Freedom fighters are like antiques. They require significant vintage.
It’s easy, in hindsight, to see the value of freedom. It’s simple, after the fact, to admire the radicals who brought it and to villify the tyrants who tried to crush those radicals.
It’s so easy, we wonder how anyone tolerated such corruption and stupidity. Our ancestors were so backward!
In the 1440s, Johannes Gutenberg gave the world the movable type printing press. Where before, written works were transcribed by hand making books very, very expensive — after Gutenberg, they could be mass-printed and sold at a greatly reduced cost.
Books exploded on to the scene. And today, EVERYONE, you included, thinks that was a positive development in the history of the world.
EVERYONE.
But back in the day . . .
It didn’t take long before terrorists started using Gutenberg’s device, starting with a man named William Tyndale.
Tyndale treasonously declared, “I defy the Pope, and all his laws; and if God spares my life, ere many years, I will cause the boy that driveth the plow to know more of the Scriptures than thou dost!”
To carry out his seditious plan, Tyndale decided to print the Holy Bible in English!
That’s NOT a very shocking thing to do, now. But back then the Bible was a virtual State Secret. Only the clergy had access to it. They would instruct their parishioners in law, modes of acceptable worship, and rules of conduct, with the implicit suggestion that they were basing their works upon God’s Word.
In this fashion, the Powers That Be (PTB) controlled the people. Tyndale treacherously believed that the people needed the information necessary to hold the PTB accountable. Thus…
Tyndale translated the Bible into English. He got it published and worked in the underground to circulate the contraband text. But then, he got caught and was held in a foreign prison. Ultimately, the PTB had him burned at the stake.
Vice President Joe Biden compared Tyndale to a “high-tech terrorist.” Senator Joe Lieberman supported treason charges.
Oops! Biden and Lieberman weren’t alive back then.
Biden and Lieberman said those things about Julian Assange, the face of Wikileaks.
See how easy it is to be backwards, like your ancestors? …to admire the tyrants who crush the radicals?
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Copyright (c) 2010 by Jim Babka. Permission to distribute this blog post for educational purposes is granted, if done with attribution to the author and the Downsize DC Foundation. Permission to use for commercial purposes is denied.