Hoist The Colors

As submitted by a reader:

As Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End opens up, lines of people in shackles and chains are being led to executions. The herald of woe is reading out the list of rights that have been suspended and informing the condemned men, women, and children of the charges against them. Piracy, aiding pirates, associating with pirates, ad nauseum -- anything having to do with pirates.


My imagination needs no invitation to wander. So I start substituting Obama lines in there. My kids holler at me to stop it. They’re trying to watch the movie.

In my own mind, I translated that scene to today’s world.

Lines and lines of otherwise free Americans are indicted as thieves for wanting to keep the sweat of their brow -- turned into beggars thanks to government-owned industry. (In Pirates, the East India Trading Company; today, the bankers - what’s the difference?)

A crisis in which an unelected, unaccountable Czar Beckett is able to suspend rights, alter laws, issue judgment, and execute punishment without appeal. Failing to actually find and apprehend the pirates he’s been sent to find and destroy, he instead heartlessly goes after the softest targets: anyone who’s ever been associated with the pirates.

Tyranny.

In the face of this shameless tyranny, a small voice raises a sad song of defiance:

The king and his men
Stole the queen from her bed
And bound her in her bones.
The seas be ours
And by the powers
Where we will, we'll roam.


Yo, ho, haul together
Hoist the colors high.
Heave ho, thieves and beggars,
Never shall we die.


Some men have died
And some are alive
And others sail on the sea
With the keys to the cage...
And the Devil to pay
We lay to Fiddler's Green!


The bell has been raised
from its watery grave...
Do you hear its sepulchral tone?
We are a call to all,
Pay heed the squall
And turn your sail toward home!


Yo, ho, haul together,
Hoist the colors high.
Heave ho, thieves and beggars,
Never shall we die.

I continued with this parallel. How we as a country chose security and prosperity over lady Liberty - whom we have bound in so many ways (just like Calypso was bound). America placed freedom herself into a cage - as if to protect an endangered species from poachers. So we visit freedom like we’d visit a caged, endangered animal at the zoo, and from the outside of the bars looking in, we think to ourselves, “We have freedom.”

Though stronger bars have been added since 2001, the cage and doors were built decades ago - before some of us were even born. Most of us have never known a time when Liberty was not bound. The song goes on.

There are some among us who have the keys to the cage. But to truly release Lady Liberty herself might mean our end as a consequence.

Finally, the call goes out for freedom. Does anyone hear?

The media ignore us. The White House demonizes us. The Speaker of the House equates us with Nazis. Some liberals call for simply letting all of us die - not being worthy of even life itself.

Does anyone recognize the call for what it is?

Do we dare answer?

Enslavement, security, and tyranny are already upon us. The shackles and chains have been forged and prepared. Freedom, our home, lies on the other side of the storm. Do we turn into that storm, or just avoid it? Do we risk all to reach for freedom, or meekly march in shackles and chains to the inevitable end prepared by every tyrant for those he hates?

Do we realize that we have already been condemned as outlaws – “domestic terrorists” is the preferred term these days – and as such, we can expect no protection from the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, the various state constitutions, and indeed, the majority of our alleged countrymen?

As we try to file away at the iron bars between today’s America and the country of the Founders, how many of us realize how late the hour truly is?

And most importantly – who among us will stand when that same trembling voice calls:
HOIST THE COLORS!

III