Libertad

Many of you know where I came from, I've posted about it several times as a sort of base from which people can ascertain where and how I came to the beliefs I hold today. My understanding of liberty has been a life long process, I was born free, I will die free.

Many of you participated in this thread I authored some months ago, it was a sort of memoir of how I got to be where I am: The American Dream has Become...

In 1989 my feet touched the tarmac in Miami. I was coming from Costa Rica, my parents, a ten year long journey from Cuba to America that took them through Costa Rica, where my brother and I were born. We are political refugees.

I'm 25 now, I remember the first time I saw a television, the first time I saw a flushing toilet, the first time I saw a modern car, my first day in an American school....No uniforms... I always wondered about that.

But that's what it's all about right? That's what I thought. For many, many years. Until 9/11. I stood aside and watched. Trying to figure out my place in America, who was, and still is, very scared of foreigners...(Not without good reason mind you.). So like many I was quiet. I would occasionally say things like, "we did this to ourselves", or "Has anybody stopped to think about why they actually hate us?", but that made no waves, and I wasn't seeking to make any...

I was recently able to meet and talk to one of my closest cousins in Cuba. It was a strange experience because up until he caught up with me on Facebook, I had absolutely no idea who he was, or if any of my family was still alive.

The conversation we had was about his work as a herald for peace and liberty. He is a Natural Rights kind of guy, like me. He is an outspoken activist and rapper in Cuba, all of his music is about a free and open Cuban society. He feels alone much of the time, but he goes on, under threat by the Cuban regime.

It was a long conversation that reaffirmed why Liberty is so important, why respecting our individual and civil rights is so important. He tells me how afraid the Cuban people are. He harbors ill feelings toward those who leave and speak out without having spoken out in Cuba first. He is a true revolutionary in my eyes. He looks at the Constitution of the United States, our Bill of Rights, as I do. To him, as it is to me, they are the culmination of thousands of years of philosophical evolution, or the written expression of Natural Law, and how the role of government is to PROTECT the rights we hold as humans alive on this Earth. To the religious, it's God's law.

You have the Right to express yourself, to believe in whatever you wish, to gather with those who are like-minded(or otherwise), to petition government for a redress of grievances and to have those grievances addressed in an appropriate manner.

You have the Right to defend yourself, your home, your family, and others by any means you see fit.

You have the Right to be free from harassment by the state: Including being searched without probable cause, having property seized, being extorted by force of law, or having your life placed on the line without trial of a jury of your peers, impartial judges and prudent, competent law enforcement.

Really I should just copy and paste the Bill of Rights. They are a list of things government CAN'T do to you. And boy did I get a wake up call when I had that conversation with my cousin. People don't realize the power of liberty, or the horror of handing it over to a ruling class. I thought I knew liberty, but I don't. I was lucky enough to have basically grown up in the US.

You have to lose liberty in order to understand it. And the things he told me. About not being able to distribute music, political or otherwise, being wiretapped, followed, harassed. My grandfather spent 11 years in a political prison in Cuba for speaking out against government abuses...11 effing years. Today, by force of law, we are falling victim to the same things.

If the government is big enough to provide you with a living then they can mandate anything they wish from you. It's a contract, you're an indentured servant, and you wear your chains with pride America. Either you're afraid like the Cuban people, or you're still too comfortable. Either way, if we don't make an effort to understand our history, our place in the world, and the intent of this Nation's founding, then we are doomed to the most pervasive despotic system in human history. If this is what you want America, it is what you will get.