The Myth of Freedom in America

Does the government exist to serve us or to master us?  If the government exists to serve us and if freedom is part of our humanity, how can the government take freedom from us?  Is human freedom in America a myth, or is it reality?

Human beings possess natural rights as part of our humanity.  In the Judeo-Christian tradition, we view these rights as gifts from our Creator.  This is particularly so if you are an American, and if you mark the founding of this nation at July 4^th 1776, as it was then that the Continental Congress promulgated in the Declaration of Independence Jefferson’s – though hardly novel – words to the effect that we humans are created equal and are endowed by the Creator with certain inalienable rights, and among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Historians have speculated that Jefferson originally planned to use the concept of property rights, but fear of addressing slavery in the same document in which he characterized the long train of abuses visited upon colonists by the king of England, would have opened the Declaration and its signers to charges of hypocrisy.

Nevertheless, Talmudic and Christian scholars and renowned skeptics, even atheists and deists, had long held, by Jefferson’s time, that the divine right of kings was a myth, that all humans own their own bodies, and that personal freedoms are integral to those bodies.  Whether the ultimate source of human freedom is founded in theology or biology, freedom exists, freedom is ours by nature, and the long history of the world is really one unceasing, increasing catalogue of the epic battles for personal freedoms against tyranny.

In other words:  thought, speech, press, worship, travel, privacy, association, self-defense, bodily integrity, dominion over ownership of property, fairness from government, and the presumption of liberty at all times under all circumstances and in all conflicts are the essence of humanity.

Unfortunately, throughout our history, persons in America have had all natural rights denied by different levels of government, from slavery to abortion, from punishment for speech to theft of property, from denial of due process to invasion of privacy; and government has prevailed.  Every day in many ways, seen and unseen, liberty is lost.

It is now time for us to fight for the primacy of the individual over the state, and to help forment a reawakening of the natural human thirst for freedom.