Do Americans Live in a Free Society?

Whenever I hear someone say that U.S. troops fighting overseas somewhere, anywhere—it doesn’t matter where—are defending our freedoms, it makes me want to vomit, and for two reasons.

The troops aren’t defending anything. They are engaging in the offense: intervening, violating, invading, occupying, killing, maiming, destroying, and making widows and orphans. This I have written about scores of times.

But there is another reason hearing that the troops are defending our freedoms makes me nauseated. The troops couldn’t possibly be defending our freedoms because we don’t live in a free society. What are these freedoms that the troops are defending? It seems as though the more the U.S. military intervenes in other countries the more freedoms that Americans lose.

Although we don’t live in a free society, most Americans think they do. They sing that they are proud to be an American “where at least I know I’m free.” They sing the national anthem and roar when it comes to the line about America being “the land of the free.”

Do Americans live in a free society when they need a license to cut someone’s hair?

Do Americans live in a free society when the government seizes more assets from Americans than the amount of money taken in burglaries?

Do Americans live in a free society when they collectively spend more in taxes than they do on food, clothing, and housing combined?

Do Americans live in a free society when they can be locked in a cage for possessing too much of a plant the government doesn’t approve of?

And then, to add insult to injury, we also live in a nanny state. We have a government full of politicians, bureaucrats, and regulators, and a society full of statists, authoritarians, and busybodies, who all want to use the force of government to impose their values, hinder personal freedom, remake society in their own image, restrict economic activity, compel people to associate with people they may not want to associate with, and limit the size of soft drinks you can purchase at a convenience store.

Yet, most Americans think that because they can find fifty varieties of salad dressing at the grocery store, choose from among a hundred types of wine at the liquor store, select a television channel from over 1,000 choices, download any movie or song they want from the Internet, and sit at home for hours playing the latest video game that they live in a free society. They are oblivious to the extent of government encroachment on their freedoms. They are complacent when it comes to government edicts. And they are ignorant as to what a free society really means.

Wake up, and don’t be one of them. And don’t settle for less than a genuinely free society.

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