It’s easy in our celebrity- and money-crazed society to forget the fundamental battle for individual rights that drove our country’s drive for independence in 1776 and the Revolutionary War years that followed. Greg Niewendorp’s stand (see previous posting) against NAIS and the authoritarian tendencies it represents bring my thoughts back to that history, in part because I’m currently reading “John Adams” by David McCullough.

We tend to think of the American Revolution as a mass popular uprising, which it was, but what is easy to overlook is that the path to that uprising was anything but smooth. McCullough chronicles long meetings of the Continental Congress, the colonies’ practice government, in 1774 and 1775, where much of the debate was taken up by representatives who argued that the British weren’t as bad as they were being cast by John Adams and others. These individuals pushed reconciliation efforts and regularly reported rumors that a reconciliation team was on its way from England. Even after King George refused to so much as open a letter from the congress exploring reconciliation, there were colonists who insisted that more must be done to try to reconcile.

I can appreciate the mindset of those individuals in favor of reconciliation-no-matter-what. No one wants to think that the government they support every day—by pledging allegiance as students and then paying taxes as working adults, and even in some cases by going to war on its behalf—is treating us with arrogance and cynicism because of underlying corruption. It’s just not a pleasant thought. We’re all Americans, aren’t we? All for one and one for all? From sea to shining sea? Baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet?

Dream on, right? When I see what the government has pulled on Richard Hebron and Richard Hochstetler, as just two immediate examples, it’s difficult to keep backing reconciliation.

Today, I saw something else that made me realize that those who seek flexibility from our government in the area of nutritional freedom are nearly certainly playing a fool’s game. For no stated reason, the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) just issued a coordinated warning about the dangers of raw milk. The CDC in a separate article recalls illnesses recorded in Washington state back in 2005 attributed to raw milk consumption. Why now? It must be some kind of coincidence. Unless someone is hearing the sound of footsteps…

Greg Niewendorp has decided that the time has come to take his stand, and a brave stand it is. He has history at his back.