In America, freedom is both a commodity and an experience. Either way, there is a cost involved. Freedom—American Style—has created a paradise for many, a superb home for most and a semblance of hell for others.
Many ideologies and most activities in the United States require regulated freedom. Therefore, we have laws and traffic lights to prevent pandemonium as people attempt to situate freedom to their advantage and redefine it to their own cause. Rarely does an individual deny personal privilege for the sake and benefit of others alone.
POLITICS
Why do Bernie Sanders and other Socialist-minded individuals desire to reign-in the Capitalists who have abused the financial market by employing greed? Their correct answer is that the “Middle Class” has lost a place at the table. Their solution is to give government bureaucracy—”Democratic Socialism” a try once again. Surely there won’t be any greedy folks in this organization who want to abuse their/our freedom?
Why are the industries of Wall Street, pharmaceutical, insurance, medical, education, etc. so often the breeding grounds for all things rapacious? It is not because Republicans, Democrats and Independents are in charge—rather because human beings are behind the deals-gone-sour.
LET FREEDOM CEASE
This is the battle cry each time we realize that someone else has defiled the moral code by discovering another loophole that is legal, yet immoral and certain to cause social decline. Let more freedom cease. Create yet another law that perhaps will stay ahead of the craftiness of greed. Restrict everyone’s freedom each time it is abused or hijacked for personal gain at the expense of civility and decency. Do we not need noble, decent leaders like Marx, Castro, Chavez, Kim Jong-un and Hitler today? You know, unselfish men of character and pure intent.
Now then, if you should find such creatures, put a wholesome, honest crew of people under them in charge—people who are immune to the slime and touch of cupidity.
This is how each of the Socialist regimes began and ironically how they ended. Freedom ceased because the leaders and their elect were also infected with the greed bug. No matter their intent in the beginning, this virus will show its ugly and debase virtue in the end.
PRISON
To abuse freedom is to lose freedom, so long as that country and its citizens wish to maintain an honorable society. Our jails are overflowed as testament. Recidivism remains high as new exposures to the hilarity of RELEASE imbibes once again. The undisciplined and those whose faculties are weakened by the strains of addiction and dysfunction have the most trouble with freedom. Cessation of freedom for these poor souls can be their best friend if it ushers them into a world where loss becomes repugnant enough to seek help. There can be great freedom behind bars or in a facility of healing.
LIKE MINDED COMMUNITY
Our founding fathers spoke much of these principles and some quite boldly. Samuel Adams certainly set a high bar for all who would seek the constitutional blessings of “the animating contest of freedom”.
“If ye love wealth better than liberty, the tranquility of servitude better than the animating contest of freedom, go home from us in peace. We ask not your counsels or your arms. Crouch down and lick the hands which feed you. May your chains set lightly upon you, and may posterity forget that you were our countrymen.”
Let freedom cease for this person because of the natural consequences, greed and covetousness, that follow. Samuel Adams recognized that these United States must have a dominance of people who love liberty more than wealth. I wonder what he would say of us now. It explains, at least in part, our divisive political climate and our collapse in moral character.
FREEDOM WILL CEASE
FOR THOSE WHO DEFINE IT AS LICENSE
Freedom is not the same as a do-as-you-wish card. Even when a human law is created that allows a person to do that which ignores the natural law around us, this individual must still wrestle with conscience and soul. Is that not where we are today? We can walk about in space and time as free as the birds above us yet be enslaved within.
Freedom is not an excuse to do wrong, yet this happens–from the cradle to the grave– as a human condition. The man to be pitied is the one who refuses to confess and to amend his wrongdoing. The woman needing the most consolation is the one who has yet to be caught.
Let freedom cease when it purports to deceive me of a consequence-less world or an EASY button.
Let freedom ring when it stands by truth, honor and dignity as though these character traits are essential–necessary to our very existence.
Each time I am willing to own my wrong-doing, confess my sin, ask the forgiveness of those I harm, make restitution and thus honor the innate laws of true freedom, I invest in an America that has hope to live and serve the world another day, just as our brave servicemen and duty-minded citizens have done for centuries. Such is the cost of freedom, and such is how freedom ceases to be.
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