A chill night had settled over the city of Boston, as the sun set over the roof lines of the British colonial city. The moon was a thin sliver, and a damp breeze blowing in from the Atlantic rippled at the furled sails and rattled the rigging of the ships moored in the harbor. Samuel Adams arrived half an hour after sunset to find a large group of patriots already waiting in the looming shadows at the edge of the harbor. Still more men were arriving, most disguised as Mohawk tribesman, their faces painted for anonymity.

Their numbers swelling to over a hundred, they looked intently at the dark shape of the three British cargo ships loaded with the British tea docked a few hundred feet away. Impatience among the patriots grew, as they waited for a signal from the small group of men who were scouting the ships to make certain no one was guarding them. They had been gone almost twenty minutes, and there was no sight nor sound to be heard, save the dark shadows of the masts against the sea and the briny wash of the low tide.

Finally, a flash of light in the darkness, a lantern from the decks of the Dartmouth, then the Beaver, and finally the Eleanor. With a shout, the Sons of Liberty patriots uncovered their own lanterns and rushed the pier. Splitting into three groups, the patriots stormed the ships and dragged hundreds of crates of tea to the decks. By nine o’clock, the shallow tide water of the harbor was choked with tea and emptied crates. Every crate of tea had been split open, their contents destroyed.

The seeds that would sprout into war and blossom into a nation had been sewn.

“Among the natural rights of the Colonists are these: First, a right to life; Secondly, to liberty; Thirdly, to property; together with the right to support and defend them  in the best manner they can.”
-Samuel Adams-

When we hear the phrase the “Law of the Land“, most Americans will think immediately of the United States Constitution. In many ways, they are correct, and the Constitution is, in a very clear sense, the “Law of the Land“. It does, after all, describe in detail the form and scope of the federal government, however there is a higher law of the land. A law that transcends the Constitution, the laws of the nation, and even the laws of kings.

It is this law, Natural Law, that the Founding Fathers appealed to in their long political struggle against the British Crown and its Parliament. It was to this law that they appealed to justify their rebellion against their British oppressors. It was to this law that Thomas Jefferson appealed in 1776 when he drafted the Declaration of Independence, outlining the intolerable transgressions against the Rights of the People by the British Crown. It was in accordance to this Natural Law that they wrote the Constitution of the United States and Bill of Rights.

It is this higher law, the true “Law of the Land“, that we have lost. An America without Natural Law is not America at all and no different than the ages of nations that have come before nor those that will come after. If we truly wish to recapture our national identity, then we must reinstate a culture of Natural Law, because only in the context of Natural Law do our founding documents find their context. Only then do we find our right and noblest selves, a people free to act in accordance to our consciences, with government as a last resort, rather than an ever present nanny.

“No people will tamely surrender their Liberties, nor can any be easily subdued, when knowledge is diffused and virtue is preserved.”
-Samuel Adams-

We patriots who seem unhinged to many, as we who rattle on about archaic ideas like virtue and Liberty are the clear minority. The People are, as the Samuel Adams feared, finally so universally ignorant and so preoccupied with their own comfort, they are willing to sacrifice sacred Liberty for illusory promises of economic and political security. The left has long been promising these in return for kneeling before their golden calf, and finally that is exactly what the philosophically uneducated are doing.

Samuel Adams and his fellow Sons of Liberty knew that their actions would likely provoke harsh reaction from the Crown. They accepted the possible consequences of their actions, committed to them, and carried out their plans in that conviction. Are there such patriots in the United States today? Is it fear that prevents us from doing what is not only right but is clearly necessary? Is it lack of direction or motivation? Are we simply no longer worthy of Liberty? Or are we truly so ignorant that we believe our problems can be solved by elections and complaining?

Ultimately, the reasons do not matter, because the result is the same. The public Liberty is at the mercy of career politicians without any interest preserving a culture of Liberty. Until brave men and women rise up to take a stand against the obvious excesses of our federal government, the path of tyranny becomes increasingly inevitable. If action is taken now, violence may not be necessary, but every day that passes, those who would impose their political power through force if necessary become that more deeply entrenched.

How tolerant have either of the two most prominent presidential candidates been of criticism? How tolerant of political resistance will they be once in office? The door of opportunity to head off what could be the end of America is closing, and when it does, may God have mercy upon us. Those who wish may be as skeptical of us seemingly wild eyed patriots, but please do not put us into a position to be proven right.

 

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Liberty is For The Win!