Now Is The Time To Speak Up

Rebekah Gantner writes about her experiences of tyranny in Maryland in a report at Townhall.com entitled Americans Must Oppose The Tyranny That Is Rapidly Spreading Across America. She starts out by comparing the rise of Nazi tyranny in Germany before WWII to the rise of tyranny in Maryland, and then ties that to a personal experience:

As Adolf Hitler rose to power, he took control of churches, shut down businesses, encouraged neighbors to report each other, and created a public surveillance operation system. If these actions sound familiar, they should. Public officials and bureaucrats are now putting their own tyranny on full display, using the COVID-19 crisis to impose similar draconian tactics in the United States.

While Maryland officials keep the state in lockdown, they are encouraging citizens not only to snitch on one another for breaking “prevention guidelines,” but they are allowed to do so anonymously! The Maryland Emergency Management Agency, State Police, and Department of Health announced a “COVID Prevention Line” available 24 hours a day as well as an email address where citizens can “report situations of concern where prevention guidelines are being ignored and the potential for the spread of COVID-19 is high.” Reports will be followed up with a visit from the health department or law enforcement.

Since July 2, nearly 40 Anne Arundel County businesses and restaurants have received citations, including my church. After an anonymous reporting on August 11, a female employee from the Anne Arundel County Department of Health showed up at our Sunday morning service.

You can, of course, read the rest of her experiences for yourself. What I wanted to highlight here are the experiences of a woman who was born in Austria, and who lived through the Nazi era:

My friend Kitty Werthmann lived in Austria under Hitler’s rule. She has traveled all across the country to warn American citizens about the dangers of totalitarianism. Austrians were arrested for attending church. If they worked for the government, church attendance meant that they were fired from their jobs. Kitty also shared the following experience in one of her speeches.

“We had another agency designed to monitor business. My brother-in-law owned a restaurant that had square tables. Government officials told him he had to replace them with round tables because people might bump themselves on the corners. Then they said he had to have additional bathroom facilities. It was just a small dairy business with a snack bar. He couldn’t meet all the demands. Soon, he went out of business. If the government owned the large businesses and not many small ones existed, it could be in control.”

I was going to make a plea that everyone needs to speak up, while speaking up is still allowed. But Ms. Gantner makes the plea more effective than I could here:

Citizens who value liberty and religious freedom must remain vigilant and make their voices heard. We must stand up and fight, and the time is now. Bureaucrats are waging a war on our churches and businesses. They are fabricating a dilemma, pitting a false sense of safety against our constitutionally guaranteed rights as citizens of the United States. America will only remain the land of the free so long as we oppose the tyranny that is rapidly spreading across our country. As my friend Kitty says, “After America, there is no place to go.”

President Reagan noted that America is mankind's last best hope. There is nowhere else to go for those who want to live free, to worship God as their conscience dictates. The Evil One can not stand that there is someplace on this earth where men can do God's will unimpeded. There are a number of countries one could go to where one could experience the wonders of Communism. Why not go to Cuba, for instance? Experience the wonders of universal health care, say. Or, any of a number of African nations, where black people are the majority. No oppression there, right? But no, America must be destroyed, because it stands as a rebuke to those Communist and Socialist regimes. If you want it to remain so, now is the time to speak up.