ChosenRebel's Blog

Actually, it is more accurate to say that they give up all the protections of freedom too easily. What are the protections of freedom? Things like:

• • • • • Freedom of speech
        • Freedom of assembly
        • Real borders
        • A constitution 
        • A real separation of powers
        • A limit on executive power
        • Property rights that mean something
        • And, easiest of all, their right to privacy.

About the only thing Americans defend with real gusto is their right to bear arms. But even that is under seige in some quarters.

All of these are too much to tackle in less than 500 words that I limit myself to here, but there is one, the right to privacy, that I would like to discuss briefly. 

Privacy is an easily abandoned right. And the minions of media and marketing have made the enticement to its abandonment so easy as to be almost imperceptible, even advantageous. Or at least, temporarily advantages. Tonight, I was reading Rod Dreher’s, LIVE NOT BY LIES, and came across this paragraph”

“Kamila Bendova sit in her armchair in the Prague apartment where she an her late husband, Vaclav, used to hold underground seminars to build up the anti-communist dissident movement. It has been thirty years since the fall of communism, but Bendova is not about to lessen her vigilance about threats to freedom. I mention to her that tens of millions of Americans have installed in their houses so-called ‘smart-speakers’ that monitor conversations for the sake of making dometic life more convenient. Kamila visibly recoils. The appalled look on her face telegraphs a clear message: How can Americans be so gullible?

To stay free to speak the truth, she tells me, you have to create for yourself a zone of privacy that is inviolate. . . . The idea that anybody would welcome into their home a commercial device that records conversations and transmits them to a third party is horrifying to her. No consumer convenience is worth that risk.”

Page 69-70

Not so for Americans. Amercans in our century, live for three values, no matter what they believe, right or left, young or old, North and South, every shade of color, male and female. Christians are not immune to these three values that dominate the lives of most Americans. American Christians, after all, are often far more American than Christian.

American values that seem to be the milk we drink from a very young age are:

• Comfort,

• Convenience, and 

• Security

We live and will sacrifice a great deal to gain these things. Give us more comfort, more convenience or more security and we will give up much. 

Here’s a link to a resource that you might find useful in searching out how unhelpful living for these values are in light of any desire to walk with the living God.

Kamila Bendova sits in her armchair in the Prague apartment and wonders if Americans will wake up before it is too late for them to keep their nation from giving its freedom away to men who smile at them and promise greater comfort, convenience and security.