In writer George R.R. Martin's sprawling fantasy novels that were developed into HBO's successful series Game of Thrones, the people from one of the warring kingdoms commonly remind outsiders, "The North remembers."  What they mean with those three words is that any indignities and injustices endured in the past remain vivid motivators today.  Betrayals have not been forgotten, nor have the North's heroes been lost to time.  Acts of courage and sacrifice from distant eras still resonate through the ages.  The Northerners are authentic patriots.

People who hail from regions of the world with similar collective memories immediately understand Martin's fictitious North as a place where political corruption and scheming are abhorred, and honor, virtue, and strength are welcome.  It is, in other words, a home for the "good guys."

I come from an area that remembers.  There are memorials dedicated to the fallen heroes of past wars.  The streets are named after consequential figures from American history.  American flags are flown prominently.  There is a minuteman mentality that connects the community in times of crisis.  Here, collective memory is powerful.  It soaks the mind in resolve.  It is the next-most effective kind of body armor, after the merciful protection of Almighty God.  If all this sounds familiar, perhaps you come from an area that remembers, too.

As such, when I watch the despots from Davos and D.C. busily engaged in transforming the world into some kind of technocratic dystopia where a few international "elite" monitor and manipulate everyone else, I cannot help but feel that they have sorely underestimated our memories.  

There are some souls who will simply never submit to tyranny.  There are rebellious spirits who would rather spit up blood than obey.  People with these qualities do not belong to any one genetic line.  They cannot be ruthlessly stamped out and forgotten.  They sprout up in unexpected places and from unusual family trees.  Throughout history, whenever authoritarians believed they could use coercion, imprisonment, and murder to rid themselves of dissent, new generations of rebels continued to spring to life.  And every time those new rebels rose, they remembered both the suffering and the courage of the past.

It is why I am filled with both dread and hope today — because no matter the difficulties that lie ahead, there will always be those who remember.

Conversely, we could boil down all of the various Machiavellian plans being unfurled today by Western governments seeking our surrender into a single order: forget.  Forget your history and your ancestors' sacrifices.  Forget your religious convictions.  Forget your natural rights and freedoms.  Forget the importance of personal liberty, property, and privacy.  Forget the sanctified bonds of marriage.  Forget the unbreakable bonds of families.  Forget the sacred duties of parents.  

Forget that forced experimental medical treatments are crimes against humanity.  Forget that climate cultists were warning about global cooling just years before warning about global warming.  Forget that one-world-government types who wish to control all farming methods and hydrocarbon energies have depended on climate models that have been consistently wrong.  Forget that race relations had drastically improved during the last century before the callous race-hustlers re-emerged with new intensity to divide human beings again.  

Forget that paper money backed by gold once had value.  Forget that warrantless government surveillance is a sign of tyranny.  Forget that J6 election protesters have been persecuted as "insurrectionists" while Antifa and Black Lives Matter domestic terrorists have been protected from prosecution.  Forget the lies told to justify earlier wars so that new lies can be told to justify the next.  Forget that a government's legitimacy comes from the people's consent.  Forget that freedom of conscience outweighs orders to comply.  Forget that censorship is a weapon of oppressors.  Forget that free speech is the hallmark of liberty.  Forget that a person's life and labor do not belong to the State.  Forget that art, culture, imagination, and innovation all give civilizations enduring strength.

The Marxist globalists want people to relinquish everything that humanity has held dear and surrender to an endless, technologically induced, joyless sleep.  They want robots to govern with artificial intelligence and human beings to obey as automatons.  They want to replace God with a "politically correct" digital imposter.  They would rather push humanity toward extinction than permit farmers to grow food and feed a hungry world.  They would rather centralize all power into the hands of a few than admit that decentralized power has been the consistent component for both human invention and peace.  They would rather sacrifice the people to "save the planet" than save the people who might one day live on many planets.  In essence, new-world-order globalists see people as "things" that should be dragged back into a feudal past when lords were masters over slaves.

For people who remember, this is not the way.

America's Independence Day is a particular challenge for those who wish us to forget.  It is not wise for would-be masters to remind their would-be slaves about the importance of liberty.  It is not helpful for control agents to celebrate a generation of Americans who refused to be controlled.  It is downright dangerous for a system that seeks our slumber to stir new rebels with noble ideas worthy of personal sacrifice.  Independence Day is a call to remember all the things that the Deep State needs us to forget.

This is, no doubt, why politicians and officials work so hard to undermine American history.  They permit Antifa to topple statues of Washington, Adams, Jefferson, and Madison and throw anything commemorating American courage into storage.  They attempt to delete the Declaration of Independence from our memories.  They seek to replace America's 1776 birth in liberty with a 1619 grievance project dedicated to slavery.  They wish us to forget that heavily outmatched militias of American colonials successfully fought for freedom against an empire supposedly too powerful to beat.

If the permanent Deep State had its way, Americans would be brainwashed into believing that the United States is nothing more than a historical accident founded on genocide, slavery, and white supremacy.  If America's foundations can be transformed into something evil, then Americans can be shamed into forgetting that the fight for independence was a fight against government tyranny.  If the importance of confronting and overcoming tyranny is forgotten, then new tyrannies can thrive.  

For the "ruling class" that now permanently occupies D.C., the ideal American would have no idea why 1776 is important to world history, no appreciation for the cause of liberty, and no recollection of the American heroes who fill our past.  America's founding would be falsely understood as a nonsensical revolution of slaveholders and conquerors who sought to overthrow an empire only to advance imperialism.  America's story would be fraudulently told as one of endless oppression devoid of meaning.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.  This is a land populated with the descendants of those who risked everything — time and again — to be free.  Our ancestors crossed oceans to escape religious persecution.  They endured periods of famine and disease to build societies beyond the reach of European lords.  They trekked out into the wilderness of an unknown world to flee the Old World's economic chains.  They preached self-reliance and charity.  They embraced hard work, faith, and adventure.  They built communities committed to self-reflection and self-government.  They rejected entrenched aristocracies and empowered common men.  They lit a spark for liberty that has never completely dimmed.  The real story of America is one in which tyranny is repudiated and unjust governments are unwelcome.

Those who remember and remind others should never be afraid.  This is the home of the free because of the brave.

Every Independence Day, I remember Lloyd Marcus and his lasting impact on so many throughout the country.

Image: Pexels via Pixabay, Pixabay License.