You’ve probably been taught that the Founding Fathers were just racist, fat, rich White men who were only looking after their own best interests. But, guess what? That’s bullđź’©!
This is an excerpt from “Sacrifice For Liberty,” which you can watch in full, for FREE, here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/rpmwrtzoenrlu7u0dsszp/June-20-2022-sacrifice-for-liberty.mp4?rlkey=nvuwapub63dy1yn7oqpyxwna7&st=90rabdzu&dl=0
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TRANSCRIPT
There’s a couple of different things—mindsets—that you hear a lot, excusing either themselves or others for doing something that is really not appropriate, not good. It’s unprincipled. And, you know, you’ll see officer excuses, either for themselves or for others, about officers—“they’re just following orders.”
And this was actually, you know, it’s—I don’t know, ironic might be the wrong word—but I find it interesting when I hear people use this for excusing police and other government officials for doing something wrong. The excuse that they were given was that they were just following orders, when that was the exact excuse that was given during the Nuremberg trials for the Nazi soldiers. And it was said that that’s not an acceptable excuse to do something wrong.
And so that’s something that I still hear on a regular basis for why people do things that are wrong. We heard this at our meeting that we reported on a few weeks ago, where the cop was talking about himself—or he was talking about a different officer—where they had to take the vaccine or they had to enforce something they knew was wrong to protect their job, so that they could provide for their family.
Or the other ones that I’ve heard before are that, you know, “If I didn’t do that thing, it didn’t matter because someone else would do it anyway.” So why—you know—it wouldn’t make a difference anyway. “Why put my neck out there? Why bother if it’s not going to make a difference anyways?”
And so this is kind of the mindset that I find to be very cowardly and helps to perpetuate the situation that we’re in. And we need to—if there’s any part of us that has this mindset—you know, I’m hoping that, you know, of course, if we’re here, that the majority of our mindset is outside of this. But if there’s any of that, you know, hidden away somewhere, I’m hoping to purge any of that that we might have left in our minds, because it’s wrong. And it helps to make things worse. And we need to really show ourselves as being principled and standing for what’s right no matter what.
Founding fathers—
Can I make one brief comment there?
Yeah, go ahead.
I was just going to say, it’s so interesting because I work with other professionals, right? So if you have, say, an electrician come to your home—like, I am not your boss. You are at my home. You will wire it this way, right? And what does the electrician say? “You’re an idiot. I can’t do it that way. And I won’t do it that way. Goodbye.” No.
And literally any other profession—you know, whether it’s a mechanic, electrician, you name it—other than government-run institutions, who will just flat deny anything—someone else’s orders on top of their own. And it doesn’t matter. Right?
People will come that I’ve worked with, and you’ll get a bid for one thing. The person will show up to actually do it. They’ll look at it and say, “Well, I don’t care what my supervisor said or what the guy giving you the bid said. That does not work.”
And so it’s strange to me that there is that, you know, that disconnect. That with government, that is absolutely 100% good. And in fact, it’s a badge of honor to just go along with what someone else is telling you to do. But, you know, then with every other profession we interact with, they’d never let that happen.
Yeah.
Even at Chick-fil-A—you go there, you forget your wallet—what do the people say? “Oh hey, just pay us next time.” It’s just—every other profession other than government allows individuals to use their moral free agency and their professional training to make decisions.
So anyway, I just thought that was interesting as I’ve compared and contrasted this. And I don’t know what the cognitive dissonance or the disconnect is in all of us, you know—and especially those officers perpetrating this, you know—and, you know, like Dan McKay when he, you know, had the guy gagged and thrown out of the Utah Capitol for wearing a “We the People” shirt. “Oh, this is just going along with what the other guys told me to do.”
But I think you make a good point too, Nate, that it’s only acceptable in certain criteria. We only let certain professions get away with that. You mentioned electricians, right? I mean, there’s just different things out there that—they’re just going to not do it because it’s wrong. And the fact that other people—
All of a sudden you’re in government, and you don’t have to follow your conscience anymore. It’s bizarre.
I appreciate you chiming in. The Founding Fathers at the end of the Declaration of Independence—they stated that:
“We mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.”
So they were putting their sacred honor—their reputations—on the line. Their fortunes—they were willing to put their resources on the line to get the job done. They were willing to put their lives on the line.
So was this just a platitude? Was this just a, you know, a figure of speech? Or did they actually implement this? Did they show in their daily lives after they signed the Declaration of Independence that that’s what they would actually do?
And I say that yes—they actually proved that they did pledge their lives—their actual lives, their actual fortunes, and their actual honor to get the job done.
So I just want to kind of go over some of the examples of that. There were five of the signers that were captured by the British during the war, and they were brutally tortured. So they were willing to be tortured for the cause.
Nine of them fought in the war, and they died from their wounds or from hardships because of it.
Four of them had their sons captured or even killed. So not only—you know, sometimes we’re like, “Yeah, okay, I’m willing to sacrifice for myself, but you involve my kids in this thing…” That’s a whole other story. You know, I’m not—you know…
These guys were willing to put their own children on the line for the cause. Not in a cowardly way, where they’re like pushing their kids in the forefront so they didn’t have to suffer—but no, there was this actual sacrifice. And I think that that’s—you know, sometimes children and families are used as a leverage against people to do the wrong things, to violate their conscience. But these men said, “No, I’m willing to do that.”
Yeah.
Twelve or more had their homes destroyed due to their efforts—their farms, their lands—destroyed because of their involvement in the Declaration of Independence.
All of them gave up hundreds of thousands of what would be dollars today—it wasn’t the money they used back then—but what would be hundreds of thousands of dollars to the cause. They were giving up their riches to be able to support what was needed, to provide the support that was needed in the field to get the job done.
And they had their businesses destroyed. There were shipping companies—they were owners of shipping companies—that had their ships confiscated and destroyed and their businesses.
They didn’t say, “Oh, you know, if I stand up for this, it might hurt my business.” They were willing to sacrifice their very livelihood. So not just giving up their money—meaning “Here is some money, get this done”—but they sacrificed their ability to provide for their families to make sure that the cause was supported.
And so we can see that these are people that put their money where their mouth is, so to say. That there was nothing—there was no part of their life—that they weren’t willing to put on the line. There was no excuse of, “Oh, I’ve got to support my family,” or “I don’t want to lose my job,” or “I don’t…” You know—whatever it was. “Oh, yes, I’m willing to sacrifice my life, but not my kids.” There was no part of their life that they weren’t willing to put on the line to consecrate to the cause of liberty.
Right.
And this isn’t just the Founding Fathers. But we go throughout time—those that understand these principles. These are the principles I’m going to go over and show—how what we’re talking about right here and what we do at Tree of Liberty is the cause of Christ.
And so I want to show what the early Christian leaders—what did they do? What did they sacrifice for the cause?
You had Zacharias, who was the father of John the Baptist. He was killed in the temple for not disclosing his son’s hiding place. John the Baptist—he was in hiding, and they wanted to know where he was, and Zacharias didn’t tell them. And so they killed him for it.
You had the apostle Paul—he was beheaded. Peter was hung upside down. Andrew himself was crucified. Thomas was killed by the spears of four Roman soldiers. Philip was tortured to death. James was stoned and clubbed to death.
And then later on—even so, it wasn’t just the Christians right around the time of Christ—but even a couple of hundred years after the time of Christ, you had St. Lawrence, who was grilled to death, because Christianity was deemed by the Roman government “the hatred of the human race.” So it wasn’t just like, “Oh, it was your religion.” It was—Christianity was deemed just a threat to humanity in general.
And so they grilled him—they barbecued him to death—because of that. And he was willing to put his life and be tortured in that way to support the cause of Christ.
