The Slippery Slope Of Freedom
By Wes Keene | March 25, 2010 | In Category: General
Americans still live in one of the most free countries in existence. People flock to the U.S. from other countries because of it. However, those freedoms are dwindling. Inattention to explosive growth in regulation due to fear mongering, grandstanding, and vote-buying have all led to laws that reduce our choices.
Right now there is a slow boil happening. A large scale, immediate reduction in our rights would never pass muster here. Citizen uprisings would have overwhelmed law enforcement, and the politicians who attempted it would have been hauled off in cuffs, or worse. The more realistic, credible threat is what we’ve seen since the beginning of the 20th century: Incremental, gradual, and “justifiable” cuts in our liberties. Most of these are disguised as “common sense” tweaks to our laws. Health care reform seems outrageous now, and it is, but our government has spent the last 100 or so years robbing us of business liberties, personal liberties, and perhaps most noticeably, the right to keep the money we earn.
Liberals will tell us that it’s just necessary to have some business licensing to keep things in order. Cities have taken it and run with it, though. John Stossel discusses it.
“Our most outrageous example of licensing madness is the plight of David Price, a man who learned the hard way that no good deed goes unpunished, especially when messing with lawyers. Price made the mistake of helping Eldon Ray, a fellow Kansan who was fined for practicing architecture without a license. Price didn’t represent Ray in court; he just helped Ray by writing a letter to respond to the fine. In states like Kansas, that practically makes Price Perry Mason. A judge (a lawyer with a robe) threw Price into jail on contempt charges, not to be released until he promised to never give legal advice again – ever.”
So we’ve lost our freedom to conduct business without State approval, which may come at a high cost, or it may not come at all. Well, it’s not that bad yet. Do you trust that it won’t get that bad?
If you’re not planning on starting a business, perhaps you’d be more concerned about government’s interest in your diet. Again, liberals find justification for their increasing restrictions. You’re too fat, they say. You could get sick if you eat too much of one thing or another and only government can help keep us on track. So there are limits on salt, increasingly gaudy food labels, bans on trans fats, and probably a dozen more senseless rules coming in future years if these food tyrants aren’t stopped.
Want to build on your property? Better check with City Hall. They’ll probably help you out, unless they deem you aren’t building a safe enough structure. After all, if they don’t help you make safe buildings, who will? Once you get done putting up that new structure, they’ll ask for a small token of your appreication in the form of higher taxes into perpetuity.
If we don’t stop the constant senseless erosion of freedoms, we are doomed to live as Soviets once lived. At some point, conservative defenders of the Constitution will need to simply stand up to “common sense regulation” and tell the progressive liberals “no more”. Sadly, it’s proven impossible to do that so far.
There are emotional segments of a society that just can’t bring themselves to turn down a new rule. Especially, if a slick looking politician brings out some fancy graphs and statistics to justify the new rule. Cautious mothers want those life saving seat belts, air bags, and other expensive automobile safety features. Established businesses actually root for competition killing barriers to entry. It’s a shame that we’ve become so short sighted that we root for the very laws which will someday enslave us. It is nearly impossible to roll back nanny state laws. Once these progressives get their hands on your freedoms they will use every hyper-emotional trick in the book to con you into keeping them.
Eventually the tyranny became too great for our Founders and they left. They knew it would be tough to keep our freedoms in this country since politicians have a way of tricking us into giving them up. Can we prove them wrong?
Comments are closed.