Yesterday, on the 4th of July, I celebrated by doing what I’ve done every year since my first deployment to Afghanistan. I spent the day alone away from the public and gave thanks to my maker for allowing me to be here and making it so that my children will grow up with a father. I also spent the day digging a trench for a foundation to a home that I am in the process of building for my family. During my time with a shovel in my hand I revisited some of the memories of my brothers in arms and wondered to myself what they made the ultimate sacrifice for. If you ask the average service member why they serve you will more than likely get the answer “Freedom”; to keep us free. Unfortunately almost every Soldier I ever led had never read the Constitution or the Bill of Rights.
I started thinking of how far away from freedom, as a country, we have strayed. I moved to Alaska because I thought it was the one of the freer states in the nation. In some aspects I was right but collectivism and liberalism catches up with you no matter where you go. I guess it’s a cycle that must be repeated every three or four generations that a nation go from freedom to majority rule to the collective and then to full blown communism before it reverts back to a Republic where you are responsible for your actions and no one is responsible for your well-being but you. Even here in Alaska it seems that many of the people I’ve met think it is the responsibility of the Gov’t, local or federal, to take care of them. What many people don’t realize is that whatever the gov’t gives you it has to take from someone else and more importantly what the gov’t gives you it can take away.
I remember reading an article where some news broadcaster conducted an investigation as to what it would cost to “legally” open a lemonade stand. If I remember correctly it would have cost around $40,000 in permits and regulatory needs and about six months before you can “legally” open a lemonade stand. Yesterday I read a story about a Quaker man who was imprisoned for Six years for selling ointments, which were produced with all natural ingredients, because the ointments were not approved by the FDA (a gov’t subsidiary that has approved hundreds of medicines that caused the death thousands of people). I also thought of how everything we do is regulated in one way or another. I think that the word regulated is the same as having to ask permission to do something and that permission is usually granted when a type of fee is paid. There are, I’m sure, a thousand or more examples of how our freedoms have deteriorated. For those who think that it is o.k. to give up liberties for safety let me remind you that one of the safest places on earth is inside of a Maximum Security Prison, you get three meals a day, get one hour of yard time, get on demand healthcare, etc. but what liberties do you have?
My hope is that in my lifetime I will see a Nation that has rediscovered its roots and that my children will one day know what it is like to be really free. To live a life without a safety net and know that their actions are the only actions that count if they are to be successful or not. If I remember my history correctly one of the reasons that the war of independence was fought was because the king had imposed a 1-2% tax on the people and today we, who pay taxes, pay on average 50% of our income in one form of a tax or another and that is not to include the degradation of the currency which is inflated on a regular basis.
In closing, I hope everyone had a great day and maybe for a moment remembered the true reasons of why we celebrate this holiday. As long as the idea of freedom is still alive there is still hope.