A General Dissolution of Principles & Manners

In a letter written to James Warren back in February 1779, one of our Founding Fathers – Samuel Adams – suggested that his “wish that the honest & virtuous Friends of our Country would cultivate a cordial Esteem for each other” was being prevented from being granted because of “little Jealousies among them which prevent their uniting their Councils and Efforts against that Inundation of Levity Vanity Luxury Dissipation & indeed Vice of every kind which I am informed threatens that Country which has heretofore stood with unexampled Firmness in the Cause of Liberty and Virtue.”

Not enough of us think that way anymore; America has lost her way on many fronts over the years since Adams wrote those words, in large part because of the freedoms he helped fight to ensure we enjoy today. Yet he couldn’t have known back then that there would be those among us who would dilute and denigrate those freedoms and our liberty to perpetuate personal agendas of ascension to power and self-aggrandizement. Adams went on to say that in order to stem these inundations he lamented with Warren, there must be “Associations of Men of unshaken Fortitude.” He was right; our country must come together as a “People” once again and stand firm against what Adams feared awaited our country were we to shrink away from our duty to defend her:

A general Dissolution of Principles & Manners will more surely overthrow the Liberties of America than the whole Force of the Common enemy. While the People are virtuous they cannot be subdued; but when once they lose their Virtue they will be ready to surrender their Liberties to the first external or internal Invader. How necessary then is it for those who are determined to transmit the Blessings of Liberty as a fair Inheritance to Posterity, to associate on public Principles in Support of public Virtue. I do verily believe, and I may say it inter Nos, that the Principles & Manners of N Engd, produced that Spirit which finally has established the Independence of America; and Nothing but opposite Principles and Manners can overthrow it.

Yet opposite principles and manners confront us at every turn. Virtue has been replaced with vanity and luxury and vice, and has been re-painted beyond all recognition by levity and dissipation. Where once America stood as a beacon of hope for the rest of the world, she now sits idly by while Americans are losing hope, for their futures and those of their children, a little bit more every day. This is not the America Adams and others fought for, and we must come together once again and fight to bring that America back. We must do this because, as Helen Valois recently suggested, “liberty is not its own opposite” and we must do it together.

[Note: This post originates at Liberty.Com]