Before it’s too late
I recently read “In Order to Live,” Yeonmi Park’s memoir. Park was 13 when she and her mother escaped North Korea in March 2007. They crossed into China, where they spent roughly two years caught up in human trafficking and sexual abuse, before escaping through Mongolia and reaching South Korea in 2009. She later came to America, graduated from Columbia University and became a U.S. citizen.
How does a free people lose its liberty?
History shows – not all at once. Not with tanks in the streets. More often it begins with appealing promises and the belief that government can solve every problem if given enough money and power.
Many Americans think, “That could never happen here.” Perhaps they’re right. But that’s why I encourage folks to read Park’s story.
After speaking publicly at many events about freedom, Park has written a second book, “While Time Remains,” to reach a larger audience. In this book, she warns Americans about widening threats to the liberty she found here just a few years earlier. Marxist, socialist, and even Communist ideology is appealing especially to younger Americans.
Her warning isn’t that America is becoming North Korea. It’s that liberty is fragile and can be lost gradually.
Today we hear promises of free housing, education, health care, and an expanding government role. Debate those ideas vigorously, but ask: What resources and powers must government acquire to fulfill those promises, and what freedoms might be surrendered in return?
Our Founders distrusted concentrated power because liberty, once surrendered, is extraordinarily difficult to regain.
If freedom is worth preserving, we should begin protecting it now – before it’s too late!