How Free Do You Want To Be?

237 years ago, in 1776, the idea, freedom, was discovered like never before and dispearsed across an unprecedented span.  Men, women, and children alike paid a costly and at times absolute price to purchase for them, theirs, and posterity to come a treasure they deemed worth every ounce of sacrifice. 

Today, it seems we are all too willing to surrendered our freedom for either promise of greater efficiency or the noble ends of social safety.  Sometimes, I wonder if we are even aware that that is what we are doing. 

• It is illegal to drive a motorcycle without a helmet.
• Our government can rightfully require money from us as penalty if we don't put a seat belt on ourselves in our own car. 
• We are required to pay taxes our whole life towards Social Security, essential choosing our source of retirement income for us.
• Our government recently decided for us that everyone needs health coverage and so we are now required to purchase it under the Affordable Care Act. 
• A rising tax burden means we are allowed to keep less and less of the money we earn.  Money embodies the power of choice well.  The less money we are allowed to keep, the fewer choices we are allowed to make.

Europe right now is experimenting with an idea of collectivism.  Basically, you will never see the majority of the money you make, but the essential services you need to stay alive and be more or less happy are provided for you by the government.  I'm open to the idea that maybe the transfer of strength from the members of society to a select governing few may temporarily and to a degree increase the strength of a society over its now relatively weak people, but on the scale of nations, a strong country will always consist of strong citizens.  It is strong, free, and powerful people that make a nation great, not a strong and powerful central government. 

The famous economist, John Stuart Mill, once said that "the tendency of all the changes taking place in the world is to strengthen society and diminish the power of the individual".  The bad news is (at least from my vantage point), that is true!  The good news is, the advancement of that ideology in America is entirely at the mercy of "We the People". 

How free do you want to be??