"Give me liberty or give me death"

Those were the words of Patrick Henry, a founding father of this great nation, on March 23, 1775. His words ring true to this day. He spoke the truth.

We are living under a police state.

The police state's agents feign a belief in liberty. Yet they do not support liberty. For them actually to believe in liberty, given their actions, would be irrational. This does not stop them from repeating the lie. Their actions are quite rational and calculating. Their intentions reside elsewhere. Look, after all, at how they operate.

Fight the police state with your bare hands, and you commit physical suicide. This is not an option for the faint of heart, nor would the action likely succeed.

Embrace the police state, and you have bought it, hook, line, and sinker. This is not an option for anyone with a heart, nor would the action fulfill our real needs.

Neither is an enticing proposition. Take the middle road, which runs not down the middle but circumvents the entire dilemma.

It is spiritual suicide to sit idly by as the police state commandeers our lives. The soul and its confidant, the mind, after all, are the keys to spirituality. We must preserve our ability to think. Use it or lose it, as the saying goes.

Pay close attention to the police state and all its talking heads. With each passing day, the truth becomes more challenging to determine, ever exponentially requiring our rapt attention. The police state suppresses truth. Perfect thought is truth. Truth is a process, not an answer, a process that yields no ultimate answer but is continual, perfect in its eternal characteristics.

The masters think they have the answer, and this convinces them to stop thought. This is their conclusion. Whether members of the police state consciously know it, they wish to stop, dead in its tracks, eternal, perfect thought, which, by definition, has no ultimate conclusion.

Theirs is a tall, egregious order. Can they succeed?

***

The first casualty of the police state is the truth.

Actually, that is a bit misleading. Truth is in jeopardy, to be sure, but its perceived spot in this pecking order of casualties is just that: a perceived one.

People are nearly oblivious to the encroaching police state. To them, the casualty of truth seems like the first casualty, for it catches them off guard. It is a tried-and-true military strategy, this element of surprise. Yet the casualty of truth is, in fact, the final casualty of the police state.

Truth withers soon after the police state kills death, the penultimate casualty of the police state. And the police state then celebrates, for it believes it has finally guaranteed its own perpetuity.

***

What is this non sequitur, this idea of “killing death”?

Readers, too flummoxed to continue, might tune out here. Inhabitants of this great country, too bewildered now to focus on their civic duties, too baffled, finally, to resist the police state, might tune out in droves. As critical as these times are, the propensity to tune out is understandable. In both cases, the uncertainty of this New World Order and the fear it breeds persuade people to cease paying attention.

Let's pay attention for a moment, though, shall we? The words “kill” and “death” are close cousins but have separate meanings no matter how closely intertwined these meanings can sometimes be.

We can die of old age, for instance. Who has killed us when this happens? No one. Not even God. Death signifies not an end but one point in a succession of events that, together, comprise the cycle of life. When we die, we do our fair share in perpetuating this cycle of life, which is not an ending, but an eternal thing.

Those at the police state’s helm kill the sacred feelings associated with death. They render the perception of death to be an absolute ending. They do so by compelling us to fear death in the face of war.

Actually, it is not the death that we fear; it is the killing. The tricky word association leaves us confused and malleable.

This is how they convince us, falsely, to separate death from the cycle of life. No longer part of life's cycle but, instead, a mournful ending, death becomes scary, and killing necessary. No longer a natural thing but something that a vengeful God has imposed on us, death even becomes our liability, as if we had any say in the matter to begin with.

Believe the right thing, or you will go to hell, the machine tells us.

***

Does the reader still doubt her masters’ intentions? She should consider the following examples, just two of scores and scores that point to the police state’s crimes:

1) “We will make you immortal,” says the biotech industry PR machine, that most sinister of corporate fascists bent on changing the very basis of mankind in the name of making a dollar. Death’s proper place beside the throne of life is no longer sacred.

2) “Defense industry contract starts have done their part in helping to boost the economy this past quarter,” reads the business page of any major newspaper. The police state loves death. Death helps the bottom line.

How does the police state see to it that the masses acquiesce and fuel the machine? It at once makes them fear death and feel guilty about the fear of death.

The killing of death remains the police state sponsors’ number one priority. Its successful execution immediately precedes truth's death.

Look at what happens as they kill the sacred feelings humans have always associated with death. Imagine, now, what they'll do to us once they finish killing death and turn their attention to killing truth.

***

They'll try to kill the truth, anyway, but truth will put up a hell of a fight. Truth will win. The word is truth. It is God’s word. God is the truth.

Who is the police state? We are. Every single one of us is an active agent of the police state. True, some are merely enablers, while others are actors; we all play our supporting roles, however.

The police state is suicidal; we are suicidal. That is how we persevere all the while knowing we will lose. What does it matter to us? God will take responsibility for us. The Book of Revelations tells us so.

***

How does your desire for the truth stack up against our species' suicidal tendencies? Is your desire to witness the truth as strong a desire as our species' hedonism is in the face of certain death? We're pretty confident in our recalcitrance. It’s because we need no confidence, just the will to die. Our belief is strong that someone else will take responsibility for us.

Are we as confident in the truth? Of course we are.

To live liberty is to live the truth, of which death is a player. To live in fear of death is to kill, the rejection of life. Surely it pained Patrick Henry to have to choose between liberty and death, to be forced to make this decision. Still, he chose liberty. He chose the truth. Henry could not have lived with himself any other way.

Do we have the courage to speak the truth, to be emissaries for God? Let's hope so.