The Libertarian Heathen

Reflecting on the sacrifices made for liberty and how we should respect it on Memorial Day

---

By: Ryan Ramsey

I spent Sunday riding motorcycles through the natural beauty of NE Florida, ending the trip in St. Augustine.

It is the oldest city on the continent still inhabited, established in 1535. One of my ancestors was held there as a prisoner of war during the revolution.

My brothers and I strolled the ancient streets, feasted and drank in the ancient buildings. I saw a woman alone in her car with a mask on driving an electric car up a cobblestone street almost 500 years old and shook my head.

A bar that served no food had live music and served drinks. Another refused us service unless we ordered food, out of blind obedience to the tyrants.

I had a few moments of reflection around a fire pit by the beach as I enjoyed a fine cigar and went to bed.

My ride home was a little over an hour, down winding two lane roads draped with spanish moss, across the St. Johns river, and past Camp Blanding, an Army training center. The rain was coming from the south and my brother and I wanted to beat it back, it was right at the point where droplets were coming out of the humid air, but it was not actually raining.

I thought about the place I just left, and all the flags that flew over it as centuries of struggle ebbed and flowed.

I thought about another ancestor of mine who pledged his life by signing the Declaration of Arbroath in Scotland. Blood covered the highlands as they buried axe and claymore into tyrants to make the statement they had no king but God.

I thought about my ancestor in a disease ridden cell in the same town I just left, and the men crawling through mud and the same sort of swampy air as they bled in New Orleans in the war of 1812.

I imagined the men at the Alamo, fighting to the last man in acts of bravery that echo through the ages.

I thought about the brave sons of Dixie, fighting the mercenary armies of federal tyranny until they were barefoot from eating their shoe leather to avoid starvation, and keep fighting.

I thought of my dad facing Communist hordes on the DMZ in Vietnam during the Tet Offensive.

I thought about being placed on the terror watchlist and being shot, bludgeoned, and cut… standing up for what I believed in, and protecting those I care about.

I thought of my friends with businesses who defied the unconstitutional shutdown orders and forced the petty local tyrants to back down.

We pulled in to refuel, a little wet. Thick droplets of water seeming to materialize out of the air.

I turned to my brother from another mother, and I said:

“You know what this is? This is the tears of our honored dead, those who gave all so that we could be free. They are sobbing from the other side, at what they gave for a nation so cowardly they are scared to unlock a dead bolt and serve their customers a cocktail or give them a haircut.”

There are no happy Memorial Days.

Look into the mirror today my fellow Americans. Look into your own eyes and ask yourself:

Are you worthy? Do you deserve all their blood and the pain of their wives and children?

If you would let some bureaucrat or oathbreaking politician intimidate you into impoverishing yourself and your employees, or scare you into making your home a prison for yourself, those tears falling from the sky are for you.