George Washington Was Right: The Ideas of Liberty Spread Very Rapidly

 By Chris Rossini

Ideas rule the world. Nothing is more important than what happens between the ears.

George Washington once wrote something very revealing to James Madison about the ideas of Liberty. He said that "Liberty, when it begins to take root, is a plant of rapid growth."

This makes perfect sense. Liberty is a foundational part of our human nature. We're all born as free thinking and choosing individuals, and are meant to stay that way.

Part of freedom though, is the option to act as a tyrant.

Tyranny is the negation of Liberty. It's the attempt to force people to act against their own conscious choices. It's the aggression against another person's life and property.

Tyranny, since it is against the nature of humanity, takes a very long time to take root. Tyranny is very expensive and time consuming. It requires ever more and higher doses of propaganda and brainwashing. 

Liberty requires none of this.

Liberty just is.

Liberty is cheap, superabundant and always present. It doesn't need any propaganda whatsoever. Liberty means people think what they want to think, and act however they want to act. There's just one simple limitation -- You can't be a tyrant. You can't use aggressive force against another person or their property.

Liberty means hands off other people and their stuff.

A lot of people have a problem with this. They want to bully other people around and they want to take their stuff. They want to be tyrants.

Liberty, on the other hand, means tolerance. You may not like what other people think or how other people act. But as long as they aren't using aggressive force against your person or property, it's none of your business. Live and let live.

So why do the ideas of Liberty spread so quickly, but only when the time is right?

It is precisely because it is our nature to live free.

Liberty is not a hard sell.

Tyranny is the hard sell, and it requires so much expense and so many resources, that it eventually runs out of options and collapses onto itself.

Think of all the "climate change" propaganda that is out there, being pumped around the clock. Think of all the militarism and war propaganda that deluge the American people every single day of their lives.

When others seek to control and take your property, they have to hammer away at you, day-after-day and year-after-year. They have to try to convince you, from every angle, that you need their tyranny and can't live without it.

They have to do this because it is against your nature to believe them.

They need to grind you down. This grinding down takes a long, long time.

You see "climate change" propagandists complain all the time. Despite all the over-the-top fear that they try to generate, people still aren't buying it.

Warmongers complain too. It takes them so long to convince you that the next country that they want to invade is a boogeyman.

Tyranny is expensive and time-consuming.

And it's all a waste.

And so, we look back at history and see very long and drawn out episodes of tyranny, that are always followed by short (and extremely powerful) surges of Liberty. 

When Liberty takes root, it's very "rapid" as Washington pointed out, and it shakes the Earth. Renaissances and widespread belief in Liberty don't come around very often, but when they do....Wow!

We don't get to decide when we each show up in this story of Liberty and tyranny.

If we did, we'd all surely choose to show up when Liberty is abundantly valued. But we don't get that choice. We show up when we show up...and then we have to deal with it.

The odds of showing up when the ideas of Liberty are widely accepted and honored are extremely slim. So it should be no surprise to you that, today, those who advocate Liberty are in the minority.

It's not the first time that this is the case, and it surely won't be the last.

But another man that George Washington knew, had something to say about that. His name was Samuel Adams, and he said: "It does not take a majority to prevail...but rather an irate, tireless minority, keen on setting brushfires of freedom in the minds of men.'

Liberty is foundational to our nature.

It's stupid to fight nature.

​It's a much better idea to embrace it.

Let's go set some "brushfires of freedom in the minds of men."