions in the state.
Year after year, we continue to see new and unconscionable state measures that enlarge the reach of government in our lives. We’re living in a state in which some of our state leaders openly campaign for a ban on all biblical teachings in public schools. In disbelief, we witness a party that openly advocates for defunding our police force but fails to address the record surges in property crimes.
It’s a state party more concerned with bracing for the effect of plastic straws on our environment than taking measures to prevent the next wildfire disaster and a government that’s more concerned with being politically correct than being politically attuned to the growing needs of our society. It’s also deaf to concerns about open borders but surprised by record deaths among our youth from fentanyl, a drug easily transported through our unsecured borders.
For parents, the left’s war on California’s culture has become personal. Take, for example, state Sen. Anthony Portantino’s proposed legislation that would criminalize your next parent–teacher conference. Senate Bill 596, also known as the “Parent Silencing Bill,” would make it a criminal offense (punishable by one year in jail) for parents and guardians to “interfere” with the “course of duties” of school employees.
Make no mistake. This is a blatant effort to diminish the involvement of individual parents in their child’s education and magnify the reach of teachers.
The culture war doesn’t stop at policy. The far left will go to unprecedented lengths to exert its influence. In June, during a school board meeting, several fights broke out between Antifa and parental rights activists at Glendale Unified School District’s administration building, where the board discussed voting on controversial policies that would further limit parents’ involvement in their children’s education.
The end results of such government reach speak for themselves. Despite the state’s major financial investments in education, the state trails nearly every other state—even states that spend far less than our state. An unprecedented homeless population continues to surge in spite of smiles, gimmicks, and easy assurances by California Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Then, there’s the campaign for the legalization of safe injection sites for heroin, cocaine, and other narcotics. There’s a culture that virtually legalizes theft crimes when the value of stolen merchandise is less than $950. There’s also a silent majority now somewhat reluctant to exercise its First Amendment right to speak in favor of ideologies, policies, ideas, creeds, and beliefs in conflict with those of the left.
By extension, the left’s national party has increasingly refashioned itself in the likeness of California’s left-wing majority. Nationally, the Biden administration has demonstrated that his party is willing to use any means necessary to take its political opponents out of the game altogether. What better way to take a political opponent out of the game than to have that person charged with the single greatest crime against the United States: treason.
That’s exactly what has transpired. Just before the ramp-up of Donald Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump was charged with committing several acts of treason—the first time in American history a former president was charged with such a crime—a crime punishable by death.
To no one’s surprise, the charges waged against Mr. Trump came at the onset of allegations of a bribery scheme in which President Joe Biden profited by $10 million while serving as vice president in the Obama administration.
Like earlier societies dominated by left-wing culture, our state and nation have grown increasingly callous to the reach and influence of far-left political regimes. Instead of taking measures to combat the sickness within, many of us have turned to the familiar sedatives of entertainment and distraction, turning up the music of cynicism to tune out the volume of looming societal despair; turning a blind eye to the enlarging hand of government; and looking back to the better days of old rather than looking ahead to anxious and uncertain times.
Like Rip Van Winkle, we’ve fallen asleep.
For a time, we failed to heed one of history’s greatest lessons, a lesson that many of our ancestors learned the hard way: that human indifference is responsible for more deprivations of human rights and more deaths than any pandemic known to man.
Nevertheless, signs suggest that now more than ever, many of us are awakening from the left’s culture-war nightmare. From the golden state of California to the red hills of Georgia, those of us who love liberty have awakened to the impending hand of government.
For evidence, look no further than the ouster of three members of the San Francisco School Board last year. Fueled by angst and anger over the school board’s handling of education policy in light of the COVID-19 pandemic (and prioritization of woke cancel culture policies), 70 percent of voters mounted a landslide recall of the three members.
Believe it or not, the large-scale movement to recall the board members started with only a handful of concerned parents, who were fed up with a school system that ignored the educational needs of their children and instead prioritized influencing the culture with more leftist policies.
Like those concerned parents, together, we must stand united and firm in the face of the social war on our culture. We must stand together in the face of tyrannical measures. We must lead this generation to the promised land of an economy unshackled, uninfluenced, and free from control by government. We must affirm the promises of the Declaration of Independence: “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
It starts right here—in our hearts and in our generation. Let’s proclaim the liberties of our nation. Let’s affirm free thought. Let’s uproot tyranny and plant seeds of liberty. Together, let’s pay the precious price of liberty with eternal vigilance.
