Republican State Sen. Jim Carlin took the floor of the Iowa Senate on Thursday to speak about the importance of protecting and preserving freedom.
“You have to ask yourself, what’s our present trajectory,” Carlin said. “We started out with freedom, are we staying true north? Are we aligning our actions as legislators with freedom as our guide? I think we have cause for concern.”
Carlin noted the government takes 40-50 percent of an individual’s income.
“Are you free,” he asked. “The government has taken away every vestige of our personal privacy. Our free speech is being attacked. If you don’t think so, ask President Trump. The moment he lost the election they took away his free speech on every media platform immediately.”
The media content and its algorithms, Carlin said, are created to define our thoughts.
“Orwell turned out to be a prophet, didn’t he,” Carlin said. “Because now, the freedom of thought is being assailed.”
Carlin said he is one of those people who believe the last election was the result of widespread fraud and never got a fair hearing.
“Representative government never got a fair hearing,” he said. “So, we have these things contextually to consider and to wonder — is the loss of freedom being incentivized by the course that we are presently on?”
Carlin was speaking in support of the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Amendment.
He shared a quote from James Madison about the importance of the Second Amendment.
“If the government’s afraid, it’s probably doing things that the people don’t consent to,” he said. “If the government’s afraid and tries to control everything you do, including your right to have a gun, they’re probably not on a good course.”
Carlin said the right to be armed was provided by the founders to protect the people as a whole and sovereign nation, to protect the fundamental right to self-preservation and the right to stand up to tyranny.
“That’s what our founders thought,” he said. “It was a boundary that empowered us to live as free people. And today we’re told the Second Amendment is a bad thing because some people die as a result of guns. Those people seldom express the same concern for the preservation of 62 million of our unborn.
“America was conceived in liberty and her boundaries afforded by the Constitution were intended to preserve it. What we are talking about is the preservation of the Second Amendment. We have a duty, at least our founders thought we did, to protect the people and to keep them free. We’re not on that course presently.
“We were given an inheritance of freedom by those who fought our wars here and abroad, by our founders, they paid for it at great price — their own blood. We have a duty to teach our children about freedom, the price and responsibility of freedom. We have a duty to make sure they get the same inheritance we got.”
Carlin said tyranny is not at the door, it’s in the house.
“It would seek to redefine America as a nation no longer free,” he said. “To make freedom appear evil and to make slavery a virtue. They will undoubtedly call us names. They will undoubtedly dehumanize us and degrade us. We will be told to cling to our guns and our Bibles. None of these things, none of the mockeries should move us. Because no justification should deny law-abiding citizens the right to keep and bear arms.
“We have a commitment to keep to one another and to our children. This bill is part of keeping a commitment to freedom. Our children’s freedom.”
