The Lanterns Must Be Lit
“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 said to his friend,/If the British march/By land or sea from the town tonight,/Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch/Of the North Church-tower, as a signal light/One if by land and two if by sea…”
Thus open the first stanzas of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem, “Paul Revere’s Ride,” commemorating that fateful ride. Revere and his fellow riders (William Dawes and Samuel Prescott amongst others) risked their very lives on that dark April night to give warning that the leaders of the colonial resistance against King George’s tyranny were in danger. The British regulars, members of the most powerful and best trained army in the world were hellbent on bringing these “outlaws” to British justice, clapping them in irons, and hauling them off to Britain and a hangman’s noose. Were it not for those two blazing lanterns in the old church tower, then our history may have been very different. They served as a warning beacon to our forebears to make ready for a fight against oppression.
Two hundred and fifty years later, we must once again stand ready, waiting for those lanterns to blaze anew. Like those patriots of over two hundred years ago, we will defend those liberties that we hold dear against the machinations of despots and would be kings. These liberties are now being obliterated with each passing day, not by some king in a far-off land, but our own president and his army of loyal minions. Guised though they might be in the trappings and robes of office, they have betrayed the freedoms they vowed to protect, the freedoms which were bought and paid for in full by the blood of Americans across two centuries.
Let us once again light those lanterns and hang them on high for all the world to see. Whether in home or school, library or church, court or town hall, may the light they shed never be extinguished and serve as a symbol, that we Americans will not stand idly while the freedoms that we cherish are stolen from us. Let those lights give warning to those who would seek to usurp that power which has been given to them by us the people. Let those lights caution them that they will account for their misdeeds in the halls of justice and in the courts of public opinion. The power which they so easily abused will not save them from the law nor will it save them from being removed from power by the ballot box. May they remember this.
May those lanterns that hung so many years ago in a church belfry, once again serve as a beacon of hope in the darkness we find ourselves in. So long as we keep those lanterns in sight, we can stave off the darkness and give warning that we the people shall never again let would be kings take that which is most dear to us: freedom itself.
Signed,
Filius Libertatis
