No Longer Living In A Free Country - 2011

Americans like to tell themselves that they live in a democracy, a free society. However, I would maintain, that if you take a close look at the type of society we have devolved into in 2011, you may find that this is no longer the case. Consider the current state of the union from a freedom perspective:

• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class controls a large part of your retirement income via Social Security requirements and taxation and then proceeds to drive the system and your tax contributions towards insolvency.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class controls the primary means of health insurance in your retirement via Medicare requirements and taxation, made even more evident by the recent court case that decided every older American had to enroll and pay taxes into Medicare, even if they did not want to, no exceptions.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class forces you spend your wealth on products and services it deems important, such as the requirement that every American must buy health care insurance via Obama Care.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class controls the only viable way to get a student loan for college expenses.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class controls most of the access to the home mortgage market via Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
• You are no longer living in a free country the political class confiscates so much of your earned income that, on average, you have to work well into the spring each year just to pay for your taxes.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class burdens both current and future generations of Americans with TRILLIONS of dollars of national debt as a result of wasteful spending and inept budget management.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class takes billions and billions of your tax dollars and uses it to bail out corporations (e.g automotive companies, financial institutions, etc.) who mismanaged themselves into financial distress.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can dictate how and where a company operates its business, as illustrated by the current law suit that the Democratic Obama administration filed against Boeing because the company wants to move some of its operations out of Washington state (a more Democratic party state) to South Carolina (a more Republican state).
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can allow corporations, unions, and PACs to pour billions and billions of dollars into politicians' re-election campaigns, in return for favorable political considerations (e.g. bailouts and corporate welfare) down the road, drowning out the opinions and needs of ordinary Americans.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can attack independent news outlets for daring to have a different opinion than those in office, e.g. the recent blackballing of the Boston Herald from an Obama campaign visit for daring to print an op-ed piece by possible Presidential opponent, Mitt Romney.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can ignore current laws or judicial decisions when they desire, such as when the Obama administration unilaterally decided against enforcing the Defense of Marriage Act or when the same administration blatantly ignored the ruling of a Federal judge relative to the Gulf coast oil drilling moratorium.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can invade your privacy capriciously, via the Patriot Act, for virtually any reason or whim.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can run a shadow government, outside the boundaries of the Constitution, by employing dozens of "czars" and using executive orders to bypass legislative procedures, much like the Obama administration did by ordering the EPA to regulate greenhouse gases after the failure of climate control legislation in Congress.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can use your cell phone or install tracking devices in your car, as currently proposed by the Obama administration to begin taxing your miles driven, to track your locations and movements.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can use the awarding of Federal tax dollars and contracts based on election campaign contributions and political views, a likely abuse of the Obama administration's desire to force corporations to disclose campaign donations.
• You are no longer living in a free country if politicians can defame and belittle Americans for simply having a different view, such as when Nancy Pelosi called all those opposed to Obama Care as being un-American, or when Howard Dean called all Tea Party members racists, or when Congressman Alan Grayson called all those opposed to Obama Care knuckle dragging Neanderthals.
• You are no longer living in a free country if the political class can overturn the wishes of millions of Presidential primary voters like the Democratic Party can do with its "Super Delegate" process.

Look at some of the words from above that describe the current political state in America today: if the political class can control, force, burden, confiscate, and blackball us in so many areas, we are no longer living in a free country. When life in a democracy more closely resembles the world in Orwell's "1984" vs. what was envisioned in the Constitution, we are no longer living in a free country.

This is why we need to implement many of the steps outlined in "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" relative to our current political processes. Until institutional changes are made to those processes, politicians will continue to control, force, burden, confiscate, and blackball.

Barry Goldwater once said: "A government big enough to give you everything you need is big enough to take it all away." With our freedom constantly being eroded by the political class, government gets bigger and bigger and the potential for Goldwater's warning to come true gets more and more likely every day.




Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com