Freedom - that subject so near and dear to many a biker... Since the early days of the first “bikers”, who were the veterans returning to the US after WWII (those guys who coined the idea and style of the chopper, which you can read about here), veterans have made up a large proportion of the motorcycling community.
My own family has seen action in every major military engagement the US has been in, starting before there was a US - the French & Indian War (and George Washington still owes my family for shoeing his horses while at Valley Forge...however, we gave the IOU to a museum about a century ago. I sometimes wonder if we shouldn’t try to collect on it somehow. The interest must be insane.).
Anyway, I came across this eerie quote from James Madison, while reading Dave Dragon’s biker blog, Ride It Like You Stole It. My family has spilled blood all over the world for the past 200+ years to help build this country (I currently have 2 cousins serving in Iraq too). It’s scary to think about how easily everything we fought for can be lost....
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"If tyranny and oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
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Of all the enemies to public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other.
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War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.
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The loss of liberty at home is to be charged to the provisions against danger, real or imagined, from abroad.”
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-- James Madison, 4th President of the United States 1809–1817
It doesn’t take a genius to see how close we currently are to throwing away what we have fought so long to achieve... Warrantless searches, domestic spying, a government basically in the pockets of big business (look at what’s going on in Alaska!), and on and on.
I’ve been to countries that have genuinely repressive and madly corrupt governments. It’s damn strange being there, and more than a little scary.
I’d never loved home so much as when I’d returned.