FREEDOM: What we are really losing?

Two blogs ago, I told you that the next series of blogs would be about the freedoms that we are losing. Chances are, you thought I would be talking about our freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and second amendment rights. While those freedoms are at stake, and while we must fight to secure our bill of rights, there is a much deeper, underlying set of freedoms as risk. While we focus our attention on the noticeable freedoms being challenged, our very right to life, our very core as Americans, is systematically being pulled out from under us. It is the loss of these underlying freedoms that ultimately will make us slaves to our government and destroy our Republic.

For instance, taking last week’s blog, if we lose our ability to elect people who will represent us then naturally we will lose the freedoms guaranteed to us by the Constitution. However, if we can retain or, as the case may be, regain the freedom to choose elected officials that will represent us, then naturally all of our other freedoms will be safe. The time for settling for the least of two evils is over. We must demand that good, honest, and ethical people who understand our rights and the importance of the Constitution be put into office. If we truly believe that each election is simply about choosing the best bad candidate, then all is lost. Our Republic was not built on politics; it was built on honest, everyday people stepping up to do their part. It is not too late, but we must act now.

The freedom that I want to talk about today is our freedom to live life unabated by undue burdens. Granted, this freedom is not directly guaranteed by the Constitution, but we are guaranteed the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, and we are guaranteed an unobtrusive federal government with very little power over the daily lives of the American People. Today, we cannot even purchase a box of cereal without a federally mandated nutritional label on the packaging. Whether we realize or not, everything that we do is directly regulated by the federal government. We cannot fly from LA to San Francisco without taking off our shoes, belts, sweaters, coats, opening our laptop bags, removing our watches and wallets, loose change, and submitting to random searches of our person and belongings. Notice that I picked two cities within the same state. Constitutionally, the Federal Government has no jurisdiction within the state of California to regulate intercity travel. Our freedom to simply live our lives is at stake, perhaps it is already lost (though, it is not too late to take it back). Now, every time we turn on the news or download our email, we are reminded of more government intervention, from healthcare, to gun control, to our ability to choose what and who we listen to on the radio and TV. Of course, all of these government regulations are for our “safety” or to insure “fairness”. But, what really is at stake is our ability to be free from undue burdens; each new safety regulation makes it just that much harder for us to simply exist in peace. Sure, most regulations are small, almost unnoticeable, but that is by design. No, this is not by some great big conspiracy, but well-meaning people in power do not understand that their “protection” of us interferes with the very core of what makes us America. They wrongly think that just a small regulation won’t really negatively affect us and besides it will just make the people that much safer. I, for one, am not afraid of calories in my cereal, but I tremble before a government that thinks it is their duty to protect me from said calories.
It is not so much the fact that our cereal manufacturers have to post the information; the real issue is why the government thinks that its responsibility is to force the cereal companies in a free country, in the United States of America, to label the packaging in certain ways. The real issue is that if our government thinks that it must get involved in such a minuscule, unimportant issue such as our morning cereal choices, what do they think about the real issues such as our businesses, our local government, our banks, our healthcare, and our children’s education? We are just beginning to see the real plans that Government has for these major issues. If we allowed them to get involved in our breakfast, why are we now so surprised that they want to get involved in the rest of our lives?

We have willingly given up all of our little freedoms that we did not think were important, but the precedent that it set was to tell the government that we did not mind their interference, that we would not fight for our freedoms. Well, now that all of the little minuscule issues are under the government’s control, they are coming for the rest of our lives. Will we hand the major issues over as easily as we handed off the “littler” issues? Well, I suppose you have the freedom to choose, whether you will stand or not, but take heed, for if you choose not to stand soon, you will not have a choice on anything.