Give Me Liberty Or . . . Oh Never Mind

By Chuck Baldwin 
March 26, 2020

Ironically, three days ago, March 23, was the 245th anniversary of Patrick Henry’s immortal “Give me liberty or give me death” speech. Without a doubt, this speech is regarded yet today as America’s most famous, most inspiring and most influential oratorical presentation. If there was any doubt that America was going to fight a war for independence from Great Britain, that speech shattered it. 

Here are excerpts from that courageous and magnificent address:

The question before the House is one of awful moment to this country. For my own part, I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery.

Let us not deceive ourselves, sir. These are the implements of war and subjugation. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it?

If we wish to be free, if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending, if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained, we must fight!

There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations. The battle, sir, is not to the strong alone; it is to the vigilant, the active, the brave.

Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!

This speech needs to be repeated in the ears of the American people today, as we again

face a new version of subjugation under Martial Law—Medical Martial Law.

Constitutional attorney Robert Barnes wrote a tremendously important column a few days ago. The column is titled I am an American constitutional lawyer – and I see our government using Covid-19 to take away our fundamental rights. Here are excerpts:

Do we really think “it can’t happen here” in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?

Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like V for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian society. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about China locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.

Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove First Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or declared the right to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a time governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a wide range of crimes in their community while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. Stay-at-home orders deprive you of your profession, occupation, business and property, without any due process of law at all beyond an executive fiat in violation of the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Governments request the authority to involuntarily imprison any American on mere fear of infection without any probable cause of crime or clear and present danger of harm by that person’s volitional conduct, deny access to personal counsel in an unsupervised, un-surveilled manner in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and act as judge, jury and executioner in violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, as jury trials themselves get suspended around the country in the nation’s quieted courts and fear-muted public.

The real pandemic threat is here. It’s the panic that will quarantine our Constitution.

Our founders were intimately familiar with pandemics, viruses and plagues, yet they did not allow any to suspend our Constitutional liberties. Not one word in the Constitution about plagues or pandemics to exempt the government from any of our Bill of Rights. Why do our current courts allow it? Because the public is asleep at the wheel. Think the pandemic threatens to kills [sic] us all? A review of the data shows the pandemic is more panic than plague. 

Time to wake up. Maybe it is time in the motto of V for Vendetta, to "Remember, remember the fifth of November, the gunpowder treason and plot." As that film's lead character well said: “People shouldn’t be afraid of their government. Governments should be afraid of their people.” Only when an awake public asserts their human liberties to protest the loss of their liberties will, then, governments quit using public health crises to seize power that does not belong to them. The answer to 1984 is still 1776.

AMEN and AMEN, Mr. Barnes!

In principle, what Patrick Henry said about British overlords could be said about the various health departments and local and State governments that are right now eviscerating the Bill of Rights. As Barnes accurately and astutely noted:

Our founders were intimately familiar with pandemics, viruses and plagues, yet they did not allow any to suspend our Constitutional liberties. Not one word in the Constitution about plagues or pandemics to exempt the government from any of our Bill of Rights.

Henry thundered, “I consider it as nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery.”

Amen! So do I.

I ask Americans to please draw any other conclusions than those drawn by Patrick Henry when he declared:

These forced business closings are the implements of war and subjugation. I ask, gentlemen, sir, what means this martial array, if its purpose be not to force us to submission? Can gentlemen assign any other possible motive for it?

How can we not see that fear of the coronavirus is being used to acclimate the American people to the disintegration of our Natural and constitutional liberties? What is the purpose of all of this hype and hysteria about corona if it “be not to force us to submission?”

Donald Trump’s Department of Justice wasted no time in calling for Congress to suspend the Constitution during a national emergency (Trump already declared a national state of emergency over corona, of course).

The Trump Department of Justice has asked Congress to craft legislation allowing chief judges to indefinitely hold people without trial and suspend other constitutionally-protected rights during coronavirus and other emergencies, according to a report by Politico’s Betsy Woodruff Swan.

The DOJ has requested Congress allow any chief judge of a district court to pause court proceedings “whenever the district court is fully or partially closed by virtue of any natural disaster, civil disobedience, or other emergency situation,” according to draft language obtained by Politico. This would be applicable to “any statutes or rules of procedure otherwise affecting pre-arrest, post-arrest, pre-trial, trial, and post-trial procedures in criminal and juvenile proceedings and all civil processes and proceedings.” They justify this by saying currently judges can pause judicial proceedings in an emergency but that new legislation would allow them to apply it “in a consistent manner.”

But the Constitution grants citizens habeas corpus which gives arrestees the right to appear in front of a judge and ask to be released before trial. Enacting legislation like the DOJ wants would essentially suspend habeas corpus indefinitely until the emergency ended. Further, DOJ asked Congress to suspend the statute of limitations on criminal investigations and civil proceedings during the emergency until a year after it ended.

Norman L. Reimer, executive director of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, told Politico the measure was “terrifying,” saying, “Not only would it be a violation of [habeas corpus], but it says ‘affecting pre-arrest.’ So that means you could be arrested and never brought before a judge until they decide that the emergency or the civil disobedience is over. I find it absolutely terrifying. Especially in a time of emergency, we should be very careful about granting new powers to the government.”

Again, this is “nothing less than a question of freedom or slavery.”

And before I get too far removed from the forced church closing subject, for tens of thousands of churches, it did not take a civil order to force them to close; they eagerly volunteered to close their churches last Sunday.

But while thousands of churches volunteered to close, Planned Parenthood’s abortuaries remained open.

One thing seems clear; Planned Parenthood believes the services they provide are needed by the public. To them, abortion is an “essential service.” They would not close even if the government ordered it. Abortionists are the most tenacious, focused, dedicated people on the planet.

Wouldn’t it be nice if churches believed in their services as much as Planned Parenthood believes in their services? Wouldn’t it be nice if churches were as tenacious as abortionists?

By closing their public services, churches declared themselves to be providing “non-essential” services.

Churches today seem to have less courage and conviction about doing God’s work than the baby butchers at Planned Parenthood have about doing the devil’s work.

In reality, Gospel preachers and true churches (as opposed to government 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations) engage in the most important service to mankind of ALL. Organizations of various types can try to rescue men’s lives, but it is the Gospel preacher and his Christian congregation that rescue men’s souls.

Spiritual salvation; spiritual understanding; spiritual courage; spiritual discernment; spiritual hope; spiritual peace; and spiritual love are more important during a crisis than at any other time. No grocery store, no drug store, no clinic, no hospital, no emergency room, no ambulance, no fire department, no police department, no FEMA center and no government health department can take the place of or provide the eternal services of a Gospel preacher and his Christian congregation.

I remind you of the words of our Lord that a true Gospel preacher delivers to the unsaved members of his community:

And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell. (Matthew 10:28 KJV)

And, again, the words of Christ that a true Gospel preacher delivers to the saved members of his community:

Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer. (Revelation 2:10 KJV)

During a crisis—ANY crisis—the spiritual leadership and preaching of the soul-saving message of redemption is needed more than ever. In other words, our communities need to be seeing the Gospel witness of our pastors and congregations in their churches and on their street corners NOW.

If Benjamin Franklin was right (and he was) when he said, “God governs in the affairs of men. I also believe that without his concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better, than the Builders of Babel,” we need to be far more concerned about offending the God of Heaven than we are about offending the purveyors of fear.

Evangelical pastors and churches should be shamed by hearing the words of Italian Catholic Cardinal Raymond Burke:

In an online statement, conservative Catholic Cardinal Raymond Burke said that access to Mass and the sacraments must not be denied even as the world faces the coronavirus pandemic.

“In considering what is needed to live, we must not forget that our first consideration is our relationship with God,” Burke wrote in a letter published on his website Saturday (March 21).

“That is why it is essential for us, at all times and above all in times of crisis, to have access to our churches and chapels, to the Sacraments, and to public devotions and prayers.”

If one wants to see REAL death and destruction, just take away the liberties contained in our Bill of Rights and turn America into a totalitarian, impoverished Third World country comprised only of rich and poor: where the rich have rights but the poor do not, where the rich have jobs but the poor do not, where the rich have guns but the poor do not, where the rich can travel but the poor cannot, where the rich have access to government but the poor do not and where the rich have adequate healthcare but the poor do not. And that is exactly what the powers that are hyping this virus are attempting to do: ruin the prosperity of America’s working middle class.

Am I saying the coronavirus is a hoax? No, I am not. We should all respect the potential harm that the coronavirus can cause in the same way that we respect the potential harm of the flu virus. We should take the same precautions.

But I am saying that the continuous, non-stop, around-the-clock fearmongering about corona is FAR WORSE than the virus itself. I totally agree with Kurt Nimmo:

The COVID-19 “pandemic” is primarily designed to empower the ruling elite and further its authoritarian reach. The primary tool is the innate human fear of death and this fear has been greatly magnified by the corporate propaganda media.

For those able to sidestep the trap of fear-mongering, it is obvious this disease is less of a threat to mortality than the seasonal flu and tuberculosis. COVID-19’s death rate thus far is minuscule by way of comparison, although the state and its media promise the number will rise precipitously and the only option is to “flatten the curve” by imposing authoritarian mandates, including the imposition of martial law, as is now the case in Italy.

The state has a monopoly on coercion and violence. It has demonstrated repeatedly throughout history that its first reflex during any crisis, real or invented, is to demand the obedience of the masses or they will suffer the consequences—arrest, fines, incarceration, possibly even death. We are witnessing this now in California, the liberal haven now on lockdown, soon to be transformed into martial law as many people refuse to believe COVID-19 is the boogieman the state claims. For the state, it is impermissible to go about our lives as normal. The same is now unfolding on the opposite coast in New York, another bastion of the liberal mindset.

In addition to furthering authoritarian rule, the state and its owners, banksters and transnational corporations are determined to take down an already sick economy, made so by decades of post-Keynesian economics and the neoliberal creed. In this way, they can reconfigure economies and finally establish a globalist plan for centralized world government, long sought after and admitted to the public at large (search “global governance”). This fascistic, top-down plan is sold as an effort to realize peace, security, justice, and global mediation systems. It is nothing of the sort.

This is the endgame of the COVID-19 “crisis”—subordination to the state and following authoritarian diktats handed down without question, complaint, or resistance.

Let me ask readers something: Is your life more important to you than your children’s liberty? 

If it is, then stop pretending to be an American. Stop pretending to believe in freedom. Stop pretending to support our Constitution and Bill of Rights. Stop saluting the flag. Stop commemorating the deaths of the brave men who died “protecting liberty” at Flanders, Verdun, Argonne Forest, Guadalcanal, Iwo Jima, Corregidor, Anzio, Bastogne, Normandy, etc.

Through two World Wars and a Great Depression MY parents, aunts, uncles and grandparents (and those entire generations) endured enough suffering and death to test anyone’s commitment to liberty—many times over. 

And after it was all said and done, their descendants (YOU AND I) were handed a Bill of Rights that had been bought and paid in blood—just as their parents and grandparents had handed it to them. Are we now going to surrender the constitutionally protected liberties bequeathed to us by our parents and grandparents—and granted to us by our Creator—because we MIGHT die of a flu-like virus, a virus that has a global mortality rate of less than 
1%?

We are more likely to die in a car wreck or die from cancer or heart disease or from falling in the bathroom or down a flight of stairs—or even from choking to death on the food we eat—than we are to die from corona.

In the midst of our national crisis today, our cry should be the same as the cry of great Americans such as Patrick Henry and my parents during their respective crises: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

I’ll take the risks of freedom over the security of government “protection” (aka oppression) any day!

P.S. Here is the message I brought to the people of Liberty Fellowship last Sunday—yes, it was a LIVE audience. It is entitled: COVID 19: A Pretext For Civil Tyranny And An Opportunity For Christian Toughness. 

© Chuck Baldwin