THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE SHOULD INSPIRE ALL FREEDOM-LOVING PEOPLE
On three late summer days a little over 2500 years ago, an event occurred that shaped the spirit of resistance to tyranny from that time to this very day. What motivates people, when faced with insurmountable odds and the almost certainty of their own deaths, to nevertheless take a stand against the forces of evil that they see swiftly enveloping them? Over untold centuries, men and women have fought and died for principles, for home and country, for the survival of their loved ones, for their faith, or simply because the alternative of giving up and surrendering to the Dark Forces was unthinkable. These people realized the eternal truth that often, and perhaps always, death is better than life as a slave who is forced to serve the enemies of God and freedom!
A time such as this did occur in ancient Greece in 480 B.C. A Persian tyrant, probably Xerxes 1, (who ruled from 488 B.C. to 465 B.C.), is mentioned in the Biblical “Book of Esther” under the name: King Ahasuerus, and at this time he was the husband of the Jewish woman, Esther (originally named Hadassah), who had earlier saved her Jewish people from annihilation, i.e. genocide, and was by then a Queen of Persia. Xerxes was a proponent of “total government” (just like his father, Darius 1, and like some of our modern-day tyrants and wanna-be tyrants), who decided to add the Greek city states to his vast Persian Empire. He began to plan and bring to fruition another (second) invasion of lands belonging to the Greeks. This was mostly in response to the humiliating defeat that the Greek forces inflicted on Xerxes’ father, Darius 1, in the monumental Battle of Marathon, ca. 490 B.C. At this time in history, Greece was a fractured (what we today call a “Balkanized) country, with small and large city states, and no central government, warring constantly with each other. But two of these ‘city states’, Athens and Sparta, who were perpetual enemies, stood out as the strongest of the lot.
Faced with a second invasion by the overwhelming forces of the Persian Empire, Athens and Sparta, plus several other smaller Greek States decided, for their common survival, to band together as they had when threatened by Darius 1 a decade earlier, to resist the threat that was closing in on them.
Initially, the Greek city states contributed around 10,000 soldiers and
their naval forces, to face the Persian might, whose forces have been reliably estimated to number from 70,000 to 300,000 (although ancient historians claimed, inaccurately, that the Persians numbered 2 to 3 million). They were considered, mostly by themselves, to be the fiercest armed force in the world at that time.
The Persian tyrant, Xerxes 1, gave the Greeks an opportunity to surrender to him and be incorporated peacefully into his Persian Empire, but they refused his offer. The Greeks pooled their naval forces to resist the Persian fleet and prepared to send their outnumbered land forces against Xerxes. Moving more swiftly than the Greeks anticipated, the Persians advanced into the land of the Greek city-states. Their invasion route would lead them through a narrow pass, at that time only a few hundred yards wide, between the mountains and the sea, which was the most direct route to invade Greece. That historic pass was called: THERMOPYLAE, named after the nearby hot sulfur springs.
THE CHANCES OF SURVIVAL WERE VIRTUALLY NON-EXISTENT, BUT STILL THE GREEKS RESISTED TYRANNY
Retreating before the invading Persian horde, the Greek forces decided to make their stand at that Pass of Thermopylae. However, for various reasons, the Greeks, particularly the Spartans, delayed sending their main forces to the pass. King Leonidas, the aging military ruler of Sparta, agreed to take his force of 300 Spartans (his personal bodyguard) and make a first stand at Thermopylae. He arrived there along with perhaps another few thousand Greek soldiers (but no other Spartans), and they began rebuilding the fortified walls that had been previously constructed at the site (the remains of those walls still exist where they were reconstructed).
When the Persian invaders arrived at Thermopylae, Xerxes expected the Greeks to flee in terror. To his dismay, they didn’t! After at least three days of intense and brutal fighting, the Persians had not been able to advance through the Pass at Thermopylae, and their losses were embarrassing to Xerxes. Because of the intense military training of the Spartan Hoplites and the tactics they used, Xerxes had almost decided to withdraw his forces from the pass. Tragically, a disaffected Greek turned traitor for blood money, whose name was Ephialtes, showed the Persians a way around the Greek defenders of the pass, via a long forgotten trail through the mountains. When King Leonidas discovered that he had been betrayed, he ordered most of the other Greek force to withdraw, but decided that he and his surviving bodyguards, plus a few hundred other Greek volunteers, would stay and fight the aggressors to the bitter end, which is what they did, thereby enrolling that band of determined warriors in the immortal annals of freedom’s defenders!.
“MALON LABE”—“COME AND TAKE THEM”—MUST BE OUR RESPONSE TO GOVERNMENTAL TYRANNY!
Xerxes gave King Leonidas and his remaining men the alternative of surrendering and living as his subjects, if they would relinquish their arms and cease resisting the Persian invasion, OR continue to fight and face annihilation. Leonidas’ memorable response to Xerxes has become perhaps the most notable quote in the long history of the refusal of free people to capitulate to tyranny. His response to Xerxes was:
“MALON LABE (mo-lone lah-veh)—COME AND TAKE THEM.”
Those words, carved in the hearts of free people for all time, resulted in one of mankind’s most noble and classic examples of courage and valor in the face of the apparent superiority of the enemy. With those words, the Spartans proved that the hearts and spirits of truly fearless people could resist insurmountable odds, perhaps not with victory and life, but with valor and determination in the face of death. King Leonidas and his remaining Spartans, and those who were left of the other Greek Hoplites who stayed to fight with them, were annihilated to a man, still refusing to relinquish their arms to the aggressors and surrender to them.
Today, on a small hill called Kolonos, where the Greek defenders met their fates, is a plaque dedicated to the memory of these heroes. The words were written by the ancient Greek poet, Simonides (556 B.C—468 B.C.). It reads: “Go tell the Spartans, travelers passing by, that here, obedient to their laws, we lie.” (The original ancient stone marker with this poem, erected on the burial mound of the final defenders—both Spartans and other Greeks, disappeared in antiquity. The bronze plaque now on the burial hill of Kolonos was erected in modern times.)
Fast forward to the U.S.A. of 2024. Over 2500 years have passed since those brave Greeks told their would-be conqueror and dictator that they would not give up their weapons without a fight. Today, the harassed, misled, and often confused people of America are faced with a similar confrontation between a constantly expanding and increasingly authoritarian federal monster and their eroding Constitutional rights. Just as in Leonidas’ time, Americans are being increasingly threatened with the demands of our new “Xerxes”, an out of control vast federal bureaucracy, the despicable mobs of enemies of freedom known as “AntiFa” and the “Black Lives Matter Movement”, and hordes of young mush brains, the “Hoggite Cadres” who have become the willing puppets of sinister mega-wealthy anti-2nd Amendment billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg, George Soros, Tom Steyer, and their equally wealthy and treacherous minions, whose main goal is to repeal our precious Second Amendment and effectively disarm the American people in order to establish their vision of “A New World Order” wherein our liberties, as codified in our U.S Constitution, would become outdated relics, no longer tolerated by freedom-hating tyrants of the left and, in the “dreams” of those Marxist/collectivist “New World Order” masters, no longer facing armed resistance from the disarmed American populace, whom they greatly fear.
WHAT IS THE REAL REASON FOR THE 2nd AMENDMENT?
Tyranny, we need to remember, often rears its ugly head in many guises, one of which is to “make the people safer”. Whenever any government tells its citizens that they must relinquish their firearms for “the good of society”, know with certainty that the only people who will be made “safer” from a disarmed populace are criminals and the members of the tyrannous government. Never forget that the REAL REASON that our Founders gave us the 2nd Amendment in our Bill of Rights was to codify—to ABSOLUTELY GUARANTEE—the God-given and unalienable right of lawful Americans to own and use their firearms in defending themselves and their fellow Americans against the future depredations of their own government against their God-given freedoms. That right is not about hunting, nor is it merely about the right of self-defense of our lives, our liberty, and our property. The 2nd Amendment was, and IS, a guarantee against our liberties being taken from us by a tyrannical, out-of-control government, just like the one ruled by Xerxes in 480 B.C. and duplicated throughout history wherever evil and ruthless and ambitious men seek to pretend that they are “God”.
IF YOU ARE NOT YET “ARMED” AND TRAINED IN THE DEFENSIVE USE OF FIREARMS, YOU’D BETTER “TAKE ACTION” NOW—PURCHASE A FIREARM AND GET TRAINING ON HOW TO USE IT (WHILE YOU STILL CAN)!
Our 2nd Amendment is the final “antidote” that free people must deliver to real or would-be tyrants who threaten our inalienable, God-given rights. Don’t be fooled by their platitudes of just wanting to enact “common sense gun laws” or wanting to “make society safer”. They are LIARS, and gun registration and eventual confiscation is their goal! Comrade President Joe Biden and his fellow band of Marxists and fascists who have basically captured working control of “our” government have never tried to hide their hatred for our 2nd Amendment and for the spirit of RESISTANCE it has always engendered in the American people!
So when “push comes to shove”, as it inevitably will in the near future if the relentless push toward Marxist/collectivist governmental authoritarianism continues unabated under the increasingly harsh rule of Satan’s minions of globalism and their lap dog “toadies”, the despicable members of the Demoncrat Party (i.e. the Klan of New Bolsheviks), let all armed Americans respond with the immortal words of RESISTANCE by Spartan King Leonidas:
“MALON LABE”—COME AND TAKE THEM!
WE DARE YOU!
