Yesterday I watched the first two parts of HBO's John Adams miniseries, and I was really impressed. (Hopefully you're watching it too, because it's very worthwhile.) The second part is about John Adams convincing Congress that it needs to declare independence from Great Britain, because of the way the colonists have been abused by the king (taxation without representation, British soldiers firing on young boys, etc.). John Adams talks a lot about the natural rights of man, and how the colonies need to be independent to get those rights back.
The whole time I was watching it I was thinking to myself, what happened to that spirit of craving liberty, no matter what the cost? What happened to believing that man has natural rights that can't be taken away by the government (and if the government does take them away, it's cause for revolution)? Today people could care less whether they're free, so long as the government helps take care of them. Can you imagine people today being willing to give up everything they owned, just for a chance at a better government and more liberty? I sure can't. And I wish I knew how we'd gone from there to here in just 230 years.
The title of today's post is a quote by Barry Goldwater.
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That series was awesome, i watched the whole thing about a year and a half ago when my brother let me borrow it. It gives incredible perspective on the founding politicaly, and shows you that people like Hamilton were trying to go against the constitution from the very beggining and it's been a constant fight. It's just now that we are losing but soon, we'll bounce back!
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