Liberty not preserved by weakness          

In days of United States infancy, upstart patriots strove courageously to topple British King George III's tyrannical dominance of the emergent New Land. We owe a tremendous debt to those champions of precious liberty.

Not least, because voices now counsel timidity.

Iowa's Des Moines Register recently carried an article  originally featured by fellow Gannett newspaper USA Today. The Register's version was titled "Is the 2024 election giving you major anxiety? You're not alone. Here's how to cope."

The opening paragraph classes 'election anxiety' with legitimate concerns over wars and natural disasters. A mental health counselor laments apprehensions among progressives' routinely bannered "marginalized communities."

Once, elections were rightly viewed as vehicles for popular voices to enter national conversation, and as advantageous opportunities for minorities seeking visibility.

No more. Now they are portrayed as nerve-shattering menaces. And surviving the horrors of citizens debating topical matters and casting ballots per beliefs supposedly requires medical intervention.

Such imbecility is of recent vintage. Campus crying rooms were step one. Far-left worry-warts soon labelled unpopular racial opinions as "health hazards." They asserted untrammeled citizen speech posed perils from which government boot-stomps offered deliverance.

A 2018 Hill essay co-authored by Kristin Clarke, "It's time for an online Civil Rights Act," preposterously equated distasteful online expression with physical violence. The piece argued that governmental regulation be imposed on privately owned platforms, that sites be made "safer" for "disenfranchised and marginalized communities."

(Did Clarke suffer career setbacks for advocating Big Brother stifling of citizen speech? Hardly. The Washington Post reported that in 2021, Biden nominated her to head the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division.)

The right (even duty) of free people to stand independently and chart our nation's course - a right paid for by patriots' blood - remains as vital as when rebels dumped English tea in the Boston Harbor.

No matter that today's milquetoastian progressives sob otherwise.