Americans Long to be Free
The View from the Middle
Recently, President Obama
suggested that slavery and prejudice are in the DNA of America. While I believe that there are some qualities
built into the fabric of our country, I will respectfully disagree with our
President. Prejudice is not one of them.
Anything that is part of our DNA would be part of virtually every
person in The United States, but even at its peak, the most aggressive estimate
of slave ownership in the South is only 33%.
That means that 67% did not own slaves.
Now, you’ll say, “that was just
economics”. Many families just couldn’t
afford slaves. That may be true, but it
doesn’t account for all non-slave owners in the South or for the fact that
slave ownership in the North was nearly non-existent.
I can safely argue that there has always been more people in this
country that opposed slavery than supported it.
The belief in slavery or the subjugation of any individual has never
been in the DNA of this country. In
fact, the concept of slavery died a long and grueling death here because it
clashed with an idea that IS in the American DNA, and that idea is “Freedom”.
If you need any proof of that fundamental conviction to liberty for
all, you need only take a quick look back at our Founding Fathers. They risked everything when they signed the
Declaration of Independence. In fact, at
the signing of that document, Ben Franklin famously warned his fellow signers, “We
must, indeed, hang together, or assuredly we will all hang separately.”
But today we give away our freedom far too easily. We won’t give up all
of our freedom all at once, of course.
We give it away slice by slice; inch-by-inch as we attempt to stop “the
other guy” from doing something that we are against. Let me give you some examples.
Let’s say that you don’t smoke. Good
for you. So, when some state decides to
ban smoking anywhere (restaurants, bars, casinos) you’re all for it,
right? Smoking is bad for people. You have the second hand smoke issue and all,
so you don’t mind taking the right to smoke away from others because you stand
on the moral high ground.
But do people have the right to smoke?
Do restaurants have the right to “choose” if they allow smoking in
general or in special smoking rooms?
Instead of taking those rights away, why not just inform people of the
impact of smoking and then let free people decide on their own what they will
do? If a restaurant chooses to allow
smoking, that is their choice. You don’t
have to go there, and if there are enough people like you, then restaurants
that allow smoking will soon go out of business. Or some may flourish appealing to that niche
market. Freedom means having a choice.
Let’s say you support gay marriage.
Good for you. Should you allow
others to have an opposing opinion? If
you believe in traditional marriage, should you be forced to bake a wedding
cake for a gay couple? Should a church
that supports traditional marriage be forced to wed a gay couple? Do those people or those churches have any
rights? By definition, “force” means a
lack of choice.
Let’s say that you have never even had a soda in your life, then, some
crazy mayor bans the sale of all large sodas in his or her city. Should you be concerned? Of course, but that’s crazy and would never
happen, right? Uh-oh, it already did.
On the University of California campuses, the home of the Free Speech
Movement, there are now dozens of phrases you can’t utter, including; “America
is a melting pot” and “America is the land of opportunity”. Is this political correctness run amuck? I think so!
Is this not a violation of the freedom of speech?
Finally, the EPA is on the verge of regulating everything from our
lakes and streams to the mud puddles in your back yard. Remember, this is the agency that used the
Roman practice of crucifying newly conquered citizens as a way to gain control. Do you really want those guys snooping around
in your private business?
We would never give up all of our freedoms at one time and move to a “Hunger
Games” or “1984” environment immediately, but we could slowly move there as our
government chips away at our freedoms one small step at a time.
We are, in my opinion, very much like the proverbial frog that would
jump out of a boiling pot of water, but would be boiled to death if it were put
into warm water, which is then slowly brought to a boil. We need to keep the government small and
involved only in the things it does well, which are very few. But is our government too involved in our
lives?
There are two ways to measure the intrusiveness of our government. The first is to look at the size of our
Federal Register. The Federal Register is
a publication of the administrative regulations of our government’s
agencies. When it was first published in
1936, it totaled only 2,620 pages. In
the Obama administration it has averaged over 80,000 pages. And with every page we lose a little bit of
our freedom. Feel like that frog yet?
Another good measure of the invasiveness of government is to track its
spending as a percent of our GDP (Gross Domestic Product). In the first hundred years of our country’s
history our spending represented less than 5% of our GDP, excluding the cost of
the Civil War. FDR brought that
percentage up to about 10% and Truman and Eisenhower took it to about 20% right
after WWII. Today it is 25% and plans
are to keep it there – sure! Getting
warm yet.
The point is, the government will continue to grow, because that is all
it knows. And, as it grows it will
continue to intrude into or take over our lives, unless “we the people” stop
it. We all need to reign in the size of
our government with our votes before it is too late and “big brother” controls
every aspect of our lives, and freedom is nothing but a vague memory.
