POLITICS: Enemy Within: The Greatest Danger to Liberty – USSA News

“Tyranny can now enter our country.”

Benjamin Rush dropped that warning in 1778 at the height of the War for Independence. But he wasn’t talking about Redcoats. Recognizing the nature of power and humanity, he was giving us a timeless warning about “ourselves” and our own “great men.”

The Founders knew the score. History is littered with power-hungry rulers who use deception. They stage false flags. They manufacture crises or exploit real ones. The worst of them pretend to love liberty just to destroy it.

In the end, it all leads to tyranny, and the greatest threat is from within.

THE TRAP

The Founders understood that the story of the Trojan Horse was more than ancient mythology. It was a strategy for infiltration. They knew tyrants don’t need to burn a city down if they can trick the people into opening the gates themselves.

In his 1766 sermon celebrating the repeal of the Stamp Act, Reverend Jonathan Mayhew called the scheme exactly what it was: a “snare broken.” Mayhew identified the Trojan Horse: The British sold the tax under the guise of security after the Seven Years War. But under the surface, it was a trick to fund a standing army and destroy liberty from within.

“And the golden temptation, it is said, took with too many, for while. A Pandora’s box, or Trojan horse, indeed!”

The previous year in his broadside urging noncompliance with the act, John Dickinson warned the people to not fall for the trap.

“If you quietly bend your Necks to that Yoke, you prove yourselves ready to receive any Bondage to which your Lords and Masters shall please to subject you.”

But even after repeal, Mayhew knew this single victory wasn’t the end of the story – not even close. He continued his sermon, quoting the desperate warning from the priest in Virgil’s ancient epic: Don’t let your guard down – it’s insanity to think they won’t come back for more.

“O wretched citizens, what so great a madness is this? Do you believe the enemies have gone away? Or do you think that any gifts of the Greeks lack treachery?”

THE FALSE FLAG

This strategy wasn’t new to Mayhew or the Revolutionaries. They knew history is filled with tyrants using these pretexts to seize power. Today, we call them false flags.

Machiavelli documented the master playbook. In 6th Century BC Athens, Pisistratus staged a fake attack on himself to justify a standing army and seize total power.

“As to the employment of deceit and cunning, I give the following instances. Pisistratus, after the victory which he had gained over the people of Megara, was greatly beloved by the people of Athens. One morning he went forth from his house wounded, and charged the nobility with having attacked him from jealousy, and demanded permission to keep a guard of armed followers for his protection, which was accorded him.”

In Cato’s Letters, Thomas Gordon explained that the fatal danger wasn’t the final army – it was the first step that this established: a tiny force of just 50 men armed only with wooden clubs.

“Pisistratus, having procured from the city of Athens fifty fellows armed only with cudgels, for the security of his person from false and lying dangers, improved them into an army, and by it enslaved that free state.”

Machiavelli knew it – one tiny step is all an ambitious tyrant needs.

“This first step enabled him easily to attain such power that he soon after made himself tyrant of Athens.”

THE FATAL PRECEDENT

It’s not just false flags.

In the early years of the American Revolution, John Dickinson gave a powerful example to show how rulers will also exploit a real crisis to establish a single precedent that will eventually destroy freedom.

“Spain was once free. Their cortes resembled our parliaments. No money could be raised on the subject, without their consent. One of their Kings having received a grant from them, to maintain a war against the Moors, desired, that if the sum which they had given, should not be sufficient, he might be allowed, for that emergency only, to raise more money without assembling the Cortes.”

The good guys fought against it – but they lost. And that loss became the template for unlimited power in the future.

“The request was violently opposed by the best and wisest men in the assembly. It was, however, complied with by the votes of a majority; and this single concession was a PRECEDENT for other concessions of the like kind, until at last the crown obtained a general power of raising money, in cases of necessity.”

They never recovered from that fatal mistake, and freedom was obliterated.

“From that period the Cortes ceased to be useful – the people ceased to be free.”

THE PROTECTION RACKET

The ancients knew this game well. Sometimes, all a tyrant needs to do is frighten the people.

Gordon told the story of Dionysius, the tyrant of Syracuse. 150 years after Pisistratus, he used the same strategy, but only through fear mongering.

“He told Them, (and this was Argument enough to gain their Belief) that he went in hourly Peril of his Life; and begged them to appoint him a Guard: They readily granted him what he wanted, and he readily took what they had thus helped him to; even the Prerogative of putting Chains upon them All.”

Like Pisistratus, he was also granted just a small force to start, 600 men. Being loyal only to him, this was quickly expanded and used to seize total control.

Being well-versed in this history, it’s no surprise James Madison understood that government will always use fear of foreign danger, real or fake, to attack freedom at home.

“Perhaps it is a universal truth that the loss of liberty at home is to be charged to provisions agst. danger real or pretended from abroad.”

ENGINEERED CHAOS

As John Trenchard wrote in Cato’s Letters, there’s also a domestic version of this ploy: manufacture a crisis at home.

“They will, by all practicable means of oppression, provoke the people to disaffection; and then make that disaffection an argument for new oppression, for not trusting them any further, and for keeping up troops; and, in fine, for depriving them of liberties and privileges, to which they are entitled by their birth, and the laws of their country.”

This isn’t theory. As Gordon documented, Nero, the most infamous tyrant in history, pioneered this tactic.

“Nero, who, disguised in the habit of a slave, went roaming about the streets, and scoured the public inns and stews, followed by a set of companions, who seized as prey whatever stood exposed to sale, and assaulted whomsoever they met; and all these violences were committed upon people so unapprized of the author, that he himself was once wounded, and bore the scar in his face.”

Once people learned it was Nero, there were copycats – and this led to widespread violence and disorder, so severe it was like the city was under siege.

“The name of Nero being once used to warrant licentiousness, was falsly assumed as a cloak by others, and many with their own separate gangs boldly practised the same excesses. So that such were the nightly combustions at Rome, as if the city had been stormed and the inhabitants taken captive.”

Nero then used these riots, which he started and provoked, as justification to expand military rule.

“These tumults went on, till the people being heated and rent into dissensions, and commotions still more terrible apprehended, no other remedy was found but that of driving the players out of Italy, and of recalling the soldiers to guard the theatre.”

THE FALSE SAVIOR

The lesson is clear: if it happened in Rome, it can happen anywhere. That’s exactly what the Anti-Federalist writer Cato warned us about in 1787.

“Americans are like other men in similar situations, when the manners and opinions of the community are changed by the causes I mentioned before, and your political compact explicit, your posterity will find that great power connected with ambition, luxury, and flattery, will as readily produce a Caesar, Caligula, Nero, and Domitian in America, as the same causes did in the Roman empire.”

That brings us to the most dangerous kind of Trojan Horse: the ruler who pretends to love liberty but destroys it once they get power. For that, we have Imperator Caesar Augustus. Gordon explained that at first, he made it look like he was on the side of the people and their liberty.

“Augustus paid great court to the people: the very Name that covered his Usurpation was a compliment to them: he affected to call it the Power of the Tribuneship, an Office first created purely for their protection, and as the strongest effort and barrier of popular Liberty.”

His tactics were masterful. First, he resigned the consulship, making it seem like he was returning power to the people. In exchange, the Senate gave him the power of the tribune, which the people understood as an office that fought against tyranny.

Then he used that power, under the guise of protecting national security, to seize total control.

“It was for their sake and security, he pretended to assume this power, though by it he acted as absolutely as if he had called it the Dictatorial power; such energy there is in words! The Office itself was erected as a bulwark against Tyranny; and by the name of it Tyranny is now supported.”

THE ENEMY WITHIN

The founders were very aware of their own 17th century Augustus: Oliver Cromwell.

He was supposed to be the champion of English liberty. But, as Gordon documented, he sold a military dictatorship to the people under the oldest trick in the book: protecting them from the opposing party.

“The Partizans of Oliver Cromwell, when he was meditating Tyranny over the Three Nations, gave out, that it was the only Expedient to ballance Factions, and to keep out Charles Stuart; and so they did worse Things to keep him out, than he could have done if they had let him in.”

That’s the ultimate lesson from history: the wolf always comes dressed as a sheep. Benjamin Rush knew this – even at the height of the war for Independence.

“Tyranny can now enter our country only in the shape of a whig. All our jealousy should be of ourselves. All our fears should be of our great men, whether in civil or military authority.”

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