by Mitchell J. McConnell
Written by an acquaintance of mine and posted on the web at: http://commonconservative.com/guest2.html
If your child asked you this question, how would you answer? What if she followed up with “Why can’t everybody be free?” Would you be prepared to answer her?
Your teenager could ask even harder questions, like “Why didn’t the founding fathers just talk to King George
and work out their differences? That’s what they tell us to do in school,” or “Why didn’t the Rwandan Tutsis just shoot the Hutus that came to kill them?”
The latter question is truly of the “fill in the blanks” variety. Why didn’t the Jews shoot the Germans during World War II? Why didn’t the Armenians shoot the Turks? Why didn’t the Chinese in Tianenmen Square shoot
back? How would you answer for those groups? Would you impugn their moral character as less worthy of freedom than the American colonists were? Would you say they just had the
bad luck to be born in Turkey? Or to be born Jewish?
Of course, the answer to the title question, and ultimately to all of these questions, is that freedom never just happens. Freedom only comes to those who are willing and able to fight for it. Look at the world around us and
you will see two kinds of people. Some appear to not be willing to fight for freedom. They would rather have a (to Americans, at least) pathetic kind of social security than the uncertainty that true freedom brings. Many others, however, would desperately love to have freedom, but are denied the means to fight for their freedom and are effectively prisoners.
This is why the brave men and women who fought for American independence stressed the importance of firearms. It was not because they lived in a simpler time, where everyone had to hunt. Neither was it because they often hunted for food, although they certainly did that.
No, they knew that there is no freedom for unarmed people!
If human history shows only one thing, it is the truth of the statement above. You show me one wise, benevolent philosopher king, and I will show you a million petty tyrants to whom your life is not worth a penny. From the most absolute dictator to the lowliest bureaucrat, give them enough power to rule over someone else’s life and they will.
In conclusion, I guess it is only fair for me to put in my two cents worth to answer my own questions. To my child I might say:
“Honey, you already know that there are some bad people in the world. Your mother and I have had to ask you to be careful about getting in a car with them, or even being too friendly to strangers. Well, there are other kinds of bad people, and they are bad to other grownups. Sometimes they hurt them or put them in prison. Usually they do it because they like to tell everyone else what to do, just like a bully in school. The worst part of all is that most of these bad people have lots of guns and they use the guns to force others to do what they want. When this happens to a group of people, they have no choice but to resist the bad guys, even if they have to have a war to do so. This is how the United States of America was born, by a group of people who resisted the king of England when he stole their money and imprisoned them for no reason. It is never pleasant to have to go to war, but it is worth it to fight for your freedom. The nice life we live here in America today is because tho se men two hundred years ago were willing to
fight for it. To the teenager, I would say the following:”Son or daughter, I have some bad news regarding your hitherto rose-colored view of the world with respect to human nature. Now you know what guns are for. Before guns were invented, people everywhere were subjected to the whims and tyrannies of the strongest, whether by fist or by sword. The invention of the gun changed the course of human history forever, by allowing even the weak to stand up to the physically stronger. It is so powerful that authoritarian rulers all over the world make confiscating the people’s weapons their first priority when taking power. Just about every case of genocide in history was preceded by such disarmament. The last thing on earth that despotic rulers can abide is a free, self-governing people with access to firearms, since it threatens their ability to enforce their despotic rule.
In the final analysis, freedom doesn’t “come” from anywhere if it does not already exist in the hearts and minds of individuals who are willing to fight for it.