“Concord Hymn” by Ralph Waldo Emerson was written as a tribute to the soldiers of the Revolutionary War.

Not only does it evoke poignant images of the soldiers, but it brings to mind the import of what these men – these common men – did. Perhaps most importantly, they took action. They saw an injustice and they fought to right it. They gave their lives so that their children and their children’s children could know freedom. In the midst of a slumbering world, blind to injustice and tyranny, these men woke us all up and taught us that complacency has no place in the life of men. And that we the beneficiaries of their struggles, have an enduring obligation to honor their memory and keep up the fight in whatever new form it may take in our lives today.

What are those things today against which we must stand? Where is the tyranny and injustice in the world today? In what ways are we ignorant and complacent to wrongdoing and evil, when we should be fighting? When *we* should be fighting — every common man and woman and not some vague and nebulous “they”? What was this country founded upon? Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness? How can we then take a blind eye when life is being redefined such that the right to life becomes a subjective; where one person can arbitrarily declare that another doesn’t have such a right? Is this not an innate right endowed by our Creator? No? Then what country is this? And are we willing to fight to get that country back? What about liberty? Specifically religious liberty? I believe we are all slumbering. Society in general and our governing officials — be it our executive, legislative or judicial branches — are herding us to a forced, homogenized relativism as regards our religious views. Laws are being enacted which curtail our right to religious liberty, yet no one is paying attention.

Who is going to stand up and fire that shot which will again be heard around the world? Who is going to again remind everyone that there are objective truths, and that those truths are worth losing your life over?