The Soul of Freedom

There are many people who have a better way with words than I. There are also people who come from backgrounds much different than that of most Americans, background that give them a deeper appreciation of the all the freedoms and liberties enjoyed (and often taken for granted) by Americans. Dieter Dahmen is an individual who embodies both of these statements. Mr. Dahmen has written an essay entitled "The Soul of Freedom". The opening paragraph gives you an idea of where Mr. Dahmen is coming from:

I was not born in this country. My mother tongue was Nazi. Yet I am, body and soul, American and if there were more parts to me, these would be American too. But for you to understand what it means to me to be American and how the Second Amendment has governed my life, I need to visit with you some of the more poignant moments of America’s history.

This is an essay on what it is to be American, and on dangers to the American ideal.

On questions of gun control the author states:

Why, then, is ownership by governmental permission so horrid? To understand the full impact of this terror, look, for example, at your favorite single action frontier colt and realize that it is yours not by a decision you have made, but by permission of your government and that only until it decides that you should not be allowed to keep it any longer. Ownership by permission rather than personal volition is the most horrifying, the most debilitating, the most demeaning form of ownership. Realize this also that the most precious property you can own is not life, is not freedom, it is arms when derived from the unalienable right to keep and bear them. In proscribing arms, the most, government can proscribe the least. Your toilet paper, your forks and knives, your candlesticks, and your matchbooks. All these are now subject to censure.

And on the decay of government, and our means to prevent that decay:

Government may never intrude this deeply into your privacy. No National Socialist ever saw the need for such intrusion. But not because of benevolence, no, only because it is too costly and too cumbersome. Government, when unconstrained will, in time, naturally gravitate to total brutality and unmitigated tyranny. The combination of power lust and crusader lust leaves it no other choice. For no politician, including Stalin and Hitler of the past, thinks of himself as evil. In a bizarre, twisted sort of way he sees himself as a savior, providing and procuring goodness for those he defines to be unable to fend for themselves. The founders of this nation knew this. That is why they encoded the Second Amendment into our Bill of Rights. For they knew that the RIGHT alone, provided it would remain revered, would always be enough to prevent conflict with a predacious and disobedient government by expunging, long before it would ever begin, any compulsion to dominate.

Go read this essay that is posted on the "Armed Females of America" website.

The Soul of Freedom