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“America has given a great gift to the world..Our gift is twofold: the declaration, as a cardinal example of all just law, of the god-given, unalienable rights possessed by every human being; and the example of our determination to secure those rights and to defend them against every challenge through the generations. our declaration and defense of our rights have made us and kept us free and have sent a ride of hope and inspiration around the globe.”
from President Ronald Reagan’s proclamation on January 14th, 1988, declaring January 17th, National Sanctity of Human Life Day
Champions are those who endeavor upon a worthwhile cause, having experienced momentary defeats, yet unstoppable in their determination to ultimately succeed in their prerogative. In thinking upon what is worthwhile; that that is essential, one may become hard-pressed to not finally consider that what is fundamentally important includes us all, and is never the plight that benefits only one person.
What are these causes and their ideas? In America, the three main ideas that binded our minds and hearts together were the defense of life and liberty, that therein be found that there be justice for all. This defense of life and liberty was the passionate advocacy of John Adams upon the floor of the Continental Congress; it was the erstwhile cause of John Quincy Adams in his unrelenting calling for the abolition of slavery in order to save the union; it was the good fire within Frederick Douglass as he went from slave to become America’s number one champion for this same defense in his written and spoken word.
These citizens did not call for a peace of appeasement at the expense of doing the right thing, but for the peace that is won because of the good fight of the defense to ascertain the rightful freedoms we enjoy. Sometimes these liberties have had to be defended on actual battlefields of war, but most often, they are liberties deftly protected in the altruist stance of those who have sharpened their minds, yet maintained their hearts tender enough to discern what is the breadth and width, length, and volume of human life and natural liberty.
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We Must Fight To Get To The Fight
“Abraham Lincoln recognized that we could not survive as a free land when some men could decide that others were not fit to be free and should therefore be slaves. Likewise, we cannot survive as a free nation when some men decide that others are not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion or infanticide. My administration is dedicated to the preservation of America as a free land, and there is no cause more important for preserving that freedom than affirming the transcendent right to life of all human beings, the right without which no other rights have any meaning.”
Ronald Reagan, Abortion and the Conscience of the Nation (essay)
In taking stock as to the time and energy required to prepare and carry out this smart defense, we may consider the sacrifices that some of these champion individuals have done for the cause of making a more perfect American union based on the right ideas. John Adams faced great stretches of time away from his family as he maintained a sentinel-like observance and mission to keep the ideas that America was to be about the just defense of human life and natural liberty. John Quincy Adams was hated by a government almost completely governed by those promoting the business of slavery. Frederick Douglass was thrown off trains, beaten with sticks, insulted, and persecuted with attempts to bring him back into the chains of slavery. Even so, he would go forth from his home to speak in as many towns and cities that would listen to his call for a more perfect American union. He also was away from his family for great lengths of time as he endeavored in the cause to bring the right narrative of what these United States of America ought to stand for.
These men, along with Thurgood Marshall, Martin Luther King, and Ronald Reagan all experienced death threats and/ or were shot at, or killed because of their championing this specific defense. But onward they endeavored with unrelenting resolve to bring about this good peace. They were, in fact, wise men, putting aside any desire to attain individual glory, instead placing their minds and hearts; their physical presence, upon that line of battle for something greater than themselves, something more worthwhile than a peaceful life if it meant that there could not be true peace upon the land.
Simply put, they cared about you and me. They cared about what America is to be about, and they went forth into toil, past the hardship of sacrifice, and into that promised land found in our hearts to set the record straight. They entered into this peace completely alive in the very action of unrelenting determination. They remained in this peace of mind and heart because they were completely alive in the continuity of their active effort to what was most fundamentally important…
….the defense of you and me!
“…the wisdom that is from above is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be intreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy. And the fruit of righteousness is sown in peace of them that make peace.”
James 3:17-18
Thanks be to God and these selfless champions of life and liberty, who understood how to attain justice for all. May it be that our communities raise up generations of Americans who seek not to impose their vision of a better life upon others, but who simply defend the sanctity of human life and our natural liberty, allowing each of us to choose for ourselves how we live our life.
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