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BOOK REVIEW
The Dream That Was America – And the Nightmare We’ve Become
A review of Liberty in Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State, by William Norman Grigg
Review by Pastor Keith Graham
Anybody blessed with so much as a vague understanding of the great principles that guided America’s Founding Fathers recognizes that the United States of America, in the Year of Our Lord 2008, is not the nation they meant us to be.
The words, concepts, and beliefs of those brave and principled men are readily available in their private and public writings. The Declaration of Independence and Constitution are open to public inspection. Those documents illustrate that the founders of our republic understood that the Creator – the God of the Bible -- Who endowed men and women with "unalienable rights” that the government was required to protect. In justifying their decision to withdraw their allegiance to the British Crown, the Founders asserted the right of the people, who are sovereign under God’s law, to “alter or abolish” any government that becomes injurious to the rights imbued in the individual by the Creator.
This wasn’t treason, as King George III and his lackeys insisted. It was a needed rebuke to a government that had transgressed the God-ordained limits of its authority, thereby making itself an enemy to Him and to those who sought the freedom to obey His law, and develop the talents with which He had blessed them.
The sobering reality confronting Americans today is that the government that rules us is no longer a free republic. In fact, it is a tyranny far worse than the one against which the Founders arrayed themselves in a bold and desperate war the reclaim their ancient rights. Yes, King George and his bureaucratic minions were tyrants and usurpers. But even they recognized and deferred to some limits on the scope of their powers. This isn’t true of the regime ruling us today, which, as William Norman Grigg demonstrates in his scintillating, providentially timely expose, has severed all ties to the Anglo-Saxon tradition of liberty under law.
With meticulous documentation and breath-taking examples, Liberty in Eclipse portrays an America that has lost the passion that begot the Declaration of Independence, ceased to embrace constitutional law and the principles that once would have made “We The People” impregnable to the tyranny that is daily encroaching upon us from within, growing with the persistence of a virulent malignity. Though our military power is unparalleled, and our material prosperity appears limitless, we have lost the true source of the grandeur that made us singular among the world's nations: The proud claim to be a self-governing people ruled by God’s law and protected by a written Constitution that makes the government our servant, rather than our master.
As Grigg writes, "...our republic is gone; it has mutated within its form into a polity completely different in substance from what was created by James Madison and his colleagues."
Let there be no blame shifting here. While sadistic predators, greedy opportunists, and depraved toadies of the sort indicted by name in Liberty in Eclipse will always crop up in a fallen world, ultimately there is no shadowy "them" at fault for this. We are the “Them" responsible for our own betrayal. The decay that has ruined this once great constitutional republic simply reflects the decadent condition of its populace.
Consider the fact that greater public passion is stirred by the contrived competition of “American Idol” than by the Bush administration’s evisceration of the Bill of Rights, its abandonment of the posse comitatus act (which prevents the military from acting as a domestic police force), and its abolition of the ancient guarantee of habeas corpus – the foundational due process protection that prevents indefinite detention without trial or judicial recourse.
While our population spends itself into hopeless debt and blankly consumes the degenerate output of the entertainment industry, our government has converted our law enforcement system into a centralized, militarized army of occupation, legitimized torture, and quietly begun to build the infrastructure needed to detain troublesome people in any quantity it deems suitable.
This sounds like the stuff of alarmist fantasy. How ardently I wish that it were. But the evidence, much of which is available in this book, is undeniable. It must be read and made available to as many people of goodwill as we can find. If we finally and permanently lose the liberty with which we were blessed, it will be a casualty of our own ignorance and indifference.
It is not enough merely to know the grim facts; we must act to restore what has been taken from us. The apostle James wrote, "For if anyone is a hearer of the word and not a doer, he is like a man observing his natural face in a mirror; for he observes himself, goes away, and immediately forgets what kind of man he was..."
Mr. Grigg has placed before us a mirror, making us behold the horrid caricature of a once-free nation that has become nothing less than a rapidly maturing totalitarian state. But he also asserts that it's not too late to turn things around - even as James (the apostle of Jesus) went on to conclude, "But he who looks into the perfect law of liberty and continues in it, and is not a forgetful hearer but a doer of the work, this one will be blessed in what he does." (James 1:23-25)
"While one can be a passive subject,” Grigg observes, “to be a citizen requires an aptitude and appetite for activism. Subjects are passive, citizens are not."
Please read this book. Then ask yourself, your friends and your neighbors, "What will it be, you who sing about the land of the free and the home of the brave? Shall we observe what we see in Mr. Grigg's mirror and forget it, or shall we be prayerful doers, turning back to God in repentance and faith, and seeking the blessing of Creator Who alone can endow us with true freedom, and restore those inalienable rights that come from Him alone?"
Keith Graham is Pastor of the New Life Presbyterian Church of the Bayshore Community in New Jersey. His “teaching page” can be found at http://www.newlifeprez.org/.
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Grigg, William. Liberty in Eclipse: The War on Terror and the Rise of the Homeland Security State. Cloudcroft, New Mexico: Welch Foundation, 2008; 321 pages, softcover.
Go to www.rightsourceonline.com/Bookorderform.cfm for pricing and order information.
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