Freedoms are fewer today than when you were born...

“Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.” – Ron Paul - author, doctor, former politician

Think about all the restrictive signs we pass, most benign; No Parking, No Entry, Closed, Speed Limit 65, Do Not Pass. All we are accustomed to daily. But what about those that have changed our lives maybe forever. The older one is the more dramatic and heavily contrasted the changes might be.

Today in the United States we face significant changes to:

1. Freedom of Speech - This is one of the biggies of the day. No longer can freedom be expressed in words without a breach of some law, expectation or accepted standard of the moment. Both public and private settings apply. Everybody seems to get pissed at almost anything anyone says anymore.

2. Freedom of Travel - Whether by bicycle, motor vehicle, train, plane or foot the opportunity to be confronted by police, security and the like is greater than ever before. Any event that threatens public safety is often used as an excuse to create barriers to travel. Risk is something to be managed, but banning risk will ultimately mean something greater.

3. Privacy - Transparency is expected at all costs from the individual, but seldom of the government, corporations or other organizations.

4. Internet Use - The Web has its beginnings in the late 60s and the freedoms associated with its use have diminished extensively. Control is the greatest its ever been. Manipulation of the end user, mostly without their knowledge, has people being played at the end of puppet strings. Databases build on your individual profile. Google is the biggest guilty private party. In the US, the National Security Agency (NSA) collects your daily Internet and phone use, your physical movement and what you buy and how. The NSA has access, through agreements and hacking, to major credit card networks and other payment methods. Every cent of your money, where it comes from, and what you are spending it on is recorded. Social media is plundering the identity, habits and privacy of users like never before.

5. Banking - Banks (and credit card companies) hide important details of your money affairs in complex sentences of legalize that are hard to pick out and ultimately understand. All's an attempt to hide the real, total money you are spending or will spend. Banks and credit card companies control your FICO score and its effect on your ability to borrow money, get the lowest cost insurance and get a job. Freedom to access money and privately is a thing of the past.

6. Social Security Number - Originally created to track your earnings and social security payments, it's now used as a national identification tracking number. Almost everything has this personal number attached; job, driver's license, tax return, everything financial, just to list a few.

7. Workplace - You can't do this anymore, you can't do that. Any privacy you had is watched, recorded and interpreted by someone. Don't say what's on your mind for fear of violating the sensitivities of those around you. Remember again, everyone seems to get pissed at almost anything anyone says anymore.

This is just the beginning of a list that includes freedoms that involves gun ownership, freedom of the news media (and its responsibility to tell the truth fairly and without an agenda), civil liberties, protesting government policies or anything, taking pictures in public, talking to police, religion.

“I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.”

• Thomas Jefferson

SteemRover out.