Difficult Freedom or Easy Tyranny: Which Will America Choose?

Mark Lewis | Jun 03, 2026 | Townhall

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“Society cannot exist, unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things, that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.” – Edmund Burke

Most men have never understood the point Burke made, which is why most men, down through history, have lived under government oppression. Americans, however, have absolutely no excuse for living under a tyranny like the Democratic Party is trying to establish. Our Founding Fathers constantly repeated the point so eloquently made by Burke: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” – Benjamin Franklin

We aren’t listening.

“The course of history shows that as a government grows, liberty decreases.” – Thomas Jefferson

Men have a choice—liberty or tyranny. And that is the very battle America is fighting now. And, “there is no liberty without morality” (Burke). The tyranny America is battling within its borders today is coming from the Democratic Party, not those who are trying to follow our Founders and the Judeo-Christian heritage they built the country upon. “To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people is a chimerical idea,” said James Madison. No virtue, no liberty.

Burke, and our Founders, made this as plain as can be. Personal self-control is freedom. Government control is tyranny. This is why the Left hates America’s Judeo-Christian heritage. Both religions teach self-control, which means freedom. The Left doesn’t want that because the Left wants government totalitarianism. They want promiscuity, they want licentiousness. They want as much sin in society as possible, as much self-indulgence as imaginable, because self-control means freedom. By its very definition, self-control is freedom; we freely choose to do the right things, and thus, don’t need government force to compel us to do them. But the Left is encouraging, glorifying self-absorption in America, decadents who do not control themselves, thus will need government to step in and do it. Growing government ultimately means tyranny.

Read the Burke quote again. Civilization obviously cannot exist unless there is some restraint on evil. It either comes from within a person—self-control, freely choosingto do the right thing—or it will have to come “from without”—government. Or civilization ceases. And, as government grows, liberty retreats. Exactly what the Left wants. Once they’ve shot everybody who disagrees (as Stalin, Mao, communism did), then they can cower the rest of the people into obedience. That is precisely the situation that exists in Communist China, North Korea, and other communist hellholes of the present and past.

There is no true freedom without self-control. There is only government tyranny. Which is the Left pushing today? “Man will ultimately be governed by God or by tyrants” (Franklin). Self-control or government oppression. The choice is ours.

Self-control is not easy, especially when a culture, as in current America, exalts promiscuity, perversion, and licentiousness so highly. Plato said, “The first and greatest victory is to conquer yourself.” Yes, and it’s becoming increasingly the most difficult thing to do; so few do it anymore, so we have very few examples of it. But notice what Plato went on the say: “To be conquered by yourself is of all things most shameful and vile.” Antisthenes of Athens said, “Virtue is the only good, and self-control is the only means of achieving virtue.” This is what Western Civilization was, morally, founded upon, from Moses, through the Greeks, to Jesus and New Testament Christianity.

Jefferson: “The Christian Religion, when…brought to the original purity and simplicity of its benevolent institutor, is a religion of all others most friendly to liberty, science, and the free expansion of the human mind.” Why? Because it teaches self-control and virtue. Indeed, well may we ask, what is science without self-control and virtue? That was the Founding Fathers’ ideal. Virtue, self-control equals freedom. True Christianity equals freedom; it is not the friend of government tyrants who want themselves, not virtue, to control the people.

And this is why the Left has given us a brand-new definition of “freedom.” The Left desperately wants us to believe that licentiousness—i.e., “let me have all the pleasure I want, with whoever I want to have it with, and with no consequences”—that, not virtue, is Leftist “freedom.” But licentiousness is not freedom, it is the opposite of self-control, and will always lead to chaos and government tyranny. Read Burke’s quote again. And look at the chaos that Leftist licentiousness has brought America today. When the Left says “freedom,” they mean licentiousness, and licentiousness always produce government tyranny—“their passions forge their fetters” (Burke). But that, of course, is the goal of the Left.

Truly, self-control, conquering oneself—freedom—is not easy, and that may be why freedom is so scarce in human history. Slavery is easy; let somebody else take care of you. Freedom, self-control, excellence is most difficult. “Individuals,” John Adams wrote, “have conquered themselves; nations and large bodies never.” Thus, “democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There was never a democracy yet that did not commit suicide.” As with Burke, people must control themselves, otherwise the government will do it for them. Democracy ceases.

But government eventually means tyranny, which is why our Founders gave us a limited government constitution, and then hoped—hoped against hope, really—that the people would control themselves. “Our constitution,” Adams said, “was made only for a moral and religious people.” We limited the power government has over the people, so, to be free, the people must control themselves. Unfortunately, Adams’ dictum about “nations and large bodies” never “conquering themselves” (morally) has, sadly, proven to be true in recent American history.

Difficult freedom or easy tyranny—which will America choose?

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