Slavery begins with a posture of mind that, like a fine mist, imperceptibly washes over the land -- permeating and tainting what it touches.  One would be foolish to expect that it arrives in violence and with manacles, for these days, servitude is birthed from the misuse of our freedom.  The choices we make forge the links of what is at first a manageable but eventually a ponderous chain: intoxication over sobriety, indolence over diligence, entitlement over gratitude, novelty over tradition, and indecision over tenacity.

By enthroning the pursuit of pleasures and avoiding the pains of rigor and risk, a citizenry paves the way for its dissolution into softened subjects of the regime.  Having grown complacent while fawning sheep-like over the material largesse of centralized power, the natural inclination towards self-preservation and sufficiency is effectively bartered away for unmerited gifts.  Distracted by the philanthropic regime, the vigilance and jealousy over a society's inalienable prerogatives and rights diminish unheeded as citizens increasingly become wards and property of the paternal state.

The greatest tragedy that can befall a free and proud people is to learn to fear and therein despise that freedom.  The willingness to barter a national birthright for a share of spoils that can only diminish over time heralds that final prerequisite for servitude.

In the indulgent West, the character of bondage has become manifest in the "degenerate self-loathing of the open outstretched palm."  A people who dilutes its virtue in a sea of cultural forgetfulness loses its identity and, in its state of aggrieved decay, pillages the legacies of its children just as it has brazenly devoured the inheritance of its fathers.  These people, having drunk deeply from the Waters of Lethe, will attend with itching ears to the smooth and assured tones of tyrants.

A people that has forgotten the historical calamity of its chains, that is morally reduced to coveting the careless crumbs of a beguiled life over the Promethean first principles of liberty, forbearance, and gratitude, has its steps firmly set on the pilgrimage back to Egypt.  It is a terrible thing to watch the slow-motion destruction of a great race that has accomplished so much and has stood as a beacon of light for the inhabitants of the Earth.  Having spilled a sea of blood to insure that faces we did not know could escape the whip of despotism, how ironic that we have not the foresight and courage to arrest our own looming fall.