With Independence Day looming, I thought it would be a good day for this discussion.
Remember when people would say, “Do what you want, it’s a free country?” I haven’t heard that saying in many years.
At what point of government intrusion do/did you no longer consider yourself free?
The whole idea of freedom has been twisted to mean freedom to engage in all kinds of depravity. Freedom to get drunk ,fat and stupid. Freedom to have multiple sex partners and sexual piggies .
I have never thought human were really free.We are enslaved to all kinds of unhealthy , sinful desires and addiction problems.Just ask Stucky.
Essentially freedom from personal responsibility for your actions.
That theme seems to pop up everywhere, one of those “………….” made me do it sort of things.
Yes you are free as long as you don’t
1) Talk about a protected class..that makes you a racist.
2) Love guns–that makes you a fascist with a small dick
3) Want to build something on your property without a permit…you need the permission of the city fathers and pay tribute to them.
4) Refuse to pay property taxes. Even though your house is paid for you NEVER own it;neither will your great,great,great,great grandchildren .
5) Want to grow your own food. Self reliance is frowned upon.
6) Drink milk straight from a cow.
7) Collect rain water. The water belongs to the government …it’s not yours…get it !
8) Think for yourself. The betterment of the collective is the only proper way think.
I’ve got more but folks feel free to add to the list
Somewhere around 1999. Much of the damage was done under Bush I and Clinton (and some under Reagan), but it was the end of the 90’s when it started to become clear that we were becoming a totalitarian nanny-state.
And you’re right, I once heard that expression all the time, and haven’t heard it now in at least 10 years.
The 911 false flag was the last nail in the coffin. The terrorists who pulled that off don’t speak any arabic.
9/11 was an inside job. You are FREE to believe or disbelieve.
AMEN, Brother Bea !!!
The gist of Mike’s question is highlighted — “At what point of government intrusion do/did you no longer consider yourself free?”
For me, it started somewhere around my senior year in high school (1970). Had to register for the draft. I wondered “How can a FREE country FORCE its citizens, especially young people to FIGHT their wars …. and then ruin their fucking lives if they object?”
I didn’t think seriously about freedom — or, lack of it — for another decade ….. until I became a homeowner. Our first house was about 80 years old, and I made changes/fixes myself and then I got a very very nasty letter from the city filled with threats of punishment for the egregious sin of not asking them for permission and I thought to myself ‘what the fuck is this … East Germany’?
My awareness of how UN-free I am took a decidedly bad turn for the worse several years ago …. when I started reading TBP.
bb- Could you define “sexual piggies”………..this should be good.
the first sliver was when I had to file my income tax docs for the first time (paper boy).
at the age of 12, I asked my dad, “what did any of them do to deserve the money I earned hauling paper and waking up before 6am?”
I don’t remember the exact answer, only that it wasn’t convincing.
so everything after that built on that basic foundation.
Stucky…you’ve ask the question that I say over and over to folks…THink you’re free ? Then build something in your backyard without the city/county permission and then tell me how free you are when the fines arrive.
In Wyoming you still can, as long as you aren’t in town limits.
Obamacare & Dodd-Frank ratcheted up the government control a lot. Unbelievable that it’s now ILLEGAL to not buy a product (health care insurance). That should have been declared an illegal capitation tax, but they got to Roberts somehow. You could see the piss dribbling out of his pants leg when they announced their first Obamacare ruling four years ago. That’s the big threat from NSA spying. They have the goods on all legislators & judges now. Look at Biden’s son who got caught up in the Ashley Madison crap. I suppose it could be true that the Russians stole his cell phone and logged in to arrange a hook-up FROM HIS OFFICE. Fucking Russians. That’s what philandering husbands should claim from here on out: “honey, the Russians put that rubber in my pocket. I swear!”
Another example of how “unfree” we are — though this time, it’s not government!
Google My Activity shows everything that company knows about its users – and there’s a lot
The new site collects every website you’ve been on, everything you’ve searched and many of the things you’ve done with your phone
Google has launched a new site that shows absolutely everything it knows about its users. And there’s an awful lot of it.
The new My Activity page collects all of the data that Google has generated by watching its customers as they move around the web. And depending on your settings that could include a comprehensive list of the websites you’ve visited and the things you’ve done with your phone.
Google has long allowed its users to see the kinds of information that is being generated as people use the company’s products, including letting people listen in on automated recordings that it has made of its users. But the new page collects them together in a more accessible – and potentially more terrifying – way than ever before.
MORE at the linked headline.
Except your not forced to use Google. That’s difference between government and private industry.
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Interesting video Ditchner thanks for posting.
I believe I’ve suspected it since high school or a bit earlier but I’ll go with 2007-2008 when I took the red pill. That experience taught me that we have not been free since at least December of 1913.
1965: The Civil Riots Act made White Males 2nd Class Citizens; then compelled us to serve the Fascist State as cannon fodder in the US Army; then Communist robbed me to support the Great Society FSA (violates my III, IV, V, VI, VII, XIII, and XIV Amendment Rights). Then TPTB banned The Beautiful Flag, The Beloved Song (Dixie), my high school’s name (Robert E Lee), the Prayer and the Ten Commandments, Gen Andrew Jackson, Southern Monuments; made me an outcast (White Male Christian, Southern Conservative, Heterosexual, Teetotaler; Constitution, Bible & gun loving Patriot). Oh Dear God, how did I go so wrong!!!
For me it was when the Fedgov came out and said, in the NDAA, that American citizens could be “indefinitely detained” without trial.
My Dad was an entrepreneur, as was his father before him. Although, they both held licenses to perform work as pharmacists, the pharmacies they owned were “private businesses”. So, I learned a lot of things about government controls while growing up. There were other licenses, besides the one to practice as a pharmacist, such as a business license, tax license, food license (soda fountain), alcohol license (some compounds required ethanol, and since taxation and the Volstead Act…), narcotics license, mandates for monthly reports to both “taxing authorities” and the “regulatory agencies”, ad nauseum.
It was easy to see that my Grandfather was less regulated (he was born before 1913 for example). My father was more regulated.
I was not a pharmacist.
My choice was in manufacturing. So, I opened businesses that were small LLCs. Unfortunately, they required significant capital and expertise, but in those days there many people willing to work free-lance and part time. It was a balancing act, but very profitable, and little chance of being sued because we didn’t do engineering or design, just manufacture according to requites according to blueprint.
Then came the ADA (americans with disabilities), NAFTA, increase in Cap Gains, increases in Workman’s Comp, ESC “contributions” (taxes), etc.
I was regulated to the point of “fuck you bastards”.
I shuttered my last operation in 2005. This was when I was slightly over 50.
2008 hurt me some, but then, I was/am ‘diversified’ (the only kind of diversity I care for).
To answer Mike’s question: “ At what point of government intrusion do/did you no longer consider yourself free?”; just about from my earliest days.
But I have to say, I have had a good life so far, I have had to dance a lot, but, I imagine that many have some of the same fears as I do still.
Fear of not being able to travel (I have been sequestered twice with no explanation and allowed to leave). Fear of not being allowed to use money or trade. Fear of not having free speech, fear of incarceration for no reason. Fear of “tax hunting” (on all levels, Fed, State, Local…).
I am by no means wealthy, what-ever that means, but I have moved most of my residences,
It is not as difficult as many may believe.
America lost its freedom the day the oligarchs signed the Constitution.
The sad thing is, we have been conditioned that most of us don’t even know that we don’t have freedom. Most of us are more comfortable with the yoke around our neck and chains binding our feet and hands. The majority of people are still living under the assumption that government is built to do something FOR us. Except that when you give power to government to do things FOR you, you also give it power to do things TO you. This part is never comprehended by the Dancing with the Stars, the Game is on, what’s on facebook masses. Maybe on some unconscious level, but they just push that away into the back of their mind. Focusing on it would leave guilt that they might have to actually DO something about it.
So freedom isn’t even missed.
I’ve been going to local government meetings and it shocks me the amount of people who are ok unveiling what douchebags they are in wanting government (in this case, the very first tier of government) to take care of everything. As if the DC swamp dictating everything isn’t enough. Let’s get it local. Getting off your ass and going to talk to your neighbor about something would be like, hard and stuff. And the council members themselves, showing that their position overlording us is first and foremost to dictate what us little people can and should do. That what they want (to nanny state us) over-rides what the majority of us want (to be left alone).
Albert J. Nock described this in Memoirs of a Superfluous Man
“According to my observations, mankind are among the most easily tamable and domesticable of all creatures in the animal world. They are readily reducible to submission, so readily conditionable (to coin a word) as to exhibit an almost incredibly enduring patience under restraint and oppression of the most flagrant character. So far are they from displaying any overweening love of freedom that they show a singular contentment with a condition of servitorship, often showing a curious canine pride in it, and again often simply unaware that they are existing in that condition.
p. 314
Considering mankind’s indifference to freedom, their easy gullibility and their facile response to conditioning, one might very plausibly argue that collectivism is the political mode best suited to their disposition and their capacities. Under its regime, the citizen, like the soldier, is relieved of the burden of initiative and is divested of all responsibility, save for doing as he is told.”
p. 319
It seems inevitable that a civil is imminent. I don’t know how this is going to play out because while the first Revolutionary War had 3% of the population to fight the British, do we even have 3% that would lay it all on the line to fight for freedom? Even for those who don’t know they don’t have it? Don’t miss it, don’t want the responsibility of it? It seems only a major catastrophe is going to wake people up to the fact that the criminality of the state exists because of the power we give it and it’s only purpose now is to increase it’s own power. Tyranny doesn’t just go away.
Even my kids remark this on every “holiday” and the 4th is the worst in my opinion. The true meaning is lost in picnics, a day off and SALE! SALE! SALE! We have lost our way. Freedom is just another word.
In 1970, when I had to register for the draft. That’s when I knew that my life wasn’t regarded as my own by the government. Other men my age here know the rest of that story, as it played out for them.