So You Think You’re Free…
by: Aaron D. Hancock
What is freedom?
Is freedom pushing a button on an electronic voting machine to choose one
of two candidates who act and vote basically the same but just have a different
letter after their name? Is freedom
being told what you can and can’t do on YOUR land?
After all, the founding fathers agreed that property rights, and being
able to do whatever you want with your own land (without a king or other
authority’s permission) was the fundamental basis of our rights.
Without property rights, they said we had no rights.
Is being able to speak your mind as long as you don’t speak it to a
government official or as long as you protest in a “free speech zone”
freedom? Last time I read the Bill
of Rights I was relatively sure it applied to ALL of America and any street
corner across this beautiful land. Is
having your every phone call recorded, analyzed by computers and catalogued by
the government freedom? Does the
destruction of Habeus Corpus concern you? It
predates the Declaration of Independence, so maybe you should have paid
attention when that was abolished a few short weeks ago.
Do the police forces around the nation acting more and more like military forces concern to you? The black uniforms, the automatic weapons, the military boots… all to inspire fear in who? Oh yes, that’s right, the American people. Is being tracked and catalogued like an animal part of freedom? Is a national ID card with a tracking chip and your personal information on it freedom? What about the scanners that look through our clothes at the airport or the cameras on street corners of even small towns like mine? What about the Justice Department’s complaints of thousands of FBI abuses of the Patriot Act against US citizens? How about the FEMA camps with barbed wire fence and armed guards; complete with searches before going out and coming in? All in the name of our safety and benefit of course! What about the “work camps” that were created and are still funded, upgraded, and staffed with armed guards as part of the REX-84 program back in the 80’s, is that how we shine to the world as a beacon of “freedom?” Are random police checkpoints where they demand to see your papers (identification) ok according to the 4th Amendment? Do you even care?
If you don’t, an American patriot named Benjamin Franklin had a little something to say to you, “Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.” As citizens of this great land we must be concerned for the lack of freedom we now have and we must be on guard and fight against the further erosion of our rights. Thomas Jefferson said, “Enlighten the people, generally, and tyranny and oppressions of both body and mind will vanish like spirits at the dawn of day.” If being afforded the opportunity to stand before a judge and have charges presented regarding your imprisonment is important to you, if you don’t feel comfortable that you could be deemed an “enemy combatant” and every single one of your rights instantly taken away, if you don’t want your children growing up in the American Union rather than America, if you want them to have the same Constitution you lived under, if you don’t want them to risk being renditioned and tortured… I mean “pressured;” if you care about any of this, then you must wake up to what is going on around us and has been for years.
It was easier not to do anything, to even profit from the system. We all have, we’re each guilty of letting too much go without so much as a whimper of true protest. Oh sure, we may have been agitated and may have even said something about how wrong the Military Commissions Act (aka the Torture Bill) was when it dissolved Habeus Corpus, but we didn’t hold anyone accountable. We didn’t call our Senators and accuse them of the treason they were guilty of. We didn’t protest when the law retrospectively went back in a sick attempt to justify and legalize torture that had already taken place authorized by the President and others in government and the military. We didn’t riot in the streets and demand our rights returned. We did nothing of consequence and for that, we, and future generations will pay the price if we do not fix things and fix them now.
We have been taught, some of us since birth, that this current system we live in and participate in is right, and all others, even those of our own past, are backwards or wrong. The TV we worship tells us our “news” and reports on “reality” around us but these news and entertainment companies are owned by a handful of men who use them to further their causes or goals. If you were a businessman concerned only about yourself, wouldn’t you do the same? When a nation allows monopolies to form, especially ones that can be controlling or dominating in the area of news and information, then we have a serious problem. When these systems are corrupted and used against us, we have an absolute catastrophe! With the explosion of the alternative media (internet, non-mainstream local news shows, radio programs, etc.) it is clear that the American public is searching for truth and reality. When we peal back the layers upon layers of lies we find the ultimate problems of the private Federal Reserve System, and the banking cartel that runs our nation today. We must expose the wickedness, the lies, and the corruption so that a new awakening can occur across the land. A new awareness of truth is coming, with a much brighter future for us today, and for future generations.