We are all created equal, but once you consent to be governed, you are bound by the chains of bondage.
Samuel Adams is often called the father of the American Revolution. He was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, cousin of President John Adams, and an activist at the Boston Tea Party:
“If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen.”
— Samuel Adams’ American Independence speech at the steps of the Philadelphia State House, the meeting place for the Constitutional Convention. August 1, 1776
Patrick Henry used the term slavery to refer to living under an oppressive government. On March 28, 1775 he gave his famous we must fight speech when he urged others to choose liberty over the safety of living as a slave under their government:
“Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased by the price of chains and slavery?… I know not what course others may take, but as for me give me liberty or give me death.”
In 1775 there was no income tax. They rebelled against their government when the legitimate tax on tea rose to 17%. Don’t claim to live in a free country if you have never seen freedom.
John Dickinson, November 1765:
“If you comply with the [Stamp] Act … you rivet perpetual Chains upon your unhappy Country.”
Abraham Lincoln, September 11, 1858:
“Familiarize yourself with the chains of bondage and prepare your own limbs to wear them. Accustomed to trampling on the rights of others you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subjects of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you.”
Sam Houston: https://notfooledbygovernment.com/sam-houston-tyrants/
“When tyrants ask you to yield one jot of your liberty, and you consent thereto, it is the first link forged in the chain that will eventually hold you in bondage.”
California Governor Ronald Reagan, first inaugural address:
“Freedom is a fragile thing and never more than one generation away from extinction… It is not ours by inheritance. It must be fought for and defended constantly by each generation, for it comes only once to a people. Those who have known freedom and then lost it, have never regained it.”
Patrick Henry, June 5, 1788 quoted in Elliot’s Debates Vol 3, page 45:
“Guard with jealous attention the public liberty. Suspect everyone who approaches that jewel. Unfortunately, nothing will preserve it but downright force. Whenever you give up that force, you are inevitably ruined.”
John Philpot Curran, July 10, 1790:
“The condition upon which God hath given liberty to man is eternal vigilance; which condition if he breaks, servitude is at once the consequence of his crime.”
Edmund Burke, Thoughts on the Cause of the Present Discontents (1770):
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”
Thomas Jefferson on November 13, 1787, wrote the following to future Congressman William S. Smith:
“… God forbid we should ever be twenty years without such a rebellion… And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time, that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms… What signify a few lives lost in a century or two? The tree of liberty must be [refertilized] from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”
Those were not the words of an angry young radical fighting in the Revolutionary War. This was the former Governor of Virginia, and Ambassador to France, the man who proposed the Bill of Rights.
Abraham Lincoln:
“Our safety, our liberty, depends upon preserving the Constitution of the United States as our fathers made it inviolate. The people of the United States are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution, but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
George Washington April 5, 1765 wrote on the topic of liberty:
“That no man should scruple, or hesitate a moment to use arms in defense of so valuable a blessing, on which all the good and evil of life depends, is clearly my opinion…”
“in questions of power then, let no more be heard of confidence in man, but bind him down from mischief by the chains of the constitution.”
— Thomas Jefferson, letter to James Madison, 17 November 1798
“Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty.”
— Thomas Jefferson, April 24, 1796, Letter to Phillip Mazzei
Just like Adam and Eve, avoiding deception is a duty to God. God will not answer your prayers (God honored your free-will, you got what you wanted, stop complaining).
“And you will cry out in that day because of your king whom you have chosen for yourselves, and the LORD will not hear you in that day.”
— First Samuel 8:18