Give me liberty or give me.......

Patrick Henry! Now, there is a guy I would loved to have met. In his famous speech, “Give me liberty or give me death”, he said, “different men often see the same subject in different lights;”. A truer statement has never been made. You can have the closest friend or partner or even spouse. You may think you know their heart on certain matters. But, until you get down to where the rubber meets the road, you never know. They may agree, but, most of the time, they have an altogether different perspective than you have. But, Patrick Henry was willing to stand up and fight for what he thought was right.

While traveling on the blogosphere today, I ran across a post that mentioned Patrick Henry, and quickly the quote of ‘give me liberty or give me death’ came to mind. So, I went looking for information. I know most of you remember the quote “let your fingers do the walking” from the old yellow page ads. Now, we let our ‘fingers do the walking’ via the keyboard to the Internet to find most anything our mind can come up with.

That aside, Patrick Henry was one for religious freedom. I found a site with an excerpt from the book “Religious Denominations” by Belcher. Seems Patrick Henry, who was a lawyer among other things, heard about three Baptist preachers who were about to stand trial for, of all things, ‘for preaching the gospel of the Son of God”. Just as the indictment against the men was being read, Henry rode up on his horse, went into the Court House and took a seat at the bar. He had rode 60 miles from his home to offer his defense of these religious men. When the prosecutor finished the reading, Henry stood up, received the paper, and began the defense. He spoke in tones that got the attention of all the people in the court room, including the Judge. And, upon finishing his remarkable speech, he concluded with, “What Law Have They Violated?”, to which the Judge said, in a very authorative voice, “Sheriff, discharge those men!”

Patrick Henry was elected as Governor of Virginia in 1776. He was governor for a few years, succeeded by Thomas Jefferson, and then re-elected in 1784. He was governor for a total of three terms. He then moved his family to Leatherwood, a 10,000 acre plantation near the Virginia-North Carolina border.

“Patrick Henry was a strong critic of the constitution proposed in 1787. He was in favor of the strongest possible government for the individual states, and a weak federal government. He was also very critical of the fact that the convention was conducted in secret.”

We need another Patrick Henry, one who is not ashamed to stand up for what he believed in, and be heard, was probably the greatest orator of his time, who believed in rights for the people, and a WEAK federal government! He could probably even out talk and be heard over Senator Kennedy!

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Conservative Cat

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