“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” —Patrick Henry, March 23, 1775, addressing the Second Virginia Convention

“I have much respect for this court and laws. I have never been in this position before and it’s not someplace that I want to be. But I have to disagree with you, sir, when you say that I’m selfish, because feeding my kids is not selfish. I have hair stylists that are going hungry because they’d rather feed their kids. So sir, if you think the law is more important than kids getting fed, then please go ahead with your decision, but I am not going to shut the salon.” —Dallas hairdresser Shelley Luther’s response to Judge Eric V. Moyé of the 14th Civil District Court of Dallas. Moyé subsequently sentenced Luther to seven days in jail and fined her $7,000.

Every crisis has a seminal moment. Henry’s speech galvanized Virginians and convinced them to provide troops for the American Revolution. Luther, who represents millions of decent Americans wanting to stand on their own two feet and provide for their children, has seemingly galvanized the nation in a similar manner.

Henry’s speech was far longer than most Americans know. But it addressed the very same elitist contempt and heavy-handedness to which Luther was subjected. “Has Great Britain any enemy, in this quarter of the world, to call for all this accumulation of navies and armies? No, sir, she has none,” Henry warned. “They are meant for us: they can be meant for no other. They are sent over to bind and rivet upon us those chains which the British ministry have been so long forging.”

As modern day Americans have been witnessing, the Democrat/Media Complex and its bureaucratic allies are using the current pandemic as the means to bind and rivet the nation to a similar group of arrogant elitists, who’ve unilaterally decided the Constitution can be suspended when they deem it necessary to do so.

Judge Moyé is one such elitist. In his imperiousness, he gave Shelly a chance to avoid jail — if she apologized. “If you would like to take this opportunity now to acknowledge: that your actions were selfish, putting your own interests ahead of those in the community in which you live,” Moyé lectured, “this court will consider the payment of a fine in lieu of the incarceration that you have demonstrated that you have so clearly earned.”

Moyé himself has earned a reputation as a racial arsonist. In 2007, he circulated a letter written by A. Leon Higginbotham Jr., chief judge emeritus of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. It described Higginbotham’s take on Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, which Higginbotham himself illuminated during a 1994 lecture at the Hastings College of Law in San Francisco. “I can only think of one Supreme Court justice during this century who was worse than Justice Clarence Thomas: James McReynolds, a white supremacist who referred to blacks as ‘ni**ers,’” he stated.

As for elitism, the same New York Times article described Moyé as a man “with a weakness for Cuban cigars and the finest steaks.”

And why not? Moyé earns $158,000 per year. Thus, he remains well paid — and currently employed.

Luther? Not so much. “We were shut down March 22, so it had been several weeks that the government was kind of telling us the [small business] money was coming,” she told Fox News host Sean Hannity. “The Dallas County Judge, Clay Jenkins, kept pushing back the date of when we would open weeks out in advance, before we would hear any new comings of what was going on with masks or whatever. When he finally pushed it back a final time I just woke up one day and I said, ‘I have to open, my stylists are calling me, they’re not making their mortgage.’”

Angry Americans woke up as well. As of this writing, the Shelley Luther Fund at the Go Fund Me website has raised a whopping $500,085, and Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick reportedly paid Luther’s $7,000 fine. Moreover, last Wednesday, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton put Moyé’s decision in the proper perspective, stating, “I find it outrageous and out of touch that during this national pandemic, a judge, in a county that actually released hardened criminals for fear of contracting COVID-19, would jail a mother for operating her hair salon in an attempt to put food on her family’s table.”

Dallas has indeed begun releasing more than 1,000 inmates from the county jail, including those with serious felonies. Unfortunately, it’s hardly alone in that regard. Thousands more inmates, and more violent offenders, have been released throughout the nation.

Remarkably, no one has asked a simple question: Why are lockdowns bad for convicts, but good for law-abiding citizens?

Moreover, why are law-abiding citizens being treated like convicts? Several protesters opposing draconian shutdown orders have been arrested.

“We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have prostrated ourselves before the throne, and have implored its interposition to arrest the tyrannical hands of the ministry and Parliament,” Henry stated. “Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne!”

All throughout the nation, America’s equally arrogant Ruling Class, every one of whom remain largely immune to the consequences of their utterly capricious decisions, have demonstrated ample amounts of similarly elitist contempt for their fellow Americans. Americans trapped in an unemployment pandemic every bit as bad — if not worse — than the viral one.

Such realities apparently resonated with both Gov. Greg Abbott and the Supreme Court of Texas. Last Wednesday, Abbot amended his executive order. “I am eliminating jail for violating an order, retroactive to April 2, superseding local orders,” Abbott stated. “Criminals shouldn’t be released to prevent COVID-19 just to put business owners in their place.” A day later, the Court ordered Shelly’s release.

“If we wish to be free,” Henry stated, “if we mean to preserve inviolate those inestimable privileges for which we have been so long contending — if we mean not basely to abandon the noble struggle in which we have been so long engaged, and which we have pledged ourselves never to abandon until the glorious object of our contest shall be obtained — we must fight! I repeat it, sir, we must fight!”

Two hundred and forty five years later, nothing has changed. Americans must once again fight to defend our Liberty. There is no nobler struggle than that. Kudos to Shelly Luther for reminding us.