We report these historical words, for they are immortal and apply to all oppressed, to all targets, to all who are the subjects of "tough love" and behaviour control. They are as fresh today as they were on March 23, 1775. We need to read them again. We need to learn them again. We need to live by them again.
Below is an excerpt from “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death” by Patrick Henry. The words apply to the American Revolution but really they are written for all men in all times. They clearly apply to smokers today, and to drinkers, and to fat folks, all of whom are targeted to lose their free choice. Henry’s words have a message for everyone today who opts to take "risks" to enjoy life. The enjoyment of life is the purpose of life and the base of happiness; thus regulating happiness is removing the purpose of life. Liberty — not health — is the fundamental value of decent society. When liberty is equated with health the only result is tyranny.
The words below can be spoken for those who fight for our most personal rights today. Those belittled rights are now denied and indeed they were never contemplated in constitutions, for those who wrote those constitutions were not insane enough to conceive the insanity of those who deny a cigarette even to he who faces the electric chair. Yet this is a reality: in America, those who are about to be executed cannot have their last cigarette because those who kill them have decided that smoking is bad for their health. In light of this incredible reality we have to make sure that those rights will, one day, be expressly contemplated and guaranteed. Better yet, we have to strive so that those rights do not have to be explicitly guaranteed, for sanity will have returned. The cost to achieve that does not matter.
We need to recapture our dignity. We cannot go on writing petitions and begging our tormentors, seeking the "understanding" of the corrupt. We cannot assimilate and accept the "cure" offered by the fraudster — so that we can fit with them and the lunatic puritanical system they are building for us and for our children. We have to fight them because they have decided that it is either them or us. “They” are “public health," "we" are the citizens; the winner has to be us.
Smoking a cigarette or enjoying beer and pizza may seem trivial to some, but what "public health" does to those who practice those "trivial" choices is not. We are facing a decision the outcome of which will reverberate through history: do we want to be free to be "trival," or do we want to trivialize freedom? Patrick Henry told us, when the time comes to fight, we must fight.
— FORCES International
Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in the illusions of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes against a painful truth, and listen to the song of that siren till she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle for liberty? Are we disposed to be of the number of those who, having eyes, see not, and, having ears, hear not, the things which so nearly concern their temporal salvation? For my part, whatever anguish of spirit it may cost, I am willing to know the whole truth; to know the worst, and to provide for it.
…Shall we try argument? Sir, we have been trying that for the last ten years. Have we anything new to offer upon the subject? Nothing. We have held the subject up in every light of which it is capable; but it has been all in vain. Shall we resort to entreaty and humble supplication? What terms shall we find which have not been already exhausted? Let us not, I beseech you, sir, deceive ourselves. Sir, we have done everything that could be done to avert the storm which is now coming on. 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. 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! In vain, after these things, may we indulge the fond hope of peace and reconciliation. There is no longer any room for hope. If we wish to be free — 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! An appeal to arms and to the God of hosts is all that is left us!
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