In this celebratory year that recognizes 250 years since the signing of our decision to be independent of His Majesty’s Crown, I look at the state of our nation. The day of Jan 6, 2021 saw irate right-wing militias attack what they perceived as an assault on freedom. Today, those same people now act and speak like a private army for a tyrannical leadership. And I would be amiss if I didn’t call out the left-wing groups that have acted in violence during the Trump regimes as the same type of blind allegiance. And the lefts sided administrations have gone against personal Liberty during its various times in office, as much as the right has. But this isn’t about national leadership. It’s about blind allegiance.

A look at a few points of our history. Thomas Gaddis (eventually a full Colonel in the Virginia militia) built Fort Liberty in Monongalia County. He later commanded Prickett’s Fort, Fort Scott, Fort Stradler, Fort Jackson, and Fort Lindley. He was by all definitions a Patriot to the cause of Liberty.

After the war he owned a tavern and distillery. Then the new American government used a tactic for finances that cause one of the main issues with the Crown. Taxes. The new government levied taxes on alcohol (the whiskey tax). Colonel Gaddis, and others, would have none of it and leading a group known as the ‘Whiskey Boys’ became involved with a conflict known as the Whiskey Rebellion. After Washington sent troops and the violence subsided, the tax was repealed by Thomas Jefferson in 1800.

I bring this up for a couple reasons. The first is his positions. First as a man who saw his duty to fight for Liberty from the oppressive Crown. The second, to show his loyalties were not blind allegiance but founded in the cause of liberty against any oppression but a government. First the Crown and then his own. That is PATRIOTISM. Blind allegiance follows a man not on principle, but on ignorance. Following blindly, whether the left like Biden or the right like Trump.

True patriotism follows the idea of Liberty. Nothing else. A true form of the Patriotism that formed a nation was one where calling that national leadership out when they were wrong.

John Adams stated, “But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored,. Liberty once lost is lost forever”. And we see this administration attempting to do that very thing, with help of Congress and the Supreme Court.

Edmund Burke said this, which now is more prevalent now than ever. “The people never give up their liberties but under some delusion”.

And this quote from James Madison may have seen the day of our time. “Liberty and order will never be perfectly safe, UNTIL a trespass on the Constitutional  provisions for either, shall be felt with the same keenness that resents an invasion of the dearest rights, until every citizen shall be an Argus to espy, and an Aegeon to avenge, the unhallowed deed”.  Argus means to be vigilant and espy means to see and catch something wrong. Aegeon was a Greek myth about a giant who was always powerful enough to punish them who crossed him. In Madison’s quote, he is likened to a person who see violations to the Constitution and seeks to destroy the perpetrator of such a crime.

Thomas Paine, who gave us the tracts of Common Sense and the Rights of man said this. “He that would make his own liberty secure, must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty, he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself”.

And today, in this political climate, It makes the words of Thomas Jefferson ring even louder. “Timid men…prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of Liberty”. Despotism is the form of government leadership where consolidation power is help by one specific person or group and rules with absolute power. Does that sound familiar? It should.

I have been called a non-patriot for opposing the current leading regime. But I have opposed the last few on many points of their administrations. Does this remove the term of Patriot from me. No. By definition in word, in ideology, and by the actions of my forefather, like Col Thomas Gaddis (my ancestor), I and many like me, meet the very definition of Patriot. The defender of Liberty no matter where the threat to it comes from.

So, for those that give blind allegiance to one side or the other, you are no more than a LOYALIST. Definitely NOT a Patriot in any meaning or sense of the title.