America Is Not a Free Country

by Doug Newman

Independence Day is upon us. This July 4 we celebrate the 228th anniversary of our independence from Britain and our birth as a free nation. We watch fireworks, go to barbecues, go camping (at tax-funded state and national parks), go to baseball games (in tax-funded stadiums) and hear endless talk about how goldurned wonderful it is that we live in a free country.

Or do we live in a free country?

Consider the following.

In a free country, taxation would be well-nigh non-existent. You could keep what you earned and you could spend, save, invest and donate as you saw fit. You would have far more money with which to solve your own problems.

In a free country, there would not be 20,000-plus laws on the books infringing – and even denying – the right of the people to keep and bear arms. Crime would plummet as criminals would never know who was armed.

In a free country, you could educate your children as you saw fit, without asking anyone’s permission. You could home school you kids if you wanted. Catholics could send their kids to the Our Lady of Mercy School; Baptists could send their kids to the Obadiah Baptist School; Mormons could send their kids to the Joseph Smith school; Muslims could send their kids to the Allah Akbar School; believers in Mungabunga could send their kids to Mungabunga school. If you are not spiritual, you could send your kids to the Whitney Houston School--“Where the children are the future�?--or to the Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young School--“Where we teach your children well.�? Prayer, declining academic standards, evolution, creation, condoms, gay curricula, busing, standardized testing, bullying, discipline, dress codes and all the other debates surrounding education today would cease to be social issues.

In a free country, businesses would not be crushed in a regulatory vise grip. Millions of jobs would stay here in America rather than going to Honduras and Bangladesh.

In a free country, the military would be used strictly for national defense. We would not have troops in 135 countries. We would heed the Founders’ advice and steer clear of foreign alliances, which have been nothing but trouble anyway. We would withdraw from the United Nations and all its subsidiary organizations. Terrorism would cease to be a threat: When we stop throwing our weight around “over there,�? hatred and resentment toward the United States will be far, far less.

In a free country, we would not have the world’s highest incarceration rate.

In a free country, jurors could judge not only the facts pertaining to a given case, but also the law relevant to that case. If Juror Smith thought Defendant Jones was being tried under a stupid law, Juror Smith could vote to acquit on that basis and that basis alone. The prison population would plummet.

In a free country, the value of money would be tied to gold or silver. The Federal Reserve Bank would be shut down. We would not see our savings and our futures eroded by inflation. And we would not owe bazillions of dollars to folks who already have bazillions of dollars.

In a free country, it would take neither a village nor a police state to raise a child. Government would not act in loco parentis for an absentee Mommy and Daddy. Parents would be responsible for raising their own children. Most of the problems we have with kids today – sex, drugs, violence – would be greatly minimized.

In a free country there would be no war on drugs. Drug profits and street crime would plummet. It would not be the government’s job to keep people off of drugs. It would be the job of parents, churches, Mungabunga temples, etc. Back when it was this way, there was almost no “drug problem�? at all. (If the Mungabunga people smoke that hooch in their rituals, they would be free to do so without fear of DEA harassment.)

In a free country, we would not constantly be relinquishing our freedom in exchange for security. People would know that the greatest threat to their security comes from their own government.

In a free country, if a state decided it had had enough of rule by Washington, D.C., it could secede from the union without fear of reprisal.

In a free country, there would be no law forbidding what you could ingest into your body. If a certain medication worked, your doctor could recommend it and you could take it without fear of punishment.

In a free country, there would be no welfare state, no education state and no medical state. There would not be a permanent underclass, the quality of education would be vastly improved, and medicine would be far less expensive. Moreover, immigrants would know that coming to America would mean either sink or swim. Deadbeats would not come here looking for a handout. And all immigrants would, out of necessity, learn English.

In a free country, there would be no minimum wage. Millions of jobs would be created in the inner cities overnight. Congressmen, senators, and other government workers would be paid what they are worth.

In a free country, there would be no Selective Service System. Threats of a draft would meet with furious resistance, not lame justifications.

In a free country, there would be no Patriot Act. There would be no "sneak and peek" warrants. The authorities would have to obtain a warrant to review your bank accounts and e-mails. Habeas Corpus would be secure.

In a free country, there would be no surrender of sovereignty to entities like the UN, where we can be outvoted 2-1 by such paragons of personal freedom as Sudan and North Korea. Our troops would not be involved in UN sponsored wars. Moreover, things like NATO and the International Criminal Court would no longer have any relevance.

In a free country, there would be no “promise�? of Social Security at age 62 or 65 or 67 or . . . how far back will they have moved it when you reach your golden years? You could take that same money and put it in the most profitable private sector investments you could find. Furthermore, you would not be constantly tracked by means of your Social Security Number.

In a free country, you would only be punished if you inflicted physical harm on somebody else. Rick Stanley would never have been arrested and Martha Stewart would be a free woman. Randy Weaver’s wife and son would still be alive. The Branch Davidians would be living in peace on the outskirts of Waco. Non-violent drug offenders would not waste away in prison, while convicted rapists and murderers went free.

In a free country, churches would truly be exempt from taxation, which would be minimal to begin with. The IRS would not have conducted raids on the Indianapolis Baptist Temple, Dr. Kent Hovind’s creation science theme park and other ministries that have not kissed up to the government in order to be tax exempt. Indeed, there would be no IRS.

In a free country, we would not have adopted nine of the ten “planks�? of Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto. How have we done this? (1)

In a free country, your property rights would not be under attack. (Plank 1) There would be no zoning laws. You could not lose your home or business for failure to pay taxes. There would be no EPA harassment of landowners over “wetlands�? and other issues. The FEDGOV would not be the nation's largest landowner.

In a free country, there would be no progressive income tax. (Plank 2) Again, there would be no IRS. Period.

In a free country, there would be no inheritance tax. (Plank 3)

In a free country, there would be no confiscation of property of those who resisted the powers that be. (Plank 4) Consider what they did to my friend Rick Stanley. (2)

In a free country, there would not be a central bank. (Plank 5) There would be no Federal Reserve and there would not a multi-zillion dollar national debt.

In a free country, there would be no government control of communications and transportation. (Plank 6) There would be no FCC, DOT, ICC, etc. Airports would not be mini-police states.

In a free country, there would be no government intrusion in manufacturing and agriculture. (Plank 7) There would be no Department of Labor or Department of Agriculture. Your business could not be shut down for OSHA violations. There would be no federal farm subsidies or price supports.

In a free country, there would be no federal control of labor. (Plank 8) There would be no National Labor Relations Board, no minimum wage laws, no affirmative action or racial quotas.

The merger of agriculture and industry (Plank 9) is tough to explain in one short paragraph. The centralizers can only be happy that farming is increasingly controlled by conglomerates that are far more likely to kiss up to the FEDGOV than a family that has worked the same piece of land for three generations.

In a free country, the government would not be in control of education. (Plank 10) I am fond of pointing out to people that, while neither the Bible nor any of America’s Founding documents say anything about state education, you will find state education as a policy prescription of the Communist Manifesto.

So there you have it.

America is not a free country.

I know, I know, I know: I can vote this November and I can write this essay without fear of punishment. And, no, there are no death camps yet.

However, if this country continues on its present course, one day I will be imprisoned for dissing the FEDGOV and there will be death camps.

The incineration of 80 innocent people by the FEDGOV at Waco in 1993 was a trial balloon floated before a brainwashed nation. Grotesquely excessive forced was used for no good reason, and millions of Americans derisively giggled at “that cult.�? When they came for the Davidians, we did not say anything because we were not Davidians.

Today, millions of Americans still buy the lie that America is a free country. Hitler knew the power of the lie: if you lie to people often enough, they will believe anything. And while we are not at the Hitler phase yet, we will arrive there if we keep (a) believing everything our government – or at least our preferred faction of the government – says and (b) believing we are a free nation. You cannot have it both ways.

Sadly, some people will not clue in until the death camp phase. I pray fervently that enough Americans wake up before then.

Scripture tells us to preach the truth without ceasing, for there will come a time when people will not want to hear the truth. Rather, they will surround themselves with ear-ticklers who will tell them whatever they want to hear, regardless of its veracity. (II Timothy 4:2-4)

People ask me from time to time if I get frustrated fighting the freedom fight in a society where so many will gladly relinquish freedom for a false sense of security. To be honest, the answer is yes. However, I must continue to fight this fight and leave the results to God.

Happy Fourth of July.

By morphus on Mar 18, 2008, 05:46 in Off Topic.

morphus says on Mar 18, 2008, 05:49:

by Fred Reed

It is possible to become so inured to being told what to do, and how to do it, and who to do it with – to become so accustomed to being told what we can say, what we may publicly believe, what we must seem to think, how we must manage our affairs – that we cease to notice just how regimented we are. We are there. We now accept that very nearly everything whatsoever is the proper domain of government. Why?

For example, if I want to let people bring their dogs into my restaurant, why is it the business of government? It used to be, and may still be, that in rural England people regularly brought the pooch into the local pub. It was nice. Country people know dogs and like them. Why is it the government’s concern?

Frightened minor people will nervously wring damp fingers and say, but oh my goodness, it’s an issue of public health. In the first place, it isn’t. Generations grew up with dogs in the house, with whom children regularly played and occasionally slept. The recorded death rate has thus far been subliminal. Give me a quick list of five kids you remember who died of dog poisoning. In the second place, whose business is it? If I want to risk my life by sharing a bar with a golden retriever, why is it not my risk to take?

If you don’t want to come to my restaurant because a Border collie upsets you, then…don’t come. How hard is that? Find another restaurant. There are lots. If there aren’t, carry a box lunch. It’s my restaurant, not yours. If nobody comes to my place because of dog-distress, then I will go out of business. That’s my problem. It is not the government’s concern.

Incidentally, I much prefer dogs to drab officious little warts in governmental offices. I have lived with dogs, and found them preferable to bureaucrats on grounds of civility, intelligence, and unintrusiveness. Further, some of them could be trained to make change.

What about smoking? Why is it the government’s business? If I want to let people smoke in my bar, it’s my affair. People who don’t like it can, once again, go somewhere else. I don’t say this truculently. Customers have every right not to patronize establishments that they find disagreeable. If they don’t like the smoke, or the music, or the food, or my ugly mug, that thing in front with the hinges on it is available. A "door," we call it.

I don’t go to places I don’t like, and don’t expect anyone else to. Why is any of this of concern to the government? To any government? Why must we be eternally diapered by tiresome prisses in power?

For that matter, why does the government have any business telling motorcyclists to wear helmets? The usual, and stupid, answer is that if I fall off and gork myself, the public will have to pay to maintain me on life-support forever. No. In the first place, that’s what insurance is for; in the second, the same argument supports making drivers of cars wear helmets, pay for full roll-cages, wear Nomex suits, and drive at five miles an hour.

In fact I don’t smoke, and I did wear a helmet, and it saved my life in a wreck. My choice, my consequence. Your helmet is not my business. Or vice versa.

Why is the government involved in the schools? If the public schools worked, an argument could be made for them: If children don’t learn to read, they are more likely to end up on the public nipple, which is everybody’s business. In fact, if the schools worked, you wouldn’t have to make an argument for them. In the fifties and early sixties, they did work. They taught the educable to read, did a reasonable job of preparing the bright for college, and did very little else. Which was exactly right.

Today they don’t work – endlessly, badly, overwhelmingly, highly documentably don’t work. They don’t work because they are chiefly a means of imposing social agendas for powerful lobbies and of hiding the failures of the swing vote in presidential elections.

Note that government is the cause of the failure. It is government in one form or another that mandates the hiring of low-grade (read certified) teachers, insists on hiring according to color instead of competence, forbids the firing of the demonstrably useless, and mandates the purchase of terrible texts. Government requires teaching to the level of the dullest-witted. Government also prevents the establishment of good schools in competition with itself. Don’t think so? Try to start a school and run it as you wish.

For this we pay taxes?

For that matter, why does the government interfere in the drug trade? When I was on the police beat in Washington a buddy of mine in the DEA estimated that ninety-five percent of drugs shipped to the United States successfully entered the country. That is, the government intercepts drugs roughly as well as it schools children. The difference is that we know how to teach kids, but just don’t do it. Nobody knows how to stop the influx of drugs.

In the Twenties the government tried to stop the sale of hooch. It didn’t work because the public wanted hooch. The same is true of drugs. People want them. That’s why they buy them. (A patented Fred Insight, forty-weight. You could lube bearings with it.) Further, anybody who wants drugs can get them. So why do we spend vast sums and put up with intrusion by a government that pretends to try to do what everyone in the business knows it can’t?

I do not say these things from some evangelical libertarian hostility to all things governmental. When government does something well, I say let it. You want to put little crawly prongy things on Mars to look for water and weird worms or half-eaten sandwiches discarded by space aliens? (I do, actually.) NASA does it well. The gadgets are there. They crawl. They’re prongy. You want to bring back the public schools of 1950? Good. They worked. I’ll vote for you.

Today, what the government ought to do, it does badly, and what it ought not do at all, it does too well – such as snoop, control, meddle, and impose the ways of the unwashed on everyone. And it’s going to get worse. Much worse.

morphus says on Mar 18, 2008, 05:51:

Is the US a Free Country?

After quite some years of Right Wing Religious ranting, we are seeing the sour fruits of their efforts, the making of a New American Order in which the Bill of Rights and the right to privacy are under attack. South Dakota has outlawed all abortions except in the case of a pregnancy being a threat to the mother's life. The fact that the Little Bush had just successfully appointed two Right Wing or Conservative (I didn't look closely for the more I can ignore what the Bush administration is up to, the happier I am) Justices to be members of the Supremes was no doubt not an accident of timing on the part of the S. Dakota legislators. That and all the other efforts to strike down Roe v. Wade constitute strike one.

The FCC has slammed CBS with a 3.6 million fine because an episode of the pro-FBI show, Without a Trace, depicted teenagers in various modes of undress thereby suggesting that a teenage orgy was occurring but gave no fine to a broadcast of Oprah where a graphic discussion of sex acts that go on at certain teenage parties occurred. Apparently, the FCC actually believes a picture is worth a 1,000 words. I saw the episode of the CBS show and do not recall any depictions of humping or even fully exposed breasts or pricks or even butts. Moreover, the show did not endorse what was going on. Allegedly, Oprah introduced to America the concept of a Rainbow party where every girl wears a different color of lipstick and they perform oral sex on the boys leaving a rainbow of color on their pricks. It is further alleged that Oprah

introduced the [above mentioned] concept to uninitiated adults on an episode that also defined "hoovering," "booty calls" and "salad tossing."
Color me uninitiated. I think I know what "hoovering" means (if it means oral sex provided for the benefit of a female) and I know what "booty" refers to (if it refers to one's rear end) but I don't know what "booty calls" (anal sex?) are nor what "salad tossing" is. In my view, Oprah's introducing overt, graphic verbal depictions of sex acts should have been vastly more offensive than the CBS FBI show to these guardians of American over-the-air morality. So why was Without a Trace fined and the Oprah Show (or whatever it is called) not fined? In my opinion, Oprah's show (timed perfectly in Columbus, Ohio so that kids would be out of school and therefore able to watch it) could only have educated naive teenagers about all the fun they are missing and giving them a primer as how to spice up their parties. This entire FCC crusade is a species of McCarthyism if understood as an effort by the Right Wing and Conservative species of human being to silence those who differ from them in regard to moral beliefs and actions resulting from such beliefs. So, the FCC has taken a pitch for strike two.

This morning, I read in my Columbus Dispatch the Right Wing columnist Thomas Sowell saying "free speech never has meant speech free of consequences." Sorry, Sowell, that is precisely what it means. He should have said "free speech has never meant that all speech is free of consequences. If I suffer consequences for saying President Bush is an evil man, then I am being denied free speech. Let's test that now. I, Mike Geis, assert that George Bush is an evil man. If you see no more blogs you will know that I have either died or was arrested for defaming the President. Actually, Sowell was bitching about professors using captive audiences to present and perhaps even advocate their political or other agendas when these are not relevant to the course material. He is not obviously wrong about this.

There is one context in which a professor or high school teacher should speak out on a sociopolitical matter and that would be in stating an objection to being forced to introduce the Non-Theory of Intelligent Design in classes. All such a teacher need do is point out that Creationism is not a theory in any useful sense of the term because it has no empirical consequences. The Theory of Evolution does and Creationists delight in pointing respects in which it seems to be wrong. That is fine. That is playing by the rules of scientific investigation. But the Non-Theory of Intelligent Design has no empirical consequences, that is it makes no claims of the form, "Since fully-fledged humans who could speak languages were created by God, if you look at place P (in the world, in the human body, or wherever else you like), you will see O (some observable).

Speech is not free speech if you are forced to say something you don't believe. This effort to force Creationism down our throats is strike three. It is damn good thing life in America isn't like a baseball game or we would be out.

kalder says on Mar 18, 2008, 07:35:

I gave up after the first post. But, my word, that was quite enough.

Libertarian mumbo-jumbo. Social Darwinism. It'd bring as much joy to the world as communism did.

"kalder- have you ever had a woman?"--Sam Salmon

britabroad says on Mar 18, 2008, 09:04:

Sounds like a lovely place. But what about all these different beliefs, education systems, drugs, lax laws etc etc? In the real world it sounds like a recipe for separitism, alienation, inter-tribal feuding and civil strife born from a total lack of cohesion. Also sounds like Britain at the moment!

In a "Free Country" there will always be some arsehole who tries to take charge and palm his/her social beliefs off onto everyone. Once the majority agree with him/her, you´ll be right back to where you were in the first place - only much worse.

And NO government anywhere, least of all the US - home of the brave and land of the free - is going to relinquish one ounce of control over the stinking, cosmopolitan, masses who fund them. They have you/us right where they want you/us. Firmly gripped by the bollocks with one hand, covering your mouth with the other. We are all mushrooms wherever we live. (Kept in the dark and fed on shit). Some people prefer it that way. Ignorance is bliss, and let´s pay someone else to deal with all that "running a country" crap so we can get on with our lives.

Leave the big stick at home...carry a cannon!