“America as the Last Man Standing?”

Richard Fernandez at Belmont Club reminds us of the precarious situation in which the "West" finds itself. The islamization of Europe is proceeding apace. And what is frightening is that just as America is needed as a bulwark of Western civilization, we may find ourselves in the hands of a party that is determined to destroy American influence in the world. A party that is literally ashamed of American and is determined to avoid winning.

Many might have taken prosperity and jobs for granted just two or three months ago. Work was just a daily hassle to some who may count themselves lucky to have it in the near future. In one respect Wilder’s speech is evergreen, speaking as it does to the universal experience of experiencing the loss of things we’ve long taken for granted. The aging understand: the teeth, eyesight and hair. But what of freedom? Wilders writes:

My generation never had to fight for this freedom, it was offered to us on a silver platter, by people who fought for it with their lives. All throughout Europe American cemeteries remind us of the young boys who never made it home, and whose memory we cherish. My generation does not own this freedom; we are merely its custodians. We can only hand over this hard won liberty to Europe’s children in the same state in which it was offered to us. We cannot strike a deal with mullahs and imams. Future generations would never forgive us. We cannot squander our liberties. We simply do not have the right to do so.

Yet in this I think, Wilders is wrong. Generations can bequeath things to each other. Abstract ideas can be transmitted through print, the visual arts and electronic storage. Even the consequences of freedom are transmittable through our institutions. But freedom itself can never be bequeathed because it always involves an exercise of will by the living man. It cannot be passively consumed. It is new to each of us, though it was there from the foundations of the world. Whether you’re hunched behind the ramp on the first landing craft to hit Omaha Beach; or deciding with your wife to have a child with Down’s Syndrome, or standing with a hood over your head awaiting a beheading deciding whether to passively await your end and eke out a few more seconds of life or snatch the cover off your head to yell “I’ll show you how an Italian dies!”, that moment was made for you and you alone. Europe and America will meet such fates as they choose. However long they’ve lived in liberty; however ancient their constitutional guarantees, they can choose unfreedom in a moment. One day they may decide they have a right to choose dependency; to choose slavery.