When this intrepid soul ventured forth to buy the first computer it was April, 1997, and the hottest thing being sold had a 28K modem and a two-gig hard drive. Like wow. As I was instructed by a wannabe geek buddy to find my way around the internet as safely as possible, I got a free antivirus system that seemed to work fairly well. The only bug I picked up was sent by someone I trusted. (We know better now.) All kinds of software was free, new geek types were anxious to make their mark by allowing the public free access to their programs in the hope someone would hire them as software developers, maybe in response to a challenge to write such a program, or just for the heck of it.
Beyond the world of computers, we had come out of the age of trading stamps, which was the big freebie deal in the 1960’s until the mid 70’s, and some merchants gave away glassware, dishes, linens and other goodies in exchange for cash register tapes.
In 1974 we had a so-called energy crisis that hit America overnight, causing panic and long lines at the gas stations for fillups by motorists who needed their vehicles to get to work. We had Watergate, the resignation of a president who had taken us off silver currency the way Franklin Delano Roosevelt took us off the gold standard in 1933, a divided nation over the Vietnam never-declared war that resulted in 58,000 dead American military personnel and the Kent State shootings of 1970.
Free began to disappear. Gasoline prices went up, quality went down, gifts and trading stamps went out.
Freedom began to disappear also. The freedom of babies in the womb to be born vanished in 1973 with Roe v. Wade, a case that an honest Supreme Court would have refused as being under the jurisdiction of the several states.
Little by little, “free” began to mean whatever the courts and politicians in power wanted it to mean — whether it be a constitutional guarantee, a gift of trading stamps or premiums, or the right to openly express our religious and social opinions whether they offend someone or not. Free no longer meant the freedom to live out one’s life in the manner predetermined by genetics, economics and environment. Soon nobody would really be free, and those most in bondage were those who least recognized that our freedoms were being lost. You take my freedom and I will vote for something to take yours, if I’m free to vote, if the machines aren’t pre-set to declare the outcome regardless of the count.
Yes, we’re speaking about America, not Communist China, our biggest trading partner now and one to which American people are indebted for at least four generations of current trade deficit.
Every year, in those cities that have Chinatowns and some that simply have those who celebrate Chinese New Year, the celebration has gone on without anyone of which we’re aware going to the Supreme Court because they are offended. Generally, non-Chinese who really don’t know what year it is by the Chinese calendar enjoy their New Year because of the festivities.
It’s the American Christians who have been driven into the closet to celebrate the First Advent in seclusion, because public displays constitute, in the Supreme and other federal court’s opinion, a violation of the constitutional guarantee of separation of church and state. Guess what? That isn’t IN the Constitution. Around 1942, Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black decided to use a letter written by our third president, Thomas Jefferson, to some Baptists who feared the Congregationalists, to assure them that government could not interfere in the freedom of worship of Christian denominations. NO mention was made that religion is to stay out of government but that government is to stay out of religion, which is why previous generations of Americans were more aware of God, our nation was stronger and our laws were based on a biblical perspective of right and wrong.
Ooops … free isn’t free when it comes to religion, provided it’s Christian. Any others are free in America to display whatever they wish. If the backbone of the American middle class has been its Christian work ethic and strong moral values, then the government and courts have done everything short of massacring Christians in the public square to reject and repudiate the God of the Bible (while still taking official oaths of office on it).
Damned liars, our leaders aren’t fit to walk a skunk on a leash. Many of our judges should be impeached, but the one who was removed from office is a Christian — Judge/Justice Roy Moore of Alabama, and the American [civil/criminal] Liberties Union is still harassing him in an attempt to get his license to practice law revoked. What? Because he is a Christian? Yes. He has stood by the faith in a manner of which our founding fathers would highly approve as moral and upright, conscionable and respectable, only to be hewn down by an organization that supports the murder of unborn infants and legalizing unions between homosexuals!
We’re in bondage to sin up to our eyebrows, which means above our noses, so we’re drowning, we cannot breathe. We’re not deprived of air by second-hand smoke but by first-hand treason against the Constitution that is the foundational law of the land, its revision at the hands of judicial activists and outright Communists who have infiltrated America’s government, schools, police, universities and public news and information media.
What is so incredible about all this is the silence of the sheep headed to the slaughter. There are no great uprisings in the United States of people who aren’t afraid to demand that our government, those who are elected and/or appointed to positions of leadership and take an oath to uphold the Constitution, either live up to their oaths or leave office now! No group seems to wish to challenge the tyrants, which is the very reason most civilizations have been in bondage to corrupt leaders and have rotted from the core, fallen to their enemies and disappeared except from history books.
Media, notably New York’s and Washington’s prominent newspapers of incredibly wide circulation, are actually taken as reliable sources of news and commentary by more people in this nation than any other source except television’s nightly news and editorializing in the name of news. Media defends media, their owners are often the same corporations, so will Macy fight Macy? They beware of dividing their house so that it will stand, while dividing the people’s nation by their reverse discrimination, race baiting, religious bashing of Christians, denigration of the South and extortion against any and all who dare stand up for the America that was founded, not as a democracy (which is their term of choice) but as a federal republic.
Nor are those papers free to the people, the American public actually buys their tabloid-level trash and pays money to read their opinions disguised as news.
It isn’t safe to assume that a popular crusader for freedom could long exist in our “free” nation, such folks tend to be terribly accident-prone — fatal air crashes, suicides with guns left far out of reach, and mysterious disappearances with the bodies being found later in some obvious place no junior detective could miss.
So the freebies have disappeared, trading stamps, good new software (some exceptions), premiums for loyal patronage, “made in USA” labels, a trade surplus and a budget surplus, with more losses to come, perhaps even by way of conscription. One of these acts might light a fire that will burn out the chaff, but right now no one seems to have a match to light the torch of liberty again.
And just as we really paid with a few negligible higher prices for the green, blue or gold trading stamps, so that the items weren’t really free, let us remember when it comes to our nation:
FREEDOM ISN’T FREE.
It cost our forefathers their lives and fortunes in many cases. We’re a might too comfortable now with funny money as long as it’s legal tender to fight for anything good. The subversives fight day and night, knowing that Americans won’t budge unless pushed too far and too obviously, so they use subversive tactics.
If any nation needed a big revolution, or perhaps more honestly, a big revival, it is US.
Since we’re money-minded, perhaps the collapse of the US dollar and default on our debt, total recession and humiliation before an angry world, and the threat of true slavery under totalitarian rule will shock enough citizens into fighting back at the government that betrayed its trusting sheep. As of this writing, the dollar is still in free fall and the comments about that are conflicting but interesting to read.
And a happy New Year’s Day to all, but beware the rest of 2005.
“Published originally at EtherZone.com : republication allowed with this notice and hyperlink intact.”