Let me begin with the words of President Donald Trump when he came out of the hospital after being treated for COVID-19: “Don’t let it dominate your life. We have developed some really great drugs & knowledge.” At that point, the President triumphantly removed his mask.

We are losing our rights not because politicians are taking them away from us, but because we are freely and easily surrendering them. Democrats and their media have marketed fear and many here have bought into it willingly. Democrats are pushing masks because they are symbols of fear, surrender, and subordination. To quote Benjamin Franklin: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

But, to Democrats fear is a weapon and the mainstream media is their army. They use fear to gain what they covet and COVID-19 provided the tool that they needed to achieve it. Fear has always been the tool most used by tyrants. The 20th-century is full of example of this. Instill fear in the people as a means of gaining power.

But who are today’s tyrants?

We do not have the terror of individuals like Stalin and Hitler. Instead we have faceless corporations, sports, and education who do their part in spreading fear among the masses. They tell us either submit and behave well or you will no longer have a job or a reputation. If you don’t do as you are told your kids may not have a future. Accept the orthodoxy or you will be “cancelled.” A person with a MAGA cap, like Nick Sandman, has shown us how eager the media was to destroy him. Instead, if you don’t accept the orthodoxy you have to do it in silence because one remark, one careless act of independence, might cost you everything.

The progressive-Left is fast to learn from China. Cancel culture is only a stop to revoking human rights and those carefully laid out in our Bill of Rights. In China, President Xi Jinping has a plan to build a social credit system based on the principle, and I quote here, “once untrustworthy, always restricted.” Practice a religion not approved by the government, like Falun Gong, and you may find yourself being tortured and “reeducated” in a Labor Camp or prison. In China, Muslims are condemned to execution in concentration camps. Yet, how far removed from China are we today? The Wall Street Journal said it best in 2019:

“When you see your opponents as evil, such practices begin to look like fair game. Progressives today seem to lack the instinct to question their own judgement and have shed any skepticism about ideology. Given the left’s vicious self-righteousness, on display daily in the media, the question becomes whether it will accept any limits in its quest to impose its views on everyone – especially if it gains control of the government’s coercive interest.”

Yet, along the way we learn that the tyrant’s appetite for power is rarely satisfied. Groups like Antifa and BLM have no problems using lawlessness, mayhem, and violence to intimidate and cower citizens. Let’s heap this on people to create even more fear until the people submit for order. Truth, facts, and data have little meaning when there is a sword hanging over your head.

In the end, ask yourself one question: Was the United States founded on fear or defiance? The men who signed the Declaration of Independence stood up to the most powerful empire on the planet at the time. If they had failed they would have faced the gallows. Yet, they showed courage is the best action in the face of fear.

There is a growing class rising among us that wants to take freedom from us. They are doing so by manipulating us to live in fear. If we continue to reject courage we are going to lose all of our liberties. The only way to defeat this class is to act courageously.

What will our future be: Courage or Cowardice?