Rant 1.1

I was listening to the radio today, and a song was playing, talking about 9/11. It asked the above question, have we forgotten. It got me thinking and here are my thoughts.

The unconscious definition of American freedom has been drastically changed in the mere 232 years of this countries existence. I would argue that we have forgotten, forgotten what true freedom is, what true freedom means.

Freedom, according to the second definition at dictionary.com, is exemption from external control, interference, regulation, etc. A more eloquent definition is freedom is a soul's right to breathe (I cant remember who said this, i think it was jefferson). Sadly, I see neither of these definitions in modern day America, more so than any other country, but still not there. I see it in the old American West, and in the colonies more so than anywhere else in all history.

Modern day freedom is a desire for freedom from pain, freedom from responsibility, freedom from being offended, freedom from want. Americans have lost their dream. One simply has to look at the size of the government over the past 100 years to see this. We, as Americans, have allowed more and more power, and more and more responsibility, to be removed further from our control. We have allowed countless departments, services, and dollars to merge into the federal government. This is an issue to me because the 10th Amendment SPECIFICALLY relegated these items to state control so that the issues at hand could be decided at a more local level, and everyone would have more control over it. We have allowed inefficiency caused by bureaucracy to infect vast tracts of our nation. One cannot argue that the government is more efficient than the free market on virtually any subject. This phenomenon is due to a concept called the invisible hand of economics, which I do not have time to go into here.

Furthermore, the federal government acts like a rather petulant bully over the issues it does not have direct control over. One must only look at speed limit regulations in the state of Montana. For years, the state of Montana had no speed limit outside of major urban regions. They also received no federal funding for the upkeep of these same highways, unlike every other state in the Union. The state of Montana did not do as the federal government asked, so the federal government withheld its money from the state, thereby making those roads less likely to be up kept, making the roads more dangerous for the drivers upon them. Finally, the cost of up keeping its state highway system grew too large, and the state of Montana caved to federal pressure and instituted a speed limit of 75 mph in 1996. They promptly started to receive federal funding.

The majority of this reduction of personal freedom occurred during or after the New Deal. This is plain to anybody with a sense of history and the barest minimum of intelligence. After the New Deal, the Democratic Party started to represent New Deal liberalism, this mentality that people are not able to provide for themselves, so the government should step into that role as provider. The logical end of that thought train is represented in socialism. To bely that fact, the modern day Republican party believes that people are not morally good, and are incapable of making moral choices. Therefore they are stepping in as the role of protector, whose logical conclusion is fascism. Neither of these roles take an optimistic look at people, neither of these roles allows people any freedom at the end of the day. The simple reason why we have fallen to neither of these evils is the democratic process, pitting these evils against each other in a field of combat where, hopefully, those who desire the most freedom for themselves decide the winner. The only flaw in this system is when those who decide the winner, the American people, fall in love with the economic safety nets of one side, or the lack of moral decisions on the other. This has been occurring for at least the past 70 years, and the worst part is that it is the American people's own doing.

Above i mentioned freedom from responsibility. That very concept is oxymoronic. To have freedom is to have choices. To have choices is to have responsibility. Freedom from responsibility is to live like a child, where you have no choices, and your parents, or a nanny state, make every decision for you.\

This note has taken me 2 hours to write. I have chosen my words carefully, and thought things out thoroughly. I write it to get words on a page, hence why nobody is tagged. It is not what i intended to write when i set out, but it is what i was meant to write. I shall leave with a few parting questions. Is it live with risks, with out chance, without failure, or merely existing? Is it deserved if it was handed to you, if you did nothing to earn it? Is it morally righteous to have all your moral decisions made by the government?