A question for older ATS members - are our freedoms being eroded?

reply to post by Onet Wosix


Look at it this way.

Every time a new law is passed, every time a new regulation is written, every time the government creates a new agency another bite is taken out of our freedom.

Congress has gone crazy, they do not even to bother to READ the bills they vote on to see what is actually in them.

Pelosi:i[] “We have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it”

Seems to be the attitude now.

Heck Mass even has a law that makes it illegal to add anything to your compost heap that did not originate on your own land.

"Stop right now! You can not add that Iceburg lettuce leaf... Come along now to the station house" From the annals of the Horse Manure Police

If you are 50 or under, you are not Old; you are young.
I'm older than I care to admit, and I can tell you for certain that this country is gone, gone, gone.

We used to be able to get clean wholsome food. Prior to the end of WWII everything was Organic. Then pesticides & chemical fertilizers came into being and the quality of food has been going down ever since.

Kids who could not control their behavior were expelled and sent to "reform school". Now they are allowed to continue to disrupt the educational process. If anyone didn't meed a certain standard, he/she had to repeat the grade, and somehow that didn't seem to cause any irrepairable harm.

There used to be health checks for any immigrant coming into this country...now you can have almost any deadly communicable disease and you are allowed in.

There is no question that in the last ten years, the noose has tightened over the American public. All three branches of government have contributed to this. The courts have used eminent domain to seize land from average citizens, bastardizing what eminent domain was intended for, and allowing it to be applied to corporations and businesses that wish to put up strip malls, and other edifices of profit. The presidents have used their "power" to issue executive orders that essentially bypass the checks and balances built into the US Constitution, and they have essentially declared wars, without explicit permission of Congress. Of course, Congress has continually ignored the will of the people, in voting for bills that the vast majority of the electorate oppose. I could go on, but I'm sure that the average ATS member could add hundreds of examples to this short list.

I graduated high school in 1973. I've lived up here near the Canadian border most of my life. Before 9-11 there weren't any check points along the border. Now you can't go twenty miles without running into one. They're usually manned by New York State Police and Border Patrol. If you try driving south of here , you're going to run into a checkpoint. Sometimes I'm asked for ID, sometimes not. They always want to know where I'm going. My friends and I go south of here to the foothills of the Adirondacks, three to four times a year to get rocks for the sacred sweat lodge. We run into a checkpoint every time. What's funny, we always take our rocks from state owned land. When we run into rangers out in the woods, we tell them who we are and what were doing and they don't seem to have problem with that. In the old days nobody ever bothered us.

I never really ever played their silly games anyway, other than having insurance on my cars and keeping an up to date drivers license and making sure my bank accounts were straight. other than that life has been a breeze and will continue to be so, because if they truly want to push my satan button, i'll let them have it like no other

I feel sorry for the people that play along because they all have become victims when it doesnt have to be that way.

they are destroying everything good and promising about this country over greed and senseless power, that will in fact blow up in their faces.

you can only lose what you are willing to deny yourself. my famous quote...lol

...i'm in my late 50s... if one group in our society is oppressed - we all are at risk... thats what i have believed since i was a little kid and think its purty much a no-brainer...

...the problem today is that those who previously had never been oppressed are finding out what its like... yeah, it sucks big ones - welcome to the crowd...

The question presumes that we were ever totally free?

It's also a question of perceptions. In the decades following WW2 the western world bathed in prosperity and was drunk with personal liesure.

In such circumstances people did not feel threatened or constrained. Hence the question I would ask is were we more free in the past or just more blissfully unaware of our limitations?

What I would say is yes there is constant erosion. Throughout the eighties and ninties students in Western countries seemed to lose their passion and social awareness, but that is now returning with the current generation of youth who are willing to protest again like those of the sixties and seventies. Student activism definitely skipped a generation.

The internet is a blessing and nobody born since the internet can properly appreciate how the internet has turbo-charged freedom of speech. The powers of conservatism however are constantly finding ever more sophisticated ways to limit the internet.

Iran's twiter revolution proved people will always find a way. The internet and new technologies give me hope that People will always find a way to over come because you can't crush people forever. That is no excuse to stop struggling against erosion of freedom.

My father fought at Normandy on D-day. We often discussed his motivation for fighting and he definitely felt his efforts were justified in the interests of maintaining a free world for his children. I am sad to say the Western world which he propped up has increasingly adopted practices that would be better suited to the Nazi regieme.

The simple answer is that there are plusses and minuses, however hope is not extinguished and nor should it be.

In occupied Europe during WW2 as more freedoms were stripped away by facism, the brave and determined... People like Assange simply became braver and more determined.

Every dark cloud eventually gives way to a blue sky. That's what age teaches.

Conception, time passes....
1.) Certificate of live birth
2.) Vaccinated
3.) Enrolled in School
4.) Issued SSN
5.) Government Issued Identification
5.) Selective Service Registry
6.) Fair Isaaac Credit Score
7.) Automated Health Record
8.) Body Disposition Form
9.) Death Certificate

There was a time in this country when acceptable identification was your birth name printed in a family bible.... eroded? Nearly wiped out.

Freedom in western countries is on life support with the plug about to be pulled.. People becoming less free by the day as the state takes full control of every aspect of your lives all in the name of "security" and your leaders tell you its for your own good.. Already america looks more and more like nazi germany or the former soviet union did going by pictures seen in papers of police and military everywhere.. Reports of tsa treating travellers as criminals.. The list goes on.. And thats from old papers and what see posted here at ats ... Will stay out here in the jungle of s.e asia far from the police state that the west has become..

you dont just have to ask the old members but look at the facts of whats going on around you! like bill s510 that food law is just crazy