Scott Tsao’s Reviews > A Free People's Suicide: Sustainable Freedom and the American Future > Status Update

...the drifters' choice: no choice at all.

The Roman republic fell, and later the Roman Empire, but there is no need for America to follow. The watching world stands by to witness what you choose and to see whether your illustrious ancestors will find heirs worthy of their vision. Americans, you are America now, just as the Athenians were Athens and the Romans were Rome. So the choice is yours...

...sustained by itself. For the source of its strength it must always look beyond itself.

So let your choice be made, and let it be known. Remember that free societies are rare and transient, that the American republic is neither ancient nor stable and that its nature as a great experiment may not survive the abandonment of the foundation of its founders. Remember also that the worst choice is always...

...sustained by itself. For the source of its strength it must always look beyond itself.

So let your choice be made, and let it be known. Remember that free societies are rare and transient, that the American republic is neither ancient nor stable and that its nature as a great experiment may not survive the abandonment of the foundation of its founders. Remember also that the worst choice is always...

Freedom is the eagle whose glory is gazing at the sun? No nation rises higher or lasts longer than the great ideas that inspire it. Freedom never lasts forever, because it is harder to be free than not to be free. Freedom must therefore be sustained and not simply won, ordered and taken for granted. American freedom, like American greatness, was not derived from itself, and it cannot be...

...whereas in reality, for empires as well as individuals, though not for nations by themselves, decline is always linked eventually to death. In other words, decline by itself may be a long time coming, so much so that no one believes it will ever come and therefore does not matter. But as the story of empires from Rome to the Soviets demonstrates, the end when it comes is often sudden, shocking and irreversible.

If there is no American renewal, American dominance can be followed only by American decline. America has reached the point where, apart from restoration, there is no other choice. So let there be no dodging or denial: as America stands before the grave wisdom of Lincoln's "This too shall pass," this is her moment of truth.

Yet even the word 'decline' is too gentle. It suggests only a slow, painless slippage,..

- When religious or political beliefs become tired and lose their vigor, the way to reinvigorate them is not to modernize or rebrand them cosmetically, but to return to the source that gave rise to them in the first place.
- America faces no problem today that cannot be resolved through a return to America's first principles.

- A return to the past can be progressive, not reactionary. Each movement in its own way best goes forward by first going back.
- Their innovations were "outside the box" because they were back to basics and not mindless espousal of the present or a breathless chase after some purported future.
- The most creative remakings are always through the most faithful rediscoveries.

Equally, what both the Jews and the early American Puritans understood as the significance of 'covenant' was paralleled politically for the founders by the significance of 'constitution'. Again, for all three, the achievements were fundamental to the ordering of their lives as liberated peoples.

The roots of the idea of a return to the past are worth pondering:
1) Exodus - Jews - national significance
2) Conversion - American Puritans - spiritual meaning
3) Revolution - Founders - political significance

For all three peoples, though in different ways, the experiences were liberating events that were formative for their creation as distinct new peoples.