"Withholding information is the essence of tyranny. Control of the flow of information is the tool of the dictatorship.” Bruce Coville, Author
October 8, 2014
By: Linda Case Gibbons
It had been a long time since I made a trip to see the U.S.S. Ship of State.
As I remembered, she had been a proud vessel, her pride well earned by her good and glorious deeds.
It was what we intended, back before the Revolutionary War even began.
When I saw her, the Ship was docked in the Bay of Liberty, located near Plymouth Rock, Boston Harbor, Pearl Harbor and close to the Delaware River, the scene of George Washington’s victory at the Battle of Trenton.
This beautiful ship had been created with decks wide enough to hold freedom and liberty for every man, but what I saw today shocked and dismayed me.
Her paint was peeling and she was listing badly -- to the left. And high above her bow, the Stars and Stripes, tattered and torn, flew beside the black flag of ISIS.
It was not what I expected.
When I said, "One, if by land, and two, if by sea” those many years ago, we colonists knew it was time -- to be vigilant, make firm decisions and take action.
We could not afford to wait.
It is still true today.
In those bygone, difficult days, we knew we had to be one in our response to a king who was curtailing our freedom and autonomy.
We maximized our response to any emergency, particularly those emanating from a tyrannical king, by cooperating and organizing. And we made certain that the information was disseminated to all the colonies.
We would have welcomed the abundance of communication devices that now exist, but without that assistance, we created the Committees of
Correspondence to communicate amongst the colonies.
I organized and was a member of the Boston Correspondence Committee. With foot patrols and information gathered from informants we managed to wage a war and win.
It was through these efforts that my Midnight Ride came to pass, not by whim, but by planning. The fate of a nation was truly riding that night.
But today, I was shocked to see no coordination, no cooperation, no dissemination of needed information. There seemed to be no concern about threats to the Ship of State. There seemed to be no patriotism.
The man who was president played games all day. The minorities were catered to with gifts and money paid for by ordinary citizens, while ordinary citizens struggled, forgotten by their government.
As I listened, I heard about the threat to the Ship of State from outside forces.
The people spoke fearfully about Ebola, about an organization called ISIS whose goal was to annihilate America and about people who were allowed to cross the borders of the country I loved with impunity, in defiance of our laws.
I heard how American life and limb were placed at risk, how the economics and health of ordinary citizens were threatened. And about a war that was being waged poorly and half-heartedly by a president who would not even give that war a name because he would not admit it was a war.
In those long ago days, we had worked carefully to craft a more perfect union, to establish a form of government that was the finest the world had ever seen, only now to see it in shambles.
When I gazed at my beloved Ship of State, I noticed masses of people lining the pier near the ship. They were good and solid citizens, as in my day, but they were told there was no room for them on the Ship’s wide decks.
Instead the decks were lined with people who only represented one percent of the population, but were people who disliked and blamed their country, people who were angry at their country, blaming it for all the world’s and their personal ills.
They were the minority, yet were catered to, while ordinary citizens were castigated and left adrift by their government.
There was no room on the Ship of State for the citizens who wanted to preserve the country we had fought to create, nor was there room for their concerns.
When they were spoken to at all, they were told to fend for themselves because their government had more important things to tend to than their "mealy-mouthed protests against illegal immigrants and fears about terrorists and deadly disease.”
What could be more important, I asked? Global warming, I was told. Raising money for politics. The welfare of non-citizens.
I could not believe my ears! But I listened as they told me more.
Patriotic citizens were blamed for their lack of compassion, told it was their fault that people in a faraway land were dying from sickness and that they should be compassionate and die, too, if that was the price that they had to pay!
I was told that the present government was unable and unwilling to fashion a method to protect these citizens from diseases, and the citizens’ faces were bleak with despair.
"We have been lied to so many, many times,” they said sadly.
I was astounded! How inept the representatives of this grand and glorious country had become! So like King George III!
How had this come to pass? How, once again, was the autonomy and freedom of good and loyal citizens was being usurped?
Oh, the lunacy!
I turned when I heard shouts coming from the Ship. Room had been made for students from Harvard and it was they who shouted gleefully that they believed America was more dangerous than ISIS!
Words like this from students from a prestigious place of learning? From a university established in 1636, a university that conferred honorary degrees upon Presidents George Washington, John Adams, John Quincy Adams and Thomas Jefferson?
But then someone told me.
They were following their president’s lead! This was a university that he had attended! They were students ignorant of their nation’s history and proud of their ignorance, just like their president!
And then it made sense something I heard that very day, something I thought they said in jest! It is easier, I was told, to get into Harvard than get a job at Wal-Mart under this faltering government!
But, nonetheless I had faith and I told them. "Never fear, friends. There are among you those who have not forgotten what we did in the early days of this nation, patriots who know when the fate of a nation is at stake, and they, like me, will gladly ride as I had for Liberty that long-ago night.”
And I quoted Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem to them so they should not forget what this country stands for.
"For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”