Some words of advice from Americans who know what freedom is and what it costs.

Listen I don't want to insight any kind of negativity on such a great thread, but there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy being practiced here.

You can't call our founding fathers the epitome of personal, religious, and political freedom when they were prominent slavers their entire existence. The founding of all American "freedom" was cut from Native American flesh, and then ridden on the backs of kidnapped Africans. When you totally take the freedom from all else around you, I bet you'd feel pretty free yourself.

That's just Jefferson and Franklin. I saw Reagan being quoted as well. Yes, Reagan, who committed high treason against his own country using drugs that HE criminalized and deaths of hundreds, if not many thousands.

Its the aristocracy who has ALWAYS been free. Its easy to be "free" when you control everything.

I would argue that mankind hasn't been "free" since before language was invented tens of thousands of years ago.

Originally posted by SantaClaus
Listen I don't want to insight any kind of negativity on such a great thread, but there is an enormous amount of hypocrisy being practiced here.

You can't call our founding fathers the epitome of personal, religious, and political freedom when they were prominent slavers their entire existence. The founding of all American "freedom" was cut from Native American flesh, and then ridden on the backs of kidnapped Africans. When you totally take the freedom from all else around you, I bet you'd feel pretty free yourself.

That's just Jefferson and Franklin. I saw Reagan being quoted as well. Yes, Reagan, who committed high treason against his own country using drugs that HE criminalized and deaths of hundreds, if not many thousands.

Its the aristocracy who has ALWAYS been free. Its easy to be "free" when you control everything.

I would argue that mankind hasn't been "free" since before language was invented tens of thousands of years ago.

Good post and thoughts, I see exactly where you are coming from and you are largely correct. That being said there is no such thing as a perfect society which is why I put this in political ideology. Our founding fathers without doubt committed injustices to foreign people both Native American and African.

I don't think we will find many nations that were built without some injustice and messy hands, very sadly, that is human nature, regardless of race. This thread is to help us remember why the country was founded not in the manner in which it was founded, why people fought and died to escape tyranny and religious oppression and why we all need to be active in our voices and actions to wrestle it back to the hands in which it belongs.

Originally posted by pyrodude
"But a Constitution of Government once changed from Freedom, can never be restored. Liberty, once lost, is lost
forever." President John Adams

"You can't hold a man down without staying down with him."
Booker T. Washington

"It is impossible to rightly govern a nation without God and the Bible."
George Washington

“Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did.”
Newt Gingrich

"Don't expect to build up the weak by pulling down the strong."
Calvin Coolidge

I completely disagree with every one of those quotes.

1. Adams must have forgotten that America had recently won it's independence and restored its people's freedoms from what they had lost to the Monarchy. Apparently, freedom doesn't have to be lost forever.

2. The so-called elites of this world are holding us down, and yet they seem to be anything but held down themselves.

3. Washington should have said instead that it is much harder to govern a nation without using "God and the bible." Superstition and fear are excellent weaknesses to exploit for control of the ignorant.

4. Newt Gingrich? Really? 'nuff said

5. How else does one who is being bullied become strong, other than standing up to their bully?

Originally posted by James1982
Nice post!

One thing very few people understand, or believe, is that living in a completely free country means you are NOT guaranteed safety.

People talk about the cost of freedom being military conflicts, or money, it's neither of those things.

The TRUE cost of freedom for the average citizen, is to live with less security. To loose your life as a victim in a terrorist attack is a cost of freedom, if the cost of preventing that attack was less freedom. That is a cost I would gladly pay. I'd much rather die in a terrorist attack, than live with the current constitution haters ruling the country.

Most people have no idea what freedom means. They are cowards. They are sheep. They are babies that want to be taken care of. They refuse to stand up and live with that fact that it's their responsibility in a free society to not give into their fears and allow others to trample their freedom because of it. "OH I'm so scared of some Arabs bombing my city! Here, take my freedoms and make me safe!" People like this need to sit down, shut up, and occupy their time by sucking their thumbs because they have proven they are not useful for anything else.

Wow James,
Very insightful and truthful, haven't heard it said like that before.

I read the op with a heavy sigh. I know the feeling all too well.

Unfortunately, the complexity of the system (of government, the world, etc) as well as technological advancement (media, weapons, surveillance, etc) and the ultimate moral decline of humanity has put us in a spot that I think we cannot recover from.

We are all saturated with media. We have internet, smartphones, television, print, radio...we are bombarded with news, stories, opinions, advertisements and manipulated, lied too, and people are simply too busy trying to get by in life dealing with busy family schedules, working multiple jobs or double shifts to fact check, validate, or even question.

The government or businesses can track you behavior, your conversations, your messages your shopping habits, your movements, as they please. But don't you dare try to tape a cop abusing their power or 'doing their job.'

All the while, regulations and policies erode what little freedom we have left. Even if the people wanted to have a revolution as the founders did, people cannot own the same weapons the government can, purchases are tracked to make confiscations a breeze. Plus, the national military homogenizes sentiment so a state or region that is getting abused has no resource to retaliate as a last resort.

No, there is no hope for salvation of the freedoms and vision that the founders had. Baring ET or Supernatural intervention, it will be up to the cockroaches to rediscover freedom and self governance in a few million years.

Just correcting one of the quotes that is very often misquoted:

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Benjamin Franklin



He certainly didnt mean trading liberty for safety is wrong in all cases. He was not an anarchist.