DO YOU HEAR THAT POUNDING ON YOUR DOOR?

DO YOU HEAR THAT POUNDING ON YOUR DOOR?
Wednesday, September 7, 2022 by Leona Choy

Are you awake or has “woke” dulled your hearing? Exactly a year ago this week I posted a blog that is more accurate to our perilous times as a nation today than it was last year.

The poet Longfellow wrote a political ballad about a guy on a horse who roused people at midnight to give them an urgent message. Might you have been forced to memorize it in eighth-grade literature class?

“Listen, my children, and you shall hear
Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-Five:
Hardly a man is now alive
Who remembers that famous day and year....”

He wrote the poem in 1860 when our still-fledgling nation was facing another CRISIS OF UNITY in a conflict that threatened to shatter our fragile Union. America was on the verge of the bloody brother-against-brother Civil War (1861 – 1865). The conflict was between "the Union" or "the North" and southern states supporting the federal union that was threatening to secede and form the Confederate States of America. Our history almost flip-flopped. With a different outcome, we could have turned out to be a much different country today. Here we go again—another CRISIS OF UNITY in 2022.

A central issue of the Civil war about race. So what else is new? Himself an abolitionist, Longfellow often used poetry to remind readers of cultural and moral values, to arouse the populace—to sound a bugle call to action. The Civil War was about to erupt! Do we listen to poetry now? Not so much—but rap comes pretty close to it.

What was the scenario in 1775? We were colonies, not yet states. Patriots were pursuing new freedoms against the Loyalists to British King George. We resisted tyranny from abroad. Muskets and gunpowder were our primitive means of offense and defense. Clumsy cannons had to be manufactured and cannonballs were hurled across the battlefield. No army existed. Local rag-tag militias were formed. Every man was armed and ready to defend his family and help his neighbor.

Society struggled with lawlessness before the Constitution took shape, before a government of and by and for the people was established. The West was waiting to be won by pioneers. We were people pf dreams and promises. Men were pledging their lives and fortunes to birth a unique concept—a nation that would be indivisible and not answerable to foreign dominance.

Communication was limited to foot couriers or horseback riders. No phones, electricity, radios, cars, or planes. Our hero, Paul Revere, a successful entrepreneur businessman, was one of those undercover messengers appointed by the Patriots as a “Federal Express” rider to carry classified information on the movements of the British troops. He carried news, messages, and copies of important documents as far as New York and Philadelphia.

On this foreboding April night, his assignment was to ride horseback to Lexington, Massachusetts with the breaking news that British troops were poised to march into the countryside northwest of Boston and then on to Concord, gaining control as they went. As he galloped through the countryside in the midnight hours he was to wake up his countrymen patriots by pounding on their doors. The Patriots needed a heads-up that the British planned to seize the militia weapons stored at Concord.

There's a pounding on our doors today—not at midnight, but in broad daylight. Foreign nations are stealthily infiltrating our institutions, dominating cyberspace, buying up our agricultural land, purchasing our food manufacturing plants, monopolizing the raw materials we need to be self-sustaining, looking with a hungry eye on our power grids.

If children don't like their gender, we allow them to change it. If they don't like their lives as God has arranged them, we let them create an avatar of themselves, put on some goggles, and run around doing as they please in another dimension world without laws or moral restrictions. If we can't take responsibility for parenting, abortion is an option. Day by day we are losing our hard-won freedoms. Dissent is not tolerated. We are being drawn into a strange, pagan image and forced to embrace and celebrate authoritarianism.

Unbelievable changes—upsets and resets—are taking place in our times. High-tech communication and messaging in cyberspace are beyond imagination and at the fingertips or in the palms of almost everyone. Although our standard of living has gone through the roof, the hearts of many are failing them for fear of our very survival, if the course of our present government is not reversed. We are immersed in racial tensions and moral depravities that permeate all areas of our society. Next? Confiscation of our lawful possession of guns for our protection is on the horizon.

Once again we are on the brink of disunion and disintegration as a civilized and moral society. We are in danger both from our enemies abroad once again—and from those of our own countrymen who have drunk the Kool-Aid of Socialism and Communism.

Have we learned nothing from the past?

History cycles and repeats itself; Freedoms and tyrants come and go; A brazen act of defiance for a righteous cause may at times be necessary; Courage and risk are always in style; There is a time to tear down and a time to build; It takes the sacrifice of lives and fortunes to upset and reset a society; Each generation births its loyalists to the beneficent status quo and its rebels against it; The sands of time blur what we may think is important; God uses many ordinary couriers to carry His messages; Let God hand out the credits—just do what is to be done.

Longfellow concludes his poem with the warning of a “coming hour of darkness and peril and need." Could he have had a prophetic glimpse into our future 2020s? He challenged the people to awaken and hear the midnight message of Paul Revere” once again.

“And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm,
A cry of defiance, and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo forevermore!
For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
Through all our history, to the last,
In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere.”

If Paul Revere knocked on our doors at midnight tonight, or if he texted or emailed, or cell-phoned us, what message of alarm would he bring? Perhaps it would be:

“People of America—Awake! Listen! Act with boldness and courage—the tyrants are coming! They are already here. Both lanterns in the belfry are lit! They are coming from both directions—from other shores to take over our America the Beautiful—and in the guise of some of our own citizens and leaders who are trying to subvert us from within!”

Share This Blog:

Comments

Kay From Frederick County At 9/8/2022 6:18:23 PM

Absolutely spot on, you have become a warrior for our nation. Thank you

Suellen McDaniel From North Carolina At 9/8/2022 11:35:00 AM

Dear Leona, thank you! Your inspiring message today of events in 1775 and our present is exactly the 1775th email now in my inbox. We met many years ago when you spoke at a conference in Georgia and I introduced you to my palomino mare named Leona in a subsequent letter. God bless you, always.

Jan Nichols From Buford At 9/8/2022 10:53:29 AM

What can I (we) do? We can pray in faith. We can live our lives as Jesus commanded. We can love ALL God's children and let that love emanate from us as we question someone in love about their distorted beliefs. We are not helpless because God hears our prayers. FAITH, HOPE, LOVE,TRUST & LOVE more.

Eugene Witmer From PA At 9/8/2022 4:27:37 AM

This was read in the middle of the night....and NOW I'm wide awake! And it's a "must read" message for all Americans. NOT just another "opinion piece" but a warning we need to heed. How? Well, we had better start thinking...and beyond! God help us if this message is ignored!

The Rest of The Way

I Have Left My Earth Suit
Leona's Family
3/9/2023

WHAT FLAVOR ICE CREAM DO YOU PREFER?
Leona Choy
1/28/2023

LISTEN FOR YOUR NAME
Leona Choy
1/21/2023

WHY THE DARK PUZZLE PIECES?
Leona Choy
1/17/2023

FINAL QUARTER CHALLENGE
Leona Choy
1/13/2023

WELCOME 2023
Leona Choy
1/1/2023

DRY BROOKS
Leona Choy
12/25/2022

LEGACY TO MY GENERATIONS
Leona Choy
12/20/2022

PROMISE KEEPING
Leona Choy
12/17/2022

"CHEWING MY OWN CUD"
Leona Choy
12/10/2022

IN PURSUIT OF A SUPER-WORD
Leona Choy
12/2/2022