Freedom allows the ignorant and inexperienced to profess utopian ideologies—ideologies that captivate the imagination. Their only physical manifestations exist through written words and media—unobtainable aspirations of the unweathered and unblemished: the blissfully ignorant.
Blissfully unaware of the prerequisites for freedom and peace, they fail to see that pacifism and protests persist only because of violence. Freedom triumphs over tyranny through the same means, though for different ends. Peace cannot passively pacify or object to oppression, expecting it to willingly relinquish its narcissistic grip. Peace is both obtained and maintained through force.
The toll of freedom and peace is paid by the tattered and torn. More than anyone, they desperately wish that utopian ideologies could become a distant reality, but their sacrifices bind them to the harshness of actuality. Tyranny and oppression conquer and subjugate through violence, yet freedom and peace, too, liberate and preserve order by the same means.
When the blissfully ignorant can no longer remain so in the face of tyrannical and oppressive violence, they call upon the tattered and torn to restore freedom and peace. It is the very violence they once condemned that they now summon to their rescue. It is the tattered and torn who answer without hesitation. It is the tattered and torn who journey to foreign lands and patrol our domestic domain, using violence to preserve the freedom and peace of pacifists and protesters alike. It is this condemned violence that safeguards their blissful ignorance.
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This first appeared in The Havok Journal on January 20, 2025.
Jake Smith is a law enforcement officer and former Army Ranger with four deployments to Afghanistan.
As the Voice of the Veteran Community, The Havok Journal seeks to publish a variety of perspectives on a number of sensitive subjects. Unless specifically noted otherwise, nothing we publish is an official point of view of The Havok Journal or any part of the U.S. government.
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