What price freedom?

I guess it has begun, the last step in the Cycle of Democracy.

For those unfamiliar with the concept, it says this:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government.  It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves largess from the public treasury.

"From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising them the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship.

"The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years.  These nations have progressed through this sequence:

"From bondage to spiritual faith;
from spiritual faith to great courage;
from courage to liberty;
from liberty to abundance;
from abundance to selfishness;
from selfishness to apathy;
from apathy to dependence;
from dependency back again into bondage."

This concept is anywhere from 75 to 200 years old (depending one who you want to attribute it to), but it is quite true.

And the first steps into bondage are the losses of freedom of speech and freedom of conscience. Both those freedoms seem in much danger these days as we watch the daily news.

Maybe it is a case of Chicken Little or seeing ghosts in the shadows but to me it appears that the rule of law is collapsing and the rule of man and the mob is rising in the United States. The U.S., it appears, is rapidly de-evolving into the Dis-United States. My feeling is that it only is a matter of time until widespread violence breaks out as various “aggrieved” factions take the law into their own hands.

Am I being a Cassandra? I don’t know. But I do know that things have not looked so dark for the Union since the late 1960s, when the nation was riven by race riots, anti-war riots and political chicanery. The American people recoiled from that visage at the time, but I am not so sanguine to think it can happen a second time.

Granted, if you look at the statistics on violence not only in the US but around the world, believe it or not the trend lines are down and down significantly. It is not what our political leaders would have you believe or our various elites and media pundits (and sadly newscasters and reporters as well). The problem as I see it is that perception becomes reality in our wired world and that is scary.

This call to fear is the siren call of demagoguery and of the mob. It seeks to call all who can claim they are victims to action. The mantle of victimhood seems to be the flag of the day and wallowing in victimhood only leads to envy, resentment and strife.

You may not agree with this assessment, but I challenge you to prove me wrong.

The one thing that made America great was that it was a melting pot of cultures – where new immigrants brought their own spices to the stew but realized that its basis was more important than the culture they were leaving behind. I say was, because – by all indications – it is more important now to deride the basis for what was American culture.

Today, we have a smorgasbord in the US where it is pick and choose the cultural value that makes you feel good today and be offended if someone criticizes that choice.  And if you are offended,  you must demand that government punish and silence those who offend you. 

And if silencing you is not enough, then we will erase your history. How Orwellian.

It seems that the word assimilation is no longer in vogue, although it served this nation very well for two centuries. Now, it seems that everything is about how you identify yourself and whether that offends someone.

President Obama may refer to America as a mixed salad, but mixed salads don’t hang together all that well. Its separate ingredients tend to separate out into their own little levels according to their size and density. Unfortunately, that is what we are seeing today, whether it is the trashing and marginalizing traditional Anglo-Saxon, Judeo-Christian, Greco-Roman concepts and values upon which the nation was formed and founded.

Of course, I can’t force you to acknowledge that truth, but that does not deny it its validity.

It is that tradition and historical values that made the United States into the City on the Hill shining its beacon to beckon people to its shore. To an extend that still holds, only the problem is various and sundry segments of both immigrants and “natives” don’t want to accept the rights and visions of right and wrong and justice that evolved from that grounding.

Whether it is five U.S. Supreme Court justices who take it upon themselves to start redefining terms in order to protect government benefits for this group or that group, or those who want to quash dissent on host of issues, or those who want to divide the country into competing tribes vying for political power and control of the government purse, or just burying history and a quest for dignity, what all of them apparently fail to grasp is that such attitudes are an assault on liberty and freedom.

If we deny freedom and liberty to others, then what is to protect others from denying it to ourselves.

Now I am only speaking for myself, and make no claim to represent anyone else, but I see many things happening in recent events that profoundly strike me as wrong.

People are claiming that health care is a right. It is not. Now, society can choose to provide health care to its members, but it is not a right that it can just be given to you. It comes at a price, as everything does. The price is something each of has to accept but apparently those who have become dependent on the largess of the society (government) have decided that it should be given to them at no cost. Unfortunately, this makes slaves of health care providers.

People are claiming that marriage is about only love and respect, but that is not really true. The debate about marriage in the United States has been over who is eligible for government benefits and largess and who is not and nothing else. Dispose of the traditional definition that basically has held for 5,000 years because it is now inconvenient and denies certain people access to those benefits.

It is time to punish those who see homosexuality, bisexuality and transgendeerisms as aberrant and not acceptable human behavior. Regardless whether or not there faith tells them that it is a sin and it is their job to avoid sin. Since they don’t accept what is perceived to be wrong, they are to be forced into celebrating it.

I have no problem with lesbians, gays, bisexuals and transwhatevers getting married, just spare me the other garbage about it being about love and commitment. It is about the desire for government largess. 

Over the millennia, government has chosen to recognize marriage, much for the same reason religion has, and that was to facilitate the perpetuation of the species and the society. And, biologically among humans, it is impossible for two members of the same sex to reproduce. Deny that, and you really are denying reality. So, I will respect your freedom to love and associate with whomever you choose, if you will respect my freedom to view homosexuality as something other than normal.

And then there is the effort to crush racism and “hate” speech and symbols. Well, folks, let me let you in a little secret: As long as we identify ourselves by ethnicity, race, color of our skin or what have you, we who do the identifying are racists. Call us bigots, call us what you want, but if you identify yourself as anything other than human, than you are racist.

The problem is freedom allows you to be racist … and stupid … and an idiot … and a jerk … and ignorant. If you can’t accept that, and have to be offended every time you turn around and some one says/does/wears/displays something you don’t like, then be willing to give up your own freedom as you demand to give the other person give up their freedom.

That is the price of freedom and to these old eyes, it seems that far too many people – not only in American but around the world – are unwilling to pay that price. It is freedom for me but not for  you.

It was that freedom and the freedom from the heavy hand of government dictates and interference in search of some elusive perceived social good favored by this segment or special interest group that really was responsible for the rise of the great and powerful nation that has become known as the United States of America.

Unfortunately, in our hubris, we are seeing those freedoms slip away from us. It will be sad, almost tragic, but it will be inevitable for that is the cycle of mankind and democracies and republics.