The Loss of Freedoms List (Vanity Post)

Cornpone | 25 Jan 2005 | Cornpone

[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

[Dan Evans]

You've stooped to making personal observations because you can't refute the plain words I use to explain the plain words of our Constitution.

I'm just trying to understand you. If you were a liberal, it would explain your logic because liberals don't believe in absolute truth. They think there is such a thing as "your truth" and "my truth". They think they can change the meaning of words to fit their argument and thereby change the truth.

[jonestown]

Whatever. -- Your insistence on making personal comments on 'if' this or 'if' that lead me to doubt you want to understand anything about religious freedom in our republic. -- Find someone else to troll.

[Refinersfire]

"I mean, who is going to defend the 2nd amendment rights of somebody with a domestic violence rap on their record?"

You may wish to rethink this one.. for there is a gentleman in the county where I live, that lost his right to own firearms for yelling at his wife. The court considered it domestic violence...

[Junior_G]

Yes, I agree-----my comment was a bit tongue-in-cheek. I know that a lot of domestic violence convictions are completely bogus; and that's why taking gun rights away from people with such convictions is especially disturbing. Plus, they did it retroactively.
Do not be surprised to find more politically unpopular convicts added to the list in the future, such as people convicted of DUI, drug offenses, you-name-it...

[packrat01]

The estate tax is dead. No longer must families sell their father's farm to pay an estate tax bill.

Not dead; merely in a coma. It comes back in 10 (9?) years...