Clark Rayder: The New American Crisis

The unyielding specter of tyranny has plagued mankind forever. The celestial conflict of binding its corruption has been the eternal fight of the human race. What is our history if not a timeless struggle of rising evil answered by the humbled righteous few?

Two Hundred and fifty years ago, this very idea reached its apex incarnation as the British Empire had all but conquered the world. Its colossal reach of power had gripped the shores of every continent and was threatening to claim everything if not for the small band of remarkable men gathered in Independence Hall on the morning of July 4, 1776.

In what can be regarded as history’s greatest defiance of authoritarianism, the founders of America risked everything to create a nation whose very philosophy would be an immortal answer to the plight of tyranny.

However, if America was truly the solution, then why are we facing the same crisis as our founders of the 1700s? Our rights, our liberties, and our freedoms are perhaps under even greater threat now than it was in the years of the revolution. For the mechanisms of control and dominance have evolved in malice. Red coat sentries on the streets of Boston have become nationwide surveillance systems that peer with an assumption of guilt into our personal privacy. Truthful voices in the taverns and the churches are not simply told to be quiet, they are forever deleted and stripped of their agency with the power of digital authoritarianism. Speak out against the ruling narrative, and your very existence will be relegated to the shapeless prison of modern censorship.

So why are we here? My belief is that the many avatars of tyranny were so restrained by the American philosophy that the only path to reclaim their throne was by waging a war not on America directly, but on its history. After all, a kinetic war against an armed population is impossible. If the generations that would inherit America knew nothing of its purpose or identity, then how easy it would be to mislead its citizens back into the grasp of subservience to the crooked rulers that America was created to defy.

So as statues of Thomas Jefferson are pulled to the ground as though this hero of freedom is worthy of association with dictators like Sadaam Hussein, it seems we are approaching the culmination of this centuries-long scheme. The American legacy has suffered such a relentless assault of defamation that only perverted slivers of its veracity remain within our culture. Its pulse in the education system (where it perhaps matters most) is kept on life support as other resources are diverted to warped priorities such as idolizing the practitioners of communism. To the average college professor of liberal arts, the courage of Paul Revere should be swapped for the genocidal ideations of figures like Chairman Mao.

In the end, if we can’t restore or reclaim our history as a nation, then we will never be able to yield it as the weapon that’s needed to shred the vicious ideologies of contemporary totalitarianism.

Clark Rayder is a film director, photographer turned author. Having spent many years navigating the film and entertainment industries, he refocused his creative talents to create stories that speak to the erosion of freedom and liberty in society. His debut book, THE LIBERTY WARS, is available at Amazon.