The Challenge

A little over forty years ago, Ronald Reagan looked out across a little auditorium and gave a televised speech. For the first time - but not the last - he took square aim at a totalitarian regime, looked out over the gathered audience, and declared: 

“If we lose freedom here, there is no place left to run to. This is the last stand on earth.”

I am here to tell you, Mr. Reagan may well have been wrong. He was talking about the United States, but only as a whole. It probably never occurred to him to think of autonomous States.

So there is a place to go. I live there.
And you’ve seen quite a bit of it, lately.

Let me tell you about it.


In my previous post, I told you that you were not born out of time. I told you that, because I suspect you are one of those Americans who has felt themselves born out of time, maybe too late … maybe too early. What if I told you that you are supposed to be right here, right now?

If you want to consider it, the Bible says the Lord called forth the generations, in order (Isaiah 41:4) … meaning you were intended to be here, now, and no mistake. If you’re not a believer, then just look at your heart. Were you born to watch adventures unfold on an LCD screen? Or were you born to live them?

Now consider this: at the dawn of the Revolution, the American colonies formed a little string of settlements mostly along the seaboard of a howling wilderness. The oldest of those settlements had perhaps a century and a half of history - many much less. Many were crude affairs hacked out of the woods in living memory. Those settlements were inhabited by a people who had just begun to develop their own identity as a people, and their own self-sufficiency. They were proud of surviving in harsh circumstances, and prouder still of their British liberties under the law.

Until, one by one, those liberties were taken away.

Neighbor looked to neighbor. Some saw life as usual. Some saw only the obligation of duty to the king. Others - our ancestors - saw the growing signs of despotism. And the tensions began to grow. How would the colonies respond?

You know what they did: they declared independence, and then fought to make it so.

I want to tell you: there is a place very much like that today. It’s called Alaska.

We are physically and psychologically removed from the bulk of the nation, a little inset in a schoolchild’s map. Distant and remote from the rest of the nation, we share a border with a foreign nation but not with our American countrymen. To the extent most Americans think of Alaska at all, it’s as a giant national park, or perhaps a setting for a TV comedy, but not a place people actually live. If there has ever been a part of America that a significant fraction of Americans would be willing to part ways with, it’s Alaska. And as the problems deepen in the Lower 48, Americans will have much more on their mind that what’s happening way up north, a thousand miles from their nearest border.

There are right now just over seven hundred thousand people in a land the size of the entire Midwest. When - not if - the inflow of Federal dollars slows to a trickle, there will be significantly less than that, as a great many newly-unemployed, unable to find work, will pack up to return home, to their families and opportunities elsewhere.

At the same time, this land has oil, gas, timber - a wealth of natural resources - a land ripe for the picking. While other nations hungrily scavenge the globe for resources, once our own government finally begins to buckle under its own weight... well, you do the math.

At some point, should things keep going as they are,  Alaska will move toward independence. If enough Alaskans hold out, and enough of those who are here from the Lower 48 go back home during the hard times, there will be an election, and it will pass.

For Alaska, then, will come crisis ... and opportunity.

Alaska can be a plum waiting to drop into foreign hands; it can be a playground for the privileged few - or we can take up the torch and be the last, best hope for human liberty.

We can be free. Free in a way that even Americans have not dared imagine for generations.

Our population is inured to what outsiders would call harsh conditions, and the better part of our elders are ex-military, or came here for the wild land - the free life - of the last frontier. We hike glacier-covered mountains and ride hundreds of miles through ice on open snowmachines for fun. We hunt and fish for food. We garden for vegetables, even in winter, with home-made greenhouses. Our own pioneer days are scarcely out of living memory, and a spirit of rugged independence and familial support still remains a part of the culture. There are no people on this earth more like the first American pioneers than Alaskans today.  

But you’re an office worker in Des Moines, or a machinist from Pittsburgh. You may be saying to yourself, “How can I measure up to those folks?” I’m here to tell you: it’s not a secret. For every life-long Alaskan, there’s a guy or gal who was born elsewhere, right alongside us.

It’s not about being a hero; it’s about rising to a challenge. And I’m challenging you to rise above your routine, your 9-to-5 existence. You must understand that becoming an Alaskan requires a commitment greater than that needed to move from, say, Virginia to Ohio.

You have to want to be here. It’s not necessarily as simple as moving for a new job, pursuing a paycheck. It’s about wanting a better way of life, and then being willing to work and fight for that life.

That desire must be with you when you notice the early winter days growing shorter – and when you reach the part of winter where it gets really cold, you’ll be ready. We don’t put up with the cold; we protect ourselves from it. So we have four-wheel-drive trucks with block heaters, and they stay plugged in, all winter. We wear heavier parkas than you do, maybe, but there are plenty of places in the northern U.S. that get as cold as Juneau or Anchorage … and some of those places get a LOT more snow.

Sure, winter lasts longer here than in places farther south. But to Alaskans, that rates a shrug and a “So what?” It makes us treasure summer more intensely, and is one of the reasons we play harder. Besides, who wouldn’t like a warm summer day that lasts 22 hours, or longer?  We have weeks of those.

It may not be as easy to live here as it is in a comfortable American home - for some that’s excuse enough to stay away.

You either want to be here, or you shouldn’t be here at all.

If you want to, keep reading.


Alaskans have always been independent, self-reliant folks. Innovation is still applauded here, and there’s not yet the same squashing of ‘thinking out of the box’ that goes on elsewhere.

We can stand on our own. We already provide not only enough petroleum for export, but for ourselves. We refine it locally, for our own use. The greater part of our population lives near agricultural areas which, while insufficient for all of our needs, could be expanded. The forests and tundra still teem with game. It won’t be easy to stand on our own feet, but we can do it. We do a lot of that already.

The challenge of maintaining the liberties that America’s Founders envisioned and codified in the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution is for the present day.  It’s not some “in the sweet by and by” concept; it’s here and now.

 
Alaska may well represent one of the last chances for an independent State. Others may do the same: New Mexico, Utah, Montana, and a few other states appear to be moving in the same direction. But it’s a special type of person we’re looking for. It’s not hard to move to a developed state and get a job in a thriving community, in an existing industry.

It’s something else altogether to move to an undeveloped state and strive to launch that  industry.


We will then need pioneers who can build a Republic, based on the Constitutional principles our Founders paid for with their own blood. No hand-outs, and no guarantees. But the pay-off will be worth it. Can you look your children and grandchildren in the eyes, and tell them you did everything you could to preserve liberty?

Are you the kind of person who would like to say that?

Then let me tell you how you could, in Part 3.


(This is part 2 of an essay jointly authored by Jenny S. and me, about a year ago.)