Not so many years ago, few people in the West were speaking or writing about “freedom.” Although civil rights battles have existed in the United States for as long as there has been a united country, Americans for several decades have more or less consigned to the pages of history the great struggles pitting “freedom” against “tyranny.” Once the Berlin Wall fell, the Soviet Union collapsed, and the Cold War came to an end, the hard-fought wars for liberty appeared won.

This misplaced confidence that freedom once obtained will remain secure without continuing sacrifice has been ruinous. As with any boxing match where one pugilist stops fighting while the other continues slugging away, friends of freedom have found themselves getting pummeled by growing State tyranny ever since. “Freedom” may have won the war but it certainly lost the peace.

Nowhere has this been more obvious than in the way the United States and its Western allies have responded to the COVID panic of the last two years. Almost immediately after government health authorities began furiously ringing emergency alarm bells, politicians just as furiously began stripping citizens of their protected rights.

The speed with which officials dispensed with the most basic building blocks of any free society—free speech, freedom of association, the rights to travel and earn a living according to free will—has been staggering. Censorship and the government’s “war on misinformation” have replaced discussion and debate. Government mandates have cataloged and controlled citizens’ movements. Government “permission” has become required to go back to school or work. The near-universal conclusion from presidents and prime ministers, congressmen and members of parliament, has been that rights and freedoms simply disappear when those in power decree it so. What a travesty!

As repugnant as Western governments’ responses have been to COVID, traditional friends of freedom have been equally disheartening. Civil rights groups have remained silent while the Bill of Rights is trampled, or worse, they have encouraged the government’s abusive tyranny as in the best interests of the “common good.”

And perhaps most disappointing of all, church leaders have, with few exceptions, abandoned their flocks by submitting to lockdowns and other unconstitutional bars against religious gatherings in the misguided belief that civil authorities must be unquestionably obeyed.

It has been clear that too many places of worship were unwilling to stand up for the natural rights delivered to us by the authority of a higher power when the authorities of so many mundane powers came knocking with billy clubs and harsh words. Fortunately, many people of faith have witnessed the tyranny of the last two years and will never forget what they’ve seen.