Freedom Rally in Philadelphia
December 8, 2020
ON SUNDAY, I attended a “freedom rally” near Independence Hall in Philadelphia. It was a great opportunity to meet like-minded people in a city that continues to be under grueling restrictions. Here are speeches by Nico Rocco, of Freedom is Essential; Dr. Andrew Kauffman, and Rick Martin, of the Constitutional Law Group. (I’m in a red hat standing behind Rick Martin as he speaks.)
According to Martin, “Either the government will be afraid of the people, or the people will be afraid of the government.”
The rally began with a reading of the Declaration of Independence and was just a few hundred feet from both Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, and most speakers referred to America’s famous war for freedom, but it was clear from the low turnout that Philadelphians today do not hold individual liberties in the same regard as the Founders. Throughout the city, all restaurants were closed to indoor business and many schools and office buildings are dark during the week. Most people are living in some degree of fear and a significant percentage have a puritanical, religious fervor for a hyper-sanitary code of behavior.
Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson or any of the signers of the Declaration of Independence being confined to their homes because of an illness with an over 99 percent survival rate? Can you imagine them nagging their countrymen to wash their hands or to stand six feet apart? Can you imagine them not putting up any resistance to covering their faces in public?
The government harassment they faced was nothing compared to what we face. But then they were the beneficiaries of a civilization in which the concepts of the sacredness of each person and of constitutional individual liberty from tyranny were born, a civilization that had wiped out slavery. (The Founders were hypocritical in allowing it to exist in America.)
The population at that time was not subject to the arts of modern propaganda or to decades of shame-inducing critiques of their history, customs, family structure and religious beliefs or surrendered themselves to materialistic consumerism. They had not already been mentally and spiritually brought to their knees.
