Authoritarians

By Andrew R. Duckworth

A mess of limitations
Unknown actors design
To increase irritation
Here and far and wide.
Over the hill, we can’t see.
Running a vicious savage sea
In a world of strangled voice,
Taking away every choice,
Authors of darkness and despair
Reap their reward without care.
In the land of bitter chill
Angry jackals enact their will.
Notice the writing on the wall
So at later hours we won’t fall.

Freedom is something that Americans love and, unfortunately, often take for granted. In a world where people in other places clamor for freedom but are held back by their own governments, we have freedom and unwittingly vote it away or elect bad actors who do the work for us. It is a sad reality, but many in the United States actually believe that freedom is a bad thing. At best, these same individuals would put forth the nonsense argument that even freedom has limits, suggesting they have a very skewed concept of freedom. When an individual acts to violate the freedom of another individual, this is not freedom-something that those who would put forth such an argument seem to ignore.

Over the last several years, I have watched as freedom has been limited and limited and limited still, one piece of terrible legislation after another. The worst part is that it is nearly entirely our own fault. In a land of choice, we made our choice, often the one that took away choice. The freedom to speak freely and openly is one that I am dedicated to, as, in the United States, it is at the first of our freedoms. That is what this poem was born from, from my love of freedom and my lament that freedom is diminishing.