Enlightenment, Freedom, and Music (continued)

4th of July Edition- Part 2

This article is the second of a two-part series contemplating my Nation’s annual celebration of its Declaration of Independence. (Part 1 can be found here) These essays are my contemporary reflections of the significance of this Independence Day celebration. I will also take this moment to thank my subscribers and supporters and wish all a safe and happy 4th of July.

Politically, the classic rock era gave the world two of the most liberating world leaders, at least since Calvin Coolidge occupied the White House. At a time when Western governments were in an all-out sprint to catch up with the socialization of the USSR while at the same time working to defeat Mother Russia’s communist ideology, Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher emerged as freedom fighters against tyrannical governmental overreach. Both leaders tapped into the growing discontent of their citizens regarding economically limiting social policies. Prior to the BlackRocks and Vanguards of the day manipulating industry one-size-fits-all DEI compliance, governments themselves off-boarded socialized directives on to the backs of industry. The 60s and 70s governmental overreach was crushing companies. Add to it, fickle monetary policy that caused rapid inflation, the two countries’ disastrous economic policies cleared the runway for Reagan and Thatcher to emerge. The expanding classic rock and roll era dovetailed with national distrust of the institutions of government. Both Reagan and Thatcher capitalized on that discontent and delivered our countries to a bit of a respite in the slow March towards socialization.

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn't pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same, or one day we will spend our sunset years telling our children and our children's children what it was once like in the United States where men were free.” – Ronald Reagan

Short Lived though it was, as subsequent administrations cheerfully picked up the torch and began the next leg of the socialism relay. Throughout most of the 90s and early 2000s, the battle lines were drawn between socialist government factions and Thatcher, Reagan hold outs. The fight was mostly in the statehouses with the mainstream media cheerleading the left and talk radio motivating the resistance. Perhaps we should call those two decades the era of “most important elections of our lifetime.”  because that's what the cheerleading pundits framed our elections every two years. And whether you were on team CNN or team Limbaugh, one drew their ideological marching orders from their favorite media personalities.

What I believe the two media consuming teams did not see coming was that the governmental factions that represent liberal and conservative wings were building back-channel infrastructures. I dub the era commencing roughly with the election of Barack Obama in 2008, as the time when the academics emerged from the shadows of ivory towers to direct the shadowy state apparatuses. Most of the socialist claptrap spewed in the 80s and 90s in the college classroom by and large stayed there as students graduating and thrust into the “real world” discovered that socialist theories had little practical application. Not so with America's first, unwilling to triangulate, progressive president. In the 16 years following the election of President Obama, these “learned” individuals were elevated to the upper echelons of power and unproved academic economic theory became real economic policy.

There are now pipelines of Ivy League graduates to the epicenter of western political economic and social structures. Cloned elite school graduates are fast tracked into the government entities of the CIA, FBI, Homeland Security, and the halls of Congress. Other groups of elite graduates find themselves headed towards BlackRock, Chase Bank, and other investment powerhouses. A third faction of elite graduates find themselves filling the ranks of today's fortune 500 companies. All these graduates are not performing their newfound highly compensated and incredibly influential positions from a background of moral and historical instruction, but from an unquestioned socialist ideology. Ronald Reagan’s prophecy was spot on, we are only one generation away from loosing our freedom. As it turns out, it only takes one generation’s children, matriculated through state sponsored socialism centers known as schools, to forget the words and meaning of our Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

The globe is now experiencing a retraction of freedom. The guaranteed terms spelled out in America's Bill of Rights are waning. For what we have learned is that the mere words on a document do not themselves hold a government accountable. The United States never has been nor will it ever be a nation of laws. It is a nation of political wills, and right now the political will of my nation is to ignore the Bill of Rights. The First Amendment right of free speech backed up by the Second Amendment right to bear arms are the cornerstones of first ten amendments to the Constitution. The words themselves mean nothing if our political leaders have not the political will to enforce them. And with that, the United States, as well as most of the globe, are descending into an era of darkness.

With the collapsing of freedoms “secured” by the Declaration of Independence and the US Constitution, will come a darkness in music. Instead of creating new and exciting genres, we will continue to play the classics of prior eras of freedom inspired enlightenment. We will hold the music as nostalgic, songs from a simpler time, but from a time that we have progressed beyond. As the walls of freedom are compacting around us, the false sense of woke enlightenment is a mirage. For in Plato’s cave, the images cast upon the walls are merely the “truths” the guards wish the captors to see. In that allegory, there is no love of God, Country, or music. For Beauty can only be recognized and appreciated in the warm light of freedom.

I know not how long our current period of darkness will last. But future generations will know when it is over because the music of the day will become the new “classics." Like the music that came out of the age of enlightenment of the 1700s and the music from the more recent age of discontent, there will be a new form of popular music that mirrors a sense of liberation. It will be a form of music that represents a feeling of liberation from, not only oppressive and tyrannical governments, but from self-imposed ignorance and isolation. And with that music will come a spirit of revival. Like the last time it happened, due to its popularity, governments will have little to do but sit back and let it play out in the culture. To be sure, there will be dimly lit, smoke-filled backroom convalescing and the institutions of power will ever try to figure out how to subdue their populations yearning for freedom. Those power brokers will decry the liberating music as evil. Let us hope the next era of enlightenment has more staying power than our last.

So, as we approach our annual 4th of July celebration of Independence, I will partake in the festivities with beach barbecues and fireworks. Like when I attend a sporting event, I will stand for the National Anthem with my right hand firmly fixed upon my heart, and I will be doing so to honor a great country. To be sure, I am honoring the country that fought for and won its independence, I am honoring the men and women, who over the last 250 years, sacrificed personal ambition and served with honor in both our military and our state houses. I am honoring the sacred documents that must have come more from the nudging's of heaven than from any mortal man that have bound my country into a political compact for “We the people” lo these two plus centuries.

What I am not honoring, is the current country that we are. The men and women of honor have long left the building and what is left is a basket of vipers, ever slithering, twisting, and biting the very hand that feeds it. For there is no honor in a political apparatus that enforces its will through a Pretorian guard type agencies that uses “Star Chamber” legal tactics towards political adversaries on one side and feather light taps on the wrist for law violators on the other side. For as I stated before, where there is not equal justice, there is no justice. A great many men and women in these United States fought for that just protection and our current leaders gleefully exchanged it for fourteen pieces.

I don’t know when the new music of freedom will emerge, but it will begin when our government stops arresting, prosecuting, and jailing its citizens and the government officials themselves become the prosecuted and jailed. Until that restoration happens, every utterance of freedom over the destructiveness of communism comes at a risk. For all the authors that dare write about unapproved state political ideology are at risk of being “deep stated” out of existence. And in that kind of oppressive environment, no art or music of any lasting value will be produced.

God is patient, loving and understanding. God blessed the United States. God inspired the compact documents that guided our journey of self-governance since 1776. And God will rejoice with us in glorious music when the growing shadows of tyranny are once again lifted. Finally, we will know freedom has reemerged when the academics are contained, and leaders talk of limitless possibilities instead of imposing limits.

When I celebrate the 4^th of July, I will be honoring the blessings of freedom and praying for God’s guidance in returning my nation into that noble covenant that inspired the words:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.