Sunday, April 28, 2013

The Forgotten Reasons for Advocating Freedom

As I watched the beginning of the Boston Red Sox game, the first baseball game played in Boston since the tragic events of 4/15/2013, I was flabbergasted by the propaganda that was taking place before my eyes. Thousands of people applauding the police who had shut down their city in an attempt to find one unarmed, wounded 19 year old. Thousands of people applauding the martial law that had come to their city. Thousands of people applauding the disintegration of The Bill of Rights and welcoming the armed men who could remove entire families from their homes at gun point without warrant and without, in my humble opinion, just cause. All for one lonely, isolated teen accused, not proven, of doing something evil and already judged guilty by the masses.

The scene was surreal. It reminded me of those other collectivist nations of the past, where the populace lined the streets and joyously applauded as their so called leaders who had brought martial law down upon them paraded by. They welcomed the tyranny. They welcomed the evil. It was only years after the fact, when the truth was able to come out, that humanity understood the suffering that authoritarian collectivism causes. Are we in the United States of America to tread down that same path? Are we to wake up decades later to discover the mistakes we made, or are we to learn from others and forego the suffering they went through? Have we so easily forgotten what our ancestors knew? Is it so easy to disregard what the founding fathers taught us? Will history remember us as those who reached the pinnacle of human potential, or as just another society who forgot history and so repeated it?

Can we remember what it was like before mankind took the first tenuous steps toward a free society? It really wasn't that long ago that royal families ruled all of Europe. They lived in opulence while the common folks lived in squalor. While it is true that there are none alive today that experienced such tyranny, enough people of empathy left record of that time for us to imagine the horrors they saw and suffered through. At first those who would be free agreed to give authority to a few elite for their protection, but soon the elite were protecting them not from outsiders who threatened physical harm, but from those within who questioned the wisdom of the authorities. People feared the authorities because authority wants fear to spread. Authority feeds on fear. Those who question authority aren't a threat to the common folk, they are a threat to the power structure.

We have more to fear from those who would lead us than we do from those who would attack us from without. Those with power over us have more to gain from terrorizing us than the outsider with no influence over our society. When we are frightened we have a tendency to rally around our so called leaders and abdicate our rights without challenge in the vain hope that we will be protected. As this progresses it always ends the same. Secrecy and corruption grow as power is centralized and the ruling elite become greedier and more entrenched in their positions of power.

Freedom for all allows for more transparency. It allows for more accountability. It allows for more personal responsibility, even in the realm of security. It allows for a more open society. It allows for more closely knit communities based on love and trust rather than doubt and fear. In short, the principles of freedom and liberty allow for all that most of us dream about. It even allows for more security, or at least it allows for us all to choose the level of security we wish to have and the level of risk we wish to take. I think that the fear generated by recent events have clouded our thinking and caused us to forget the very things we should be most conscious of, the very things the people of the United States of America should hold most sacred.

We are supposed to be the land of the brave. We are not supposed to tremble and cower in our locked down homes in fear every time some mad bombers show up in our streets, let alone some misguided kids who, from what I've been able to gather from mainstream sources, cooked up some hair-brained scheme. The real terrorists are laughing at us. We are supposed to be a fiercely independent nation of rugged individualists. How did we come to be so dependent on the state for our security? How did we come to be a nation of meekly obedient sheep who so easily defer to the "authorities" whenever some small time troublemaker acts out? The real terrorists are taking advantage of us. We are supposed to be a nation of freedom loving people. How did we come to be a nation of livestock begging to be tyrannized simply because we have discovered that the world can be a dangerous place? How can we give up that which is most precious to us when we are supposedly afraid to lose it? The real terrorists will be happy to take it from us.

I feel for the people of Boston. I feel for those who lost their lives and limbs and innocence on April 15th. It was a terrible tragedy, a horrible thing to go through, but the reaction was worse. Will we go after those who failed? Will anyone from law enforcement be fired? Will anyone from law enforcement be implicated in the bombing and/or be held accountable for negligence? I doubt it. They never are. Perhaps a more important question is: why do these events always seem to take place when some drill is going on? Maybe it's time to take a look at how these drills are run. Maybe we should try to find out how terrorists seem to know when they're going to happen. In a society with a more open government the answers to these questions would more likely be forthcoming.

We, as a society, seem to have forgotten what it means to be free and independent. We have come to depend on the government power structure so much that we have forgotten what it takes to find our own way in life. We have forgotten the pride one gets from working hard to create a better life for one's self and one's family. We have forgotten the immense personal sense of satisfaction one gets from knowing that what you've accomplished you've accomplished through your own efforts, not through some government largess.

It's time we rediscovered what freedom is about. True freedom brings peace. True freedom brings brotherhood. True freedom brings about security. We have tried giving power to a few elite, and they have failed. We have tried their centralization schemes and they have proved catastrophic. It's time to decentralize. It's time to strip the federal government down to its constitutional size. It's time to demand they obey the law that is the Constitution of the United States. It's time to stop cowering, step out and show that martial law is unnecessary no matter the circumstances. If we don't honor freedom in the face of terrorism, then history will not remember us as a free and independent people, but the people of the future will instead shake their heads and ask how we could not see what was coming and how it was we let the evil grow.

If you enjoy my writings, please visit szandorblestman.com to make a donation.

Below is a list of all my works available at smashwords.com. Please help me by purchasing one or more of my ebooks and writing favorable reviews if you like them so that others might also find and enjoy them.

Caged in America: A Collection of Essays Celebrating Freedom. By Szandor Blestman

Ron Paul's Wisdom, A Layman's Perspective. A Collection of Opinion Editorials. By Szandor Blestman

Galaxium. A screenplay By Matthew Ballotti

The Colors of Elberia; book 1 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Legacy of the Tareks; book 2 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Power of the Tech; book 3 of The Black Blade Trilogy. By Matthew Ballotti

The Edge of Sanity. By Matthew Ballotti

The Ouijiers By Matthew Ballotti

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