The year 1865 marked the end of slavery.  It was an inflection point in history.  Until 1800, institutional slavery had always been the norm, unquestioned for thousands of years.  Male and female, free and slave, these were almost universally accepted as being the major bifurcations of people.  After the Civil War, tyrants often interrupted the decline of slavery, but 1865 marked the inflection point, the inevitability of its demise.

Today, we are approaching another inflection point of historic proportions.  It will be the culmination of the ages-long struggle between top-down rule of the masses and true freedom:  the self-government of the ordinary man and woman.  That struggle is being waged even as you read this, and the outcome will either free us or enslave us more deeply than it crushed the rebel slave Spartacus.

It can be validly argued that the present trend toward self-rule was already well underway in 1776, but it never culminated, as would slavery almost ninety years later.  Indeed, after 1865, the idea of self-rule began, in practice, to be reversed, as the powers of the several states gave way to the ever-increasing authority of the victorious central government in Washington, D.C.  That authority is now poised, and this is no exaggeration, at the brink of totalitarian control.  

All of this helps to explain the present: the impending climax of that historic struggle is nigh upon us.  The grand experiment in self-government is facing its greatest challenge since (metaphorically speaking) the Battle of Bunker Hill.  As George Washington put it, "the time is near at hand which must determine whether Americans are to be free men or slaves."

Our Founders recognized this struggle, and resolved it — on paper, but their solution soon began to unravel during a series of crises, including the issue of slavery.  Even so, after 1865, the freedom movement continued, albeit more underground than we would like, and the flame has not died, not yet.  Whether it will be extinguished depends on the actions of people now living.  

The power of the central government has never before been as potent, nor with as many secrets, as now it is.  Yet even so, while it is on the verge of permanently locking itself into place, it faces one final hurdle before it can do so.  That hurdle is you, the free American.  

The dark state has enjoyed victory after victory, undermining every obstacle in its path, including such staples as the rule of law, fair and honest elections, and even the limitations imposed on government, but not on you, by the Tenth Amendment ("The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.").  

With unprecedented governmental power, abused with increasingly raw force, and augmented with impenetrable secrecy, there are only a few remaining tools available to those of us who value freedom.  They must be used immediately.  

One of those tools resides in the state legislatures, which have moved significantly to close the gaps that were penetrated in 2020 to remove from power President Trump.  Gaps remain, however, as lawless "law enforcement" agencies can still physically impede poll watchers, as they did in 2020.  

Another tool is that voters, especially parents gaining positions on school boards, are becoming less "woke" and more awake about what is being done to their children behind closed classroom doors.  

Major corporations are discovering that kowtowing to leftist mobs has a downside on their bottom line.  They have begun to resist.  

In addition to the growing grassroots threat to those in authority, there are also the renegade pro-freedom politicians, most notably of course Donald Trump, but also state governors such as Ron Desantis (Fla.) and Kristi Noem (S.D.) among others, who never locked down their states, thereby exposing the blunder of doing so.  Witness New York and California.  

Finally, the leftist "news" entities have lost so much credibility among the general public that many people who may have voted Democrat in 2020 are now recognizing that they were swindled, and continue to be swindled, by leftists who absurdly tell them that their food prices are not too high.

So, yes, we do have hope.  As George Washington said, "let us ... rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being."  

We can indeed remove from power the would-be tyrants who have for so long oppressed those whom they pretend to champion.  We can do that with our ballots and with our faith in God.

Image via Max Pixel.