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Health & Fitness

Happy Dependence Day: the Retreat from Liberty

What does it mean to be independent?

“Liberty: The state of being free within society from oppressive restrictions imposed by authority on one’s way of life, behavior or political views.”

The idea of our country is independence. We all know that the Declaration of Independence was our way of stating that we were no longer the property of England, but in many ways, December 7, 1787 was our real day of independence.  That’s the day our Constitution was finally ratified; the promise that each American was to be considered an individual and independent.  Our government wasn’t giving us Liberty through the Constitution; freedom never belonged to government so it wasn’t theirs to give.  The Constitution is to keep government in check; a guarantee that our freedom will not be taken away from us.  The Constitution’s purpose was also to lay out the framework for our country, each state is self governing, and each American is free to govern their own life.  

Government’s role would be to protect the citizens from force and fraud, then for the most part leave us alone.  A lot has happened over the past two-hundred and thirty-five years; as government slowly grew, our individual freedoms slowly shrunk.  These days, government isn’t only interested in protecting us from each other, they’re now in the business of protecting us from ourselves.  

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There’s no doubt, over the years our individual liberty has been eroding, and the erosion seems to be accelerating.  Our elected officials and bureaucrats are taking away our ability to decide for ourselves and our children and graciously taking on the responsibility themselves. 

Mayor Bloomberg couldn’t get the snow off of New York’s streets this past winter, but he  spent his time, used tax dollars and resources to declare war on soup (too much sodium) and bran muffins (too much fat).  New York State Assemblyman Felix Ortiz wanted to ban salt from all Restaurants after his Dad had heart troubles.  If Ortiz had his way, there would be a one thousand dollar fine imposed on any New York restaurant caught with salt in their kitchen.  In one of the most blatant displays of hypocrisy, before he was disgraced, Anthony Weiner actually sponsored a bill to rid the internet of sexual predators.  I guess he wanted to get rid of some of his competition.  

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We’ve seen government attempt to ban music with explicit lyrics and violent video games (that’s called “censorship”).  We can’t buy a decent toilet because the good ones use too much water, we can’t buy a decent light bulb, we can’t even cut a tree down on our own property without asking permission from an appointed bureaucrat.  There was nothing illegal in the drink “Four Loco” but it was banned anyway; we can’t even smoke outdoors now, our toddlers and senior citizens are being x-rayed, poked, prodded and humiliated before they fly, but it’s fine with a lot of us because it’s all being done for our own good; we’re now snug as bugs in rugs. 

Government is supposed to set up stable, non-intrusive rules that regulate the way we deal with each other.  There should be laws that protect us from being attacked and hurt physically, and laws that prevent our property being taken from us, but when they regulate the way we choose to live our own lives, I think the the laws are going too far.

Little by little, government is getting into the business parenting, not just for our children, but they’re parenting the adults too.  They’re also getting into the business of morality.  Do you really want to leave it up to people like Elliot Spitzer or Anthony Weiner to decide the moral code the rest of us will  be forced to live by?  

If you happen to like the person or people in power now, and think their grab for more power is okay, think again.  I guarantee that they won’t be in office forever.  If you were a fan of President Bush, when he pushed his Patriot Act legislation that said Police wouldn’t need a warrant before searching someone’s property, would it have been okay with you if you had known that President Obama’s people would inherit that very same power?  If you’re a fan of President Obama and you thought it was okay that he pushed legislation that  forces each American to buy a product, would that same power be okay with you if Sarah Palin is elected President?  Someone you don’t care for can hide behind the commerce clause just as easily as President Obama does.  

I hear tea party types screaming that we need to get back to the Constitution, but in my opinion, throughout our history, we always had to fight for our individual rights.  For our first Four Score and Seven years we had legal slavery in half of the country and for the next hundred years or so, we had segregation in the South.  In February of 1942, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order that put more than 100,000 Japanese Americans into Concentration camps!  In the 20th Century, only seventy years ago, American citizens were rounded up, forced to give up their homes, their businesses, their ways of life and their FREEDOM without due process, and were imprisoned based on their RACE!  Not very Constitutional of President Roosevelt, or our Country.  

Those were terrible marks on our history, but thankfully we always seemed to correct ourselves.  I think we’re due for another correction; I hope we can move away from our dependence on government, because it’s not good for us, and it’s not good for the country (just take a look at Greece).  Too many of us look to them for money, answers and guidance; I think we’re making a terrible mistake.  We were warned by our founders that if we gave up our freedom for the promise of safety, we’d end up losing both.  One of the biggest mistakes any of us can make is to have faith in a political leader, their goal is usually power.  Whether we voted for someone or not, I think we should always be skeptical of the people that hold office.   One day, we might be able to see for ourselves that the Emperor has no clothes.      

We should make a pledge to ourselves this Independence Day, to be more independent.  We don’t need to put our hand on a Bible or salute a flag, we should  just swear it to ourselves and mean it.  We should remember that we don’t belong to the country, the state, the Political Party, the President, the Local Union or the Company we work for; we are the property of no one; we belong to ourselves.  Don’t give yourself away.  

Happy Independence Day!  

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