Thursday, January 1, 2015

Happy New Year Oath Keepers!

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New Years message from Oath Keepers Founder 
Stewart Rhodes:

Let 2015 be a year when we all honor our oath to defend the Constitution by acting with maximum courage, strength, and honor, to live out the spirit of the Founding fathers, and to honor those who have come before.  Remember, as John Quincy Adams said, "Duty is ours; results are God's."  Let us set aside fear and do our duty.

Here at Oath Keepers, we are kicking the new year off by launching a new website, which should be up and running within the next week, and we will have more exciting news and upcoming initiatives and goals for 2015 which we will share with you in the coming weeks of this new year. 

But today I wanted to thank you for your devotion to the cause of liberty, and for your support of our mission to defend the Constitution.   For those of you who are members, I thank you for stepping up and formally joining this org and this cause, and I look forward to working hard with you this coming year to preserve liberty and to restore our Republic.   For those of you who are not members, but who support our work, we thank you for that support.

Let us all walk our talk in 2015, while always remembering what matters most - that we leave our children and grand-children free.   This is a good time to reflect on the past, but to also look to the future.   Today, let us harken to the timeless words of Thomas Paine, in his immortal work, The Crisis, published on December 24, 1776, when the war of the Revolution was not going well, and the patriots needed to be reminded of what matters most.  Let his words burn into your soul, and let them ignite a fire of resolve within you:


    THESE are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman. Tyranny, like hell, is not easily conquered; yet we have this consolation with us, that the harder the conflict, the more glorious the triumph. What we obtain too cheap, we esteem too lightly: it is dearness only that gives every thing its value. Heaven knows how to put a proper price upon its goods; and it would be strange indeed if so celestial an article as FREEDOM should not be highly rated.


 And this passage also, can help us to see our duty:

    I once felt all that kind of anger, which a man ought to feel, against the mean principles that are held by the Tories: a noted one, who kept a tavern at Amboy, was standing at his door, with as pretty a child in his hand, about eight or nine years old, as I ever saw, and after speaking his mind as freely as he thought was prudent, finished with this unfatherly expression, "Well! give me peace in my day." Not a man lives on the continent but fully believes that a separation must some time or other finally take place, and a generous parent should have said, "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace;" and this single reflection, well applied, is sufficient to awaken every man to duty.



Hear, hear!  I encourage you to read it all:   http://www.ushistory.org/PAINE/crisis/c-01.htm

Thomas Paine had a gift for articulating timeless truths that always apply to the struggle for liberty, in any age.   Let his words awaken you to your duty in this New Year, and may you set aside your regrets, your fears, your should-have's from the past, and instead start anew, with a renewed commitment and resolve to defending liberty for your children's sake, with courage, strength, and honor.   Let's make our forefather's proud, so that they will know that their hard work and sacrifice was not for nothing - that we deserved the liberty they won for us.  And let us show this by our actions each moment of each day.   In all we do, our first question must be "what is right?"  And once we know what is right, it then becomes our duty to do it.   Duty is ours.  Results are God's.  Let 2015 be a year we can look back on as a year we fulfilled our duty.

For the Republic,
Stewart Rhodes, Founder and President, Oath Keepers

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