Freedom Is on the March

February 16, 2025 by J.B. Shurk

The plan was simple. If Western governments controlled the “narrative” and censored dissent, those with power would retain power forever. If they spied on citizens and threatened uncooperative parties with imprisonment, nobody would dare resist. If they fashioned their labyrinthine bureaucracies into regulatory weapons targeting ideological enemies, opposition leaders with the most to lose would be the first to cower in silence. Own the message. Monopolize the means of messaging. Neutralize competing messengers. This is how totalitarianism rises and freedom dies.

However, as nineteenth-century Prussian military commander Helmuth von Moltke warned, no plan survives contact with the enemy. The globalists did not foresee Brexit. They could not imagine the election of President Donald J. Trump. They underestimated the public support for Bolsonaro, Orbán, Farage, Wilders, and Le Pen. They did not anticipate the return of eloquent defenders of freedom such as Canada’s Pierre Poilievre, Argentina’s Javier Milei, and America’s J.D. Vance. As is true of all ruling classes whose reigns appear unbreakable right before shattering, hubris will be globalism’s undoing.

For many years we’ve watched as the West’s would-be executioners tightened the noose around civilization’s neck. Open borders have dampened wages, strained welfare systems, exacerbated crime, incited cultural conflict, and diluted citizens’ votes. Propaganda has become the only finished good that globalist governments mass-produce. Bureaucrats have seized the authority to decide what is true, and they have used this stolen authority to label dissent as “false,” “dangerous,” or “hateful.” As governments have criminalized “misinformation” and “hate speech,” they have transformed political opponents into “criminals.” This is what the Enlightenment’s descendants have wrought: they have murdered free speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of conscience. They have thrown liberty’s corpse on a funeral pyre and set it ablaze.

Yet out of the ashes, something now walks. Can you see what’s taking shape? If your eyes are still too weak from decades of blinding lies, open your ears and listen. Whispers of resistance have grown into shouts of outright defiance. Rusty voices from the past are clearing their throats and making noise. New voices are speaking loudly about a future that values human liberty over government intimidation. What was long dying is coming back to life.

I have no interest in luring people down the path of false optimism. There is plenty of rough terrain ahead, and the journey will require everything we have. I picture the contest for freedom as something akin to what many of our ancestors faced when they chose to leave towns on the East Coast and settle the American frontier on the other side of the Appalachians and the Mississippi. Imagine packing up your family on a horse-drawn wagon and traveling a thousand or more miles over jagged, wild terrain. There were no paved roads. There were no bridges transecting the hundreds of streams and rivers. There were no signs, stores, or first responders. There was only self-resilience and the allure of a powerful idea — that if a family could push hard enough and survive long enough despite numerous dangers along the way, freedom and prosperity could be won.

As is humanity’s wont, we forget how much effort the struggle for freedom requires soon after it is achieved. We honor the soldiers who sacrificed their lives for its cause, but we rarely take the time to consider their grueling day-to-day existence. We remember that our ancestors spent months onboard cramped, disease-laden ships to cross the Atlantic, but we fail to appreciate that such tremendous hardship was the price for religious freedom and self-determination. We know that millions of Americans trekked the continent in search of land and opportunity, but we neglect to notice the multitudes buried in unmarked graves along overgrown and forgotten trails.

We should remember. We should gather friends and families together and recall how our forefathers left their native lands on the other side of the ocean for merely the chance at freedom. We should put ourselves in their shoes and ask why they would risk so much for nothing more than a glimmer of an inchoate dream. We should think about all of our relatives who died during the journey. We should ask ourselves why freedom from religious persecution was worth the cost. We should ask why so many settled in strange, untamed lands to escape established European institutions. We should ask why so many gave so much to break free from the chains of social caste. We should contemplate our ancestors’ suffering in great detail, until we learn this lesson: freedom is precious and never obtained cheaply.

Not a day goes by when I don’t see some prominent public figure mocking the idea of freedom. Celebrities, pundits, and politicians denigrate Americans for owning guns, expressing unpopular opinions, or wanting the government to stay out of their private affairs. Lawmakers who swore oaths to uphold the Constitution (including the Bill of Rights) falsely claim that the First, Second, and Fourth Amendments have limits. If the government has a really good reason to censor, disarm, or spy on Americans, they argue, the Constitution’s protections for Americans’ natural liberties should never get in the way. Lawmakers who see exceptions and loopholes in the Bill of Rights are not only ignorant but also dangerous. They have forgotten the sacrifices our ancestors bore for freedom, and they refuse to believe future generations would do the same.

Democrats and neoconservatives (who, as it turns out, were always just Democrats running the Republican Party) often speak about the War in Ukraine as a great struggle for human freedom. Yet those same rhetorical defenders of Ukraine’s freedom ridicule Americans who defend freedom at home. They send weapons to Ukraine (a country whose population was largely disarmed before the war) but demand that Americans give up their own. In passionate speeches, they describe Ukraine’s borders as sovereign and sacred but strangely expect Americans to accept tens of millions of foreign nationals flooding into the United States. They pay lip service to the invaluable blessings of “democracy” but look the other way as Ukraine cancels elections, locks up political opponents, and censors online speech. They describe Ukraine’s soldiers as heroes for liberty but fail to acknowledge that many were captured, conscripted, and forced to fight on the front lines.

In other words, the Establishment Class in D.C. uses the language of liberty to convince Americans to support overseas military operations, yet it feigns shock when patriotic Americans demand liberty for themselves. Television commentators sneer at small towns covered in red, white, and blue. Agencies make watchlists filled with drivers who fly Gadsden or Culpeper flags from the backs of their trucks. Democrats regularly express fear and loathing of Old Glory. Elected representatives openly describe the Constitution as not only “antiquated” but also “patriarchal,” “racist,” and even “dangerous.” Government officials who have a duty to protect and defend Americans’ God-given freedoms instead undermine those freedoms daily.

We are in a pivotal moment in history when human freedom will either slip away for centuries or return to the forefront of our thoughts. With the national security surveillance state expanding all around us and the ascendancy of artificial intelligence accelerating, we have every reason to be apprehensive about the future. Those who wish to be our perpetual “rulers” are building economic and technological cages for our imprisonment, and many “inmates” like their new cells. I can promise this, though: there will be a jailbreak.

The fight for freedom rarely begins before freedom is nearly snuffed out. That’s when lofty ideals transform into something more than pretty words. They become reasons for living and breathing.

Change is in the air. Leaders are speaking out. The sound of purposeful footsteps is getting louder in much of the West. Once again, freedom is on the march.