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The Loss of Freedoms List (Vanity Post)
Cornpone | 25 Jan 2005 | Cornpone

Posted on 01/25/2005 4:37:42 PM PST by Cornpone

Dear Freepers,

I'm getting old and perhaps a little wacky but as I look back over my life I continue to try and understand how my country hasn't quite turned out the way my mother and father brought me up to believe it should be and what it was I was always raised to defend. So I've started making a list of those things that just seem to represent a betrayal of what I always thought America is about...freedom. Its a short list, I'm still working on it and I know many, if not most, will not agree with everything on it. But I'm sure everyone has something to add to it...like the state of medical care in this country which I haven't even begun to think about. Anyway, they are simple things that individually don't amount to much. But, taken together they represent a fundamental change in our culture if you think about it. Please help me add to this list. I don't know what I will do with it. Perhaps I'll just go nail it on the doors of Congress..not likely. I'd rather nail it on the doors of the White House except we can't really go there anymore...another freedom lost.

• Mandatory motorcycle helmet laws

• Mandatory automobile seatbelt laws

• Mandatory boating lifejacket laws

• Increasing erosion of property rights

• Increasing regulation of alcohol consumption, tobacco use and firearms possession

• Virtual elimination of the right to self defense

• Denial of the right to carry a weapon for self defense

• Hate crime laws that ridiculously imply that the murder of one human being is more heinous than the murder of another based on some politically motivated criteria

• Encroachment on the constitutional right to assembly

• Increasing attempts to limit our constitutional right to free speech through hate speech laws that seek to dampen dissident opinions

• Increasing restrictions on demonstrations of personal faith with a bias against Christians

• Increasing restrictions on hunting

• Increasing restrictions on fishing

• Increasing restrictions on the traditional use of fireworks

• Increasing restrictions on traditional methods of outdoor cooking

• Increasing restrictions on water rights and usage

• Increasing government incursion and attempts to regulate the possession of domestic animals which in all cases don’t happen to be ‘pets’

• Unfair taxation to fund social practices abhorrent to most Americans

• Government advocacy of socially deviant lifestyles

• Government attempts to redefine millennia-old family relationships and bonds, i.e., gay marriage

• Affirmative action laws and policies that unjustly punish and deny opportunity to current generations based on the shortcomings of generations long past

• Ridiculous product liability judgments that seek to limit access and deny choice through judicial activism rather than legislative debate

Add your thoughts to the list please.

God Bless our Forefathers and God Bless You


TOPICS: Your Opinion/Questions
KEYWORDS: anotherstupidvanity; constitution; findabetterone; freedom; future; leavethecounty; nannystate; newbiemoron; tryanny; vanityofvanities; yeahitsuckshere
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To: Southack
Freedom for anyone helps free all of us in some little way, just as surely as slavery for anyone enslaves all of us at some level.

Not really true. When you give more freedom to people who don't respect the law and the freedom of others, we are all less free. Today the Democrats want to give voting rights to felons.

Putting a tyrant or a criminal in jail gives freedom to the rest of us. Women feel free to walk at night if they aren't worried about rapists. Iraqis have more liberty with Saddam in jail.

181 posted on 01/26/2005 1:13:01 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Cornpone
Several years ago when we lived in MT, they were implementing a law where you had to have a license or permit to PICK HUCKLEBERRIES on public lands! Don't know if they still have the law or whatever happened with it - would love to know if any Montana Freepers are familiar with this one.
182 posted on 01/26/2005 1:14:09 PM PST by Arizona
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To: Southack
Yes, rationing is now gone...and we are MORE free today because of that fact.

But before 1941, we didn't have rationing so we had more freedom before. Look, we are talking about long-term trends. Rationing was just an historical blip.

183 posted on 01/26/2005 1:17:52 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Southack
Lawsuit (tort) reform is being handled this very year by Republicans in Congress. Medical liability is first up on that list.

Good. Let's hope they grow some stones and don't cave in this time.

184 posted on 01/26/2005 1:20:21 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: kingsurfer
"Many people here have stuck up for the Patriot Act. Personally I am not keen on it at all but as I am not currently living in the States I am powerless to do much about it."

Like I said I really don't understand it well enough to comment on it specifically. Its 132 pages of difficult reading. However, I'm generally against government attempts to gain more authority to intrude into people's lives. At the same time, the government and our laws haven't caught up with the 'electronic era.' For example, as someone who has seen criminals commonly carrying around a bag full of cell phones so they can compartmentalize and disguise their criminal acts, it makes sense to me to authorize a wire tap against the individual and not a specific phone. I've also seen a lot of cases where restriction on computer records matching have enabled an awful lot of fraud at taxpayer expense. An example of that is you're not supposed to be able to get a government small business loan if you are in default on a government student loan but in the past, because they couldn't match records, it happened all the time...and we just got fleeced again. I don't know if the Patriot Act has changed that or not.

185 posted on 01/26/2005 1:26:34 PM PST by Cornpone (Aging Warrior -- Aim High -- Hit'em in the Head)
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To: Cornpone

I have avgue memories of Clinton trying to pass a similar act to the Patriot and it getting flamed down by the Republicans.

Could be wrong though.


186 posted on 01/26/2005 1:28:37 PM PST by kingsurfer
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To: Southack
We can freely carry assault rifles. I do. We can still own machine guns.

If you have a Federal Firearms License. It used to easy to get one. I understand it is very difficult today.

187 posted on 01/26/2005 1:32:14 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Southack
The World Wide Web would have happened without the government Internet. There were plenty of other national, non-government computer networks that could have hosted the Web if the feds hadn't allowed commerce on the Internet. It wasn't against the law to make a profit on them.

The big innovation was the invention of the web browser.

188 posted on 01/26/2005 1:38:38 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Arizona
One of the ways governments often try to protect resources or limit demand for services is to impose onerous burdens to access whether through licensing, fees or both. In many, if not most, cases these requirements are discriminatory. For example, where I live we have taxpayer funded recreational facilities with swimming pools, basketball courts and the like. Even though they are built with taxpayer dollars our kids have to pay fees to use the facilities and the fees are relatively high. IMHO this discriminates against the less fortunate in our community, though there aren't many, because they simply can't afford to pay the fees.
189 posted on 01/26/2005 1:38:56 PM PST by Cornpone (Aging Warrior -- Aim High -- Hit'em in the Head)
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To: Southack
"The fact is, we lose more freedom every single year."

In 1920, it was illegal for men to buy beer.

The 18th was an infringement of numerous unemumerated individual rights, nullified by juries until repealed.

In the 1930's, gold was illegal to own ($100 limit).

Yet another unconstitutional prohibition on our right to own property of any type.

In the 1940's, our military was racially segregated and the government mandated at gunpoint how many ounces of sugar you could have in your pantry.

Jim Crow in the military, and out, was unconstituional.
Sugar was rationed under war powers.

In the 1950's, Blacks were being beaten by policemen, hosed by firemen, bitten by sheriffs' dogs, as well as prevented from even *registering* to vote by Jim Crow laws.

None of these practices could even remotely be considered Constitutional.

In the 1960's, it was *legal* to pay women less than men for the same job.

It still is, if there is a difference in job performance.

In the 1970's, it was illegal to drive more than 55 miles per hour.

Another unconstitutional 'law'.

In the 1980's, it was illegal to use the Internet for profit.

It was?

In the 1990's, it was illegal in most states to carry a concealed handgun. Up until 2004, it was illegal to have a folding stock, flash hider, and 30 round clip in your assault rifle.

You seem to think that anything Fed/State or local authorities declare to be the 'law' is Constitutional. -- Why is that?

Today, none of those restrictions on our freedom apply.

They never did 'apply', with the exception of rationing during wartime.

190 posted on 01/26/2005 1:54:15 PM PST by jonestown ( A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." ~ Winston Churchill)
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To: Southack
Illegal aliens haven't stolen many elections recently; overall voter fraud is down substantially (yet more steps in the right direction).

And how do you know that? When an election is stolen, is it officially tallied as "stolen"? How do you measure election fraud?

Instead, look at what is happening. In southwestern states, officials tell cops that they cannot even inquire about the immigration status of a suspect. Cops are forbidden to call the INS. In California, the lieutenant governor had been a member of a group that wants to eject all non-hispanics from the state. Don't tell me they aren't affecting our politicians.

In Washington DC, the mayor was a convicted crack addict who, when he got out, later won election to the city council. Don't tell me that city isn't corrupt.

You see only serfdom in a a land of extraordinary freedom.

The trouble is, the people who are getting more freedom are criminals, wasters, greedy lawyers, politicians and perverts. The people who have less freedom are the ones who produce goods and the ones who create jobs, the people who provide medical care.

191 posted on 01/26/2005 1:56:25 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: rdb3
Look it, my grandfathers were saddled with gun laws that forbade black people from owning any firearm.

Things aren't much better. Even when the KKK was lynching blacks, they only hung a few hundred of them total. Today that's the typical summer crime carnage in Washington DC. And of course today in a lot of big cities most people are not allowed to carry weapons, only the criminals carry weapons and people are not nearly as free to walk at night as they were in 1950.

You take a 50 year old black man who had to address a 10 year old white kid as "sir" or "ma'am" while they can turn right around and call this man "boy."

And today in New York City, the white residents have learned never to make eye contact with black men in the subway. But are the blacks better off now?

192 posted on 01/26/2005 2:08:47 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Dan Evans
True, our Constitution, in Art VI, explicitly establishes that it cannot be breached by any government entity.
-- Fed/State or local, ALL officials are pledged to support the US Constitution and its Amendments as the supreme Law of the Land.

"Congress shall make no law" meant what it said, but did not mean that only Congress was so restricted.

Why not? That's what it says, "Congress", not the states.

Art VI, and the rest of my comment explains "why not". -- Did you bother to try to understand them?

The 10th made clear that States were also prohibited powers, among them the power to infringe on peoples RKBA's.
After the civil war, southern States were denying freed slaves the RKBA's, under the pretense that the BOR's did not apply. The 14th was ratified to end that controversy.

193 posted on 01/26/2005 2:10:04 PM PST by jonestown ( A fanatic is a person who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." ~ Winston Churchill)
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To: Dan Evans
But are the blacks better off now?


Oh, geez. The definite article 'the' to modify blacks. Not 'blacks', not 'black people', not 'black Americans'. No. It's "the" blacks.

Whatever, man.


Real men don't whine.

194 posted on 01/26/2005 2:12:03 PM PST by rdb3 (The wife asked how I slept last night. I said, "How do I know? I was asleep!")
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To: Southack
(apparently we "serfs" are forbidden from taking explosives and firearms onto public transport, Oh My!).

But public transport is where we are most likely to need them. Ask any inner city dweller who has been mugged.

195 posted on 01/26/2005 2:17:50 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Dan Evans

Southhack appears to be applauding the one step forward while ignoring the two steps back.


196 posted on 01/26/2005 2:20:43 PM PST by Dead Corpse (Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt.)
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To: Southack
...And yet, contrary to your earlier hyperbole-drenched rant, vaccines are still being made.

Not in America.

197 posted on 01/26/2005 2:21:02 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Southack
Corporations and organizations, however, may be under some different restrictions, but those are *not* applicable to the freedoms of individual humans.

In other words, a businessman doesn't have human rights? Used to be they were allowed to reject employees or clients for any reason. Now they can't. We've lost that freedom.

198 posted on 01/26/2005 2:27:39 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: rdb3
Oh, geez. The definite article 'the' to modify blacks. Not 'blacks', not 'black people', not 'black Americans'. No. It's "the" blacks.

Excuse me. I meant to say, "the Negroes".

199 posted on 01/26/2005 2:36:17 PM PST by Dan Evans
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To: Dan Evans
Excuse me. I meant to say, "the Negroes".


Oh, I'm more than convinced you did. Yes, sirree!


Real men don't whine.

200 posted on 01/26/2005 2:40:57 PM PST by rdb3 (The wife asked how I slept last night. I said, "How do I know? I was asleep!")
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