Imagine, if you will, a child who grows up living a completely sheltered life. This child never is exposed to friends, to work, or to difficulties of any kind. Instead it is given everything it wants and needs. Now, if you were to take this child and let it loose in society, how would it act, how well would it be able to survive?

Not very well I would imagine. This child would not understand the concept of work, the meaning of pain, of sadness, or of anger. These sentiments would be completely foreign. It might very well be too much for this child to contend with, causing it to suffer a breakdown, leaving it totally unable to cope with life.

I provide this analogy to show that just as this imaginary child would not now how to handle life without having experienced the normal range of emotions, people cannot understand the meaning of liberty unless they have experienced it.

I don’t think there is a person alive today, except maybe those close to one hundred, who can honestly say that they have lived during a period in our nations history when the people were truly free.

For that matter, I don’t think there are many people alive today who understand what liberty means. Thomas Jefferson described it as, “Rightful liberty is unobstructed action according to our will within limits drawn around us by the equal rights of others. I do not add ‘within the limits of the law’ because law is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the rights of the individual.”

Hugo Adam Bedau, PhD, stated the following about liberty, “Government should allow persons to engage in whatever conduct they want to, no matter how deviant or abnormal it may be, so long as (a) they know what they are doing, (b) they consent to it, and (c) no one — at least no one other than the participants — is harmed by it.”

Those may sound like radical ideas today when we have become so accustomed to governmental regulations, fees, and restrictions upon almost everything we do, but that is what our founders fought for, and that is what they attempted to preserve in the system of government as outlined in the Constitution.

Almost a year prior to the signing of the Declaration of Independence, the founders wrote the Declaration on Causes and Necessity of Taking Arms. From that document I quote, “We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force.¾ The latter is our choice.¾ We have counted the cost of this contest, and find nothing so dreadful as voluntary slavery.¾ Honor, justice, and humanity, forbid us tamely to surrender that freedom which we received from our gallant ancestors, and which our innocent posterity have a right to receive from us. We cannot endure the infamy and guilt of resigning succeeding generations to that wretchedness which inevitably await them, if we basely entail hereditary bondage upon them.”

You see, our founders understood that there can be only freedom, or slavery. Under our government today we are in fact slaves, no matter how much freedom we think we have.

Try to build a house, or make an addition to one without a permit. Try to go fishing, hunting, or even drive your vehicle without a license. See if you can buy anything, whether it be goods, or services, without paying some kind of tax.

Whenever a crisis arises I am always hear people say that our government needs to do something. William Pitt once stated, “Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.”

It seems that far too many people are content to let the government regulate their lives, and infringe upon their rights and freedom. This might be so because along with liberty comes a price. As Friedrich von Hayek, author of The Constitution of Liberty, (1960), once said, “Liberty not only means that the individual has both the opportunity and the burden of choice; it also means that he must bear the consequences of his actions… Liberty and responsibility are inseparable.”

Could it be that people are reluctant to accept responsibility for their own failures? Could it be that people are too timid to accept responsibility for defending their homes, their families, and their rights?

Is responsibility now something similar to the definition given us by Ambrose Bierce in the Devil’s Dictionary, “Responsibility: A detachable burden easily shifted to the shoulders of God, Fate, Fortune, Luck or one’s neighbor.”
Although, as I previously said, I don’t believe anyone alive today has truly experienced pure liberty, I think I have come close. After I graduated from high school, a friend and I took the summer off and went up into the hills to live. We took two tents, our sleeping bags, fishing poles, rifles and pistols, and a sluice box, and a few kitchen utensils.

For that entire summer we lived off the land. If we didn’t catch any fish, or shoot any squirrels or rabbits, we didn’t eat. We mined gold, swam, slept, and plunked away with our rifles all summer long. Not once did we see another human being, and I have to tell you, it was the best 3 months of my life. I regretted going back to society after being able to do as I please, whenever I pleased. I knew that if I made a mistake, and got hurt, that I might die, but I accepted that responsibility and was cautious.

I didn’t go into the woods with a hunting license, a fishing license, or a permit to camp. We just drove as far back into the woods as we could, then we hiked back until we found a place we thought was isolated enough to provide us the privacy we desired.

That taste of freedom from governmental interference has stuck with me, and I cannot, for the life of me, understand how anyone would give away that kind of freedom for all the rules, fees, and restrictions upon their liberties.
Not only that, to quote Uri Blumenthal, “I’m not sure which upsets me more: that people are so unwilling to accept responsibility for their own actions, or that they are so eager to regulate everyone else’s.”

John Stuart Mill was a British Philosopher who by the age of eight had read the six dialogues of Plato, and was fluent in Greek. In his writings he once said, “…the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others…Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign.”

That my friends, is liberty. That is also something most Americans have never experienced. And as long as the people of this country continue to vote for candidates who make promises to “do things” for them, they never will experience liberty as it was meant to be experienced.

You see, once our government assumes a power, it never, ever, gives it up. So, as long as people keep voting as they do, all they are doing is voting for people who will forge more chains to bind us into servitude.

That is why there are those of us who still believe as did the founders in 1775, who said, “We are reduced to the alternative of chusing an unconditional submission to the tyranny of irritated ministers, or resistance by force.” I have tasted freedom, and I have lived as a slave. I know which lifestyle I prefer. Do you?

Live your life in such a way that when your feet hit the floor in the morning, Satan shudders and says “OH SHIT!!…. HE’S AWAKE!!”

“Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?“

~ The Author ~
Neal Ross can be reached for comments at bonsai@syix.com. Visit Neal’s Blog at http://www.zombie-slayer.com/neal