“There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come.” –Peter Muhlenberg (1776)

In October of 1941, amid the darkest of days in human history, against seemingly insurmountable odds, Sir Winston Churchill issued this charge: “Never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never – in nothing, great or small, large or petty – never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”

The Greatest Generation, which lived through those days if they did not perish to sustain Essential Liberty for our generation, were the last Americans to confront evil face-to-face on a global scale. And confront it they did, albeit at immeasurable human cost. We are fortunate that some of the survivors from that generation are among our Patriot Post ranks; they write us daily to voice their grave concerns about the current domestic threat to American Liberty that awaits their grandchildren’s children.

Amazingly, though they now are in their eighth and ninth decades of life, these old warriors invariably note that they are ready to take up arms again today in keeping with their hard-won devotion to Liberty! If, given the wisdom of age, they understand the current threat to Liberty and are ready to fight, then there is no excuse for complacency or resignation from anyone in the generations after them.

However, in the two weeks since the Supreme Court upheld the individual mandate portion of the so-called “Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act,” too many conservatives have all but thrown up their hands in preparation for retreat to their bunkers. Too many have given in under duress of the apparent overwhelming might of the imperial executive, Barack Hussein Obama, now that even the Supreme Court appears to have surrendered to his socialist regime.

It is that unfortunate lack of fight that distinguishes mere conservatives from today’s ranks of American Patriots.

I encourage conservatives and Patriots alike to pause for a minute and allow me to offer a perspective on Chief Justice John Roberts’ enigmatic ruling – a perspective that differs from the conventional reasoning that resulted in the condemnation of Roberts by commentators and political pundits. While I certainly agree that Roberts grossly violated his sacred oath to faithfully uphold our Constitution, I conclude he did so very deliberately in a dangerous gambit in support of our Constitution – which is to say, he has not departed for the Dark Side.

My first response to a non sequitur like Roberts’ decision, where a conclusion does not logically follow a well-established premise, is to determine what premise it does follow.

In this case, since Roberts’ decision wholly departed from everything we know about him as a jurist and from the erudite opinions of his constructionist colleagues on the court, his conclusion must be based on an alternative premise. While some have asserted that the chief justice’s motive was to reset the limits on the Commerce Clause, I believe his overarching motive was much more blunt, and rendered for philosophical reasons that, in Roberts’ frame of reference, supersede the constraints of his oath. Justice Antonin Scalia said as much in an after-interview: “I haven’t had a falling out with Justice Roberts. [Justices] vote the way they do because they have their own judicial philosophy.”

In his decision, Roberts concluded, “It is not our job to protect the people from the consequences of their political choices,” and I think therein is the premise for his decision. Roberts is forcing what our Constitution’s author, James Madison, called in Federalist No. 44 “a remedy obtained from the people.”

While I certainly do not endorse Roberts’ ruling, I believe that he decided in favor of ObamaCare with the complicity of his constructionist brethren, associate justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito. I believe he did so as a call to arms, because he understands, as do we, that if Obama is re-elected, the full institution of Democratic Socialism is inevitable, and restoring constitutional integrity by way of ballots rather than bullets will be further diminished during a second term in which Obama may well appoint two or three more justices.

Roberts’ reclassification of the ObamaCare penalties as a tax and tossing it back to the electorate slipped a couple of aces into Republicans’ presidential and congressional hands to increase the odds of defeating Obama. It sets up a full repeal of ObamaCare, a centerpiece of the Republicans presidential and congressional platforms (as confirmed by the House vote this week), and supports the case against Obama’s socialist endeavor to tax and spend the nation out of a recession, which has resulted in the very real probability of prolonged “stagflation” similar to that of the Carter years.

Further, Obama’s plan to sunset the tax cuts enacted by George Bush on income, capital gains, dividends and death, across all five brackets, combined with the ObamaCare taxes set to begin in 2013, will result in a $494 billion tax increase, the biggest increase in history by any measure, which even Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke characterized as a “massive fiscal cliff” leading to an economic abyss.

Moreover, inadvertently exposing his own socialist political cards when arguing for the next round of so-called “stimulus spending,” Obama claimed, “The private sector is doing fine,” and went on to suggest the real focus needs to be adding more government jobs. This socialist sick-think mirrors that of Senate Leader Harry Reid, who said of the last round of stimulus spending, “It’s very clear that private-sector jobs have been doing just fine. It’s the public-sector jobs where we’ve lost huge numbers, and that’s what this legislation is all about.”

The bottom line here is that the premise for Roberts’ ruling does not warrant the retreat that too many conservatives are contemplating, or have already begun.

For more than three decades, beginning with the Reagan Revolution, I have joined with tens of millions of American Patriots who have endeavored on many fronts to thwart the advance of tyranny over Liberty. Since Obama’s ascension to power, additional Patriots have coalesced around our First Principles in defense of Liberty.

However, never before in my lifetime has the threat of tyranny been greater than in the present day, and for no other reason than too many conservatives, particularly those with means, have given up the fight, leaving a thin line of Patriots to hold the line.

Suggesting that the next presidential election will be “the most critical in our lifetime” is not seasonal campaign hyperbole. Indeed, it will be the most important since our nation’s founding. This election will determine if Liberty can peacefully be restored, or if our nation is irrevocably locked into the fatal “Cycle of Democracy,” due to the lethargy and complacency of its people. Indeed, it will be a plebiscite on the American Revolution.

If you are among our Patriot ranks reading these words, you are not likely to be among the conservatives who have resigned in belief that the last battle in the campaign to restore the integrity of our Constitution has been fought. Granted, some major battles have been lost, but the war is NOT over. Thus, it falls upon our shoulders to rally our brothers and sisters back to the front by any and every means, and to seize the opportunity in the current crisis. As Churchill wrote, “A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”

It is past time for all conservatives to form a unified front in order to ensure that Obama is defeated, that the House majority is fortified with additional conservatives, and that a Senate majority is restored. Patriots should admonish those who would retreat in the face of the considerable adversity we now face, and equally those who would foment disunity among our ranks with their incessant complaints and defeatist mindset. Such division greatly weakens our front lines.

Thomas Jefferson observed, “Very many and very meritorious were the worthy Patriots who assisted in bringing back our government to its republican tack. To preserve it in that, will require unremitting vigilance.”

That vigilance cannot succeed without a unified front.