Simple Liberty

Liberty, the freedom to make decisions and choices for one's self that are not imposed by a religious, governmental or "other" entity with regulation powers over groups of people.

Simple Liberty is what most people ask for.  You don't tell me what to do and I won't tell you what to do.  Not much difficult to understand there.

Obviously, there are regulations on individuals liberties in every society.  There has to be a compromise in order to protect the remaining liberties.

In America, the "golden rule" of regulating individual liberties is the idea that "Your rights end where the next person's begins."

So, to state, again simplistically, the ideal of American individual liberties we say, "If you don't like/ agree with/ believe in 'A', then you do not have to do/think/agree with, 'A'.  However, you do not have the right to interfere in someone else's ability to do/ think/ agree with 'A'."

If you don't like abortion, don't get one.
If you don't like homosexuality, don't be homosexual.
If you don't like music and dancing, don't listen to music or dance.
If you don't like just about anything, don't do it.

However, this is America.  You have the right to live your own life and no one else's.  Unless someone is doing something that is hurting other people, they have the right to screw their lives up if that is, in fact, what they are doing.

We hove to make note here though, that a great many people want to maintain and vociferously defend the right to live their own life, yet at the same time, when they engage in something that causes them some type of harm, they do not want to accept the responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

In a truly "free" society, it is up to the individuals to research, prepare for and understand the surrounding issues and risks of what they involve themselves in.

Because we now have courtrooms full of lawsuits by people who take litigious action trying to avoid being responsible for their actions, the government and regulatory bodies increasingly abridge individual liberties to protect people from themselves.

The problem with this is that everyone must now lose or have liberties restricted because of others that have abused their own liberties.

The bigger problem with this is that we have a government that thinks it can continue to restrict everyone's liberties in order to protect people from themselves and to protect itself from liability.

The citizens who elect the representatives have voluntarily handed over the leadership  of the country to the government itself.

American leadership is not meant to work that way though.  It is a government intended to be led from within the citizenship, not the government.

In short, we have taken the locks off the pens and hired wolves to tend sheep.

Apathy, desire for comfort and an attitude of "Let someone else worry about it." among a larger number of citizens has led to a governing "class"  that does not sees itself as the stewards of the citizens interests, but as the leaders and "keepers" of the citizens instead.

We are the citizen leaders of this country.  We provide the course and direction of this country, NOT the government.

In order to regain our liberties we are obligated to participate.

1) Be a part of the discussions as often as possible.  It may be boring to sit through a city council meeting, but they are counting on not having many, if any citizens pay attention to what they are attempting to slip by them.

2) Vote.  Vote every chance you get to.  The government and so called partisan "leadership" is counting on voter apathy to slip their candidates through the few citizens who are participating.

3) Be educated in local, state and federal issues, don't just take the media's or the politician's word for it.  The sad thing is, the media is not objective or un-biased.  They have become editorialists and have taken sides in political and governmental activities.  The politicians have become and hired people to be masters of deception.  The more citizens educate themselves, each other and think for themselves, the better and greater impact citizens will make at the polls.

The Death Of Liberty Is ...Selfishness

To have liberty, in this country, the freedom to make choices for oneself instead of having some entity or group forcing them upon you, is something special in the world.  Sadly, too many people confuse liberty with selfishness nowadays.

Civil liberties and the "protection" of them in this country were intended (ah, there we go again with intentions)to make sure that certain things were not denied to people based on things they couldn't necessarily change. Ensuring that things like housing and the ability to go into store and shop, etc for things like skin color, physical or mental handicap.

There are some things "protected that could be chosen to change, but they are those kind of things that if people were forced to change them or were denied a living because of them, we might as well hang up the whole "freedom" ting anyway.  Something like religious beliefs for example. Religion is a choice, but it isn't a light choice.  It's something that affects our lives profoundly.

Fast forward to today.People want to make civil liberty issues out of personal choices to escape responsibility for their personal decisions.  It's not enough that they aren't denied the ability to do most anything they want, no.  Everyone else must be forced to accept and support that choice as well., is what they want.

Part of being free is accepting responsibility for yourself and your choices.  If someone invents something that is deemed largely un-safe or even dangerous to use and a few people make the choice to use it anyway, they have accepted a responsibility for their choice.  To tell everyone else that not only must we accept that they want to use that thing (no problem there as long as it hurts only the person using it if it hurts anyone at all) but that we must accept their using it even when it conflicts with other peoples choices and rights, well now, that's not OK, not at all.

Don't Waste Your Vote, Vote Your Own Mind

How often do we hear people say things like, "If you vote for candidate C, you might as well be voting for candidate A, so vote for candidate B to make sure candidate A doesn't get elected."

Have you ever heard, "We need to vote for the best interest of the whole country."

That sounds nice doesn't it?  Not to me.

I don't try to tell people how to live and work in other parts of the country because I don't know what is in the best interests for their geography, weather, economy and so on.  No, I'll continue to focus on the very few things the federal gov't should be focusing on and my local issues, where I live and am involved.

This country was founded on the ideal of individual liberty.  Each person having the rights and freedom to live their own life.

When we walk into the voting booth, that is one of the most personal and individual things we can do.

We are able to express our own individual opinion on who we think is the best candidate for the job.  Not to make sure another candidate doesn't get elected or  just because a candidate belongs to the same party.

Sadly, the only vote that is wasted is the vote not made.  When we have people who will use false and stolen identities to manipulate voting outcomes, it only helps when everyone who is able to vote for themselves does so.

Voting is more than a privilege, it's one of the few outright obligations we have as Americans.

So, This Liberty "Thang"

There is a balance that must be kept between individual liberty and the community as a whole when we live in a town or city.

The problem seems to be that in these times, in name of "safety", in the response to fear, the balance is tipping away from individual liberty.

This is an extremely bad thing.  The rallying cry of the "group" always seems to come down to "If it saves just one..., Then it will be worth it."   That kind of thinking my friends is dangerous and un-true.

Now, I am a notorious isolationist and under other circumstances,  I might relish tossing the many to save the one, but even I realize that all communities start with families.

So balance must be sought.  A tightrope walk that never ends.  We must always ensure the individual has the largest amount of liberty as possible.  At the same time, those individual liberties end where the next person's begins.

As I said in the previous post though, group-thinking seeks to remove individual liberty in the name of safety and security.  Group-thinking is an agent of fear.

More than that though, group-thinking is an agent of control.  Our government was originally designed to make sure the many were above the few.  That small groups of "special people" would not have dominion over the many.

Because this is not a country of many people united as a group of minions or ants in an ant hill.

We are united as individuals with a common cause.  That is in our Constitution.  We are recognized as equal individuals first and foremost.  We cannot or should not, be making laws and regulations that does not take the concern of each individual into consideration.

We should elect representatives to stand for us to do the best job of looking out for the interests of ALL the people in that representative's district.  They should not be looking out for only the interests of the members of his or her party or "club".  Yet it happens more and more each election.

There are people who want to raise taxes  to use taxation as a tool to stop hurting themselves.  That is not what taxation is meant for.  It is not that group of people's place to stop the individual from doing something that might hurt themself.  That is the right, choice, responsibility and consequence of the individual.

You know what else is in our Constitution?  The direction to protect the minorities.  What minorities are those?  Most people think that it is a religious, racial, etc.. minority.

What it really refers to is the voting minority.  The group of people who held the smaller number of the vote.  Now, that might come down to religious, racial or other reasons that numbers in the election were so small, they just weren't there to represent a larger share.  

Our Constitution says that even if one side has the majority (vote) they can't just run roughshod over the minority.  Considerations have to be made to respect those people's individual liberties as well.

That consideration is being lost.  The Constitution is being ignored by the group-thinkers pushed by fear and greed and desire to control.

If we really want to get this country back on track, we have to find balance again and allow people to make their own choices and live with the consequences of them.