Yes we value what we have but mostly we value what we USED to have! Pretending that we still are the same country that we used to be helps no one. The question now is not whether we can PRESERVE our former freedom, it is lost, the question is whether we can ever REGAIN our former freedom. I’m sorry but in my honest opinion if you cannot see that you are evading reality, either that or you just are not aware of what is really happening in the USA. By the way do you realize that not many years ago many in the American South where I was born and raised used to fantasize about going to Australia because they believed that true freedom still existed there after, in their view, it had already been lost in the USA?
Those who prattle about “all our great freedoms that we enjoy” in this country are simply acting like an old, old man who speaks of what he used to do as if he is still young and virile and still doing it. We are not enjoying our great freedoms we are merely REMEMBERING our great freedoms. Those who are under thirty cannot even remember them and I am being generous by saying thirty, I think it goes back farther than that.
One thing I consider particularly telling is that forty years ago if someone said something like, “I think I will just knock off and go fishing”, they would hear a reply of, “Well, go ahead, it’s a free country, ain’t it?” I have not heard that reply for a long time and in my view it is because either consciously or subconsciously, everyone is aware at some level that this IS NOT a free country. Some may call me unamerican or unpatriotic but in my own opinion I am simply a realist. I will be happy to spin dreams and fantasies with anyone but please don’t ask me to treat them as reality.
Other than the gun buy back things were fairly good here up until 6-7 years ago or things were happening behind the scenes so much they were barely noticeable - we had a stable smart conservative government for more than a decade and our freedoms (mostly) were not being impinged upon too much. Then comes this current Labor Government and they have been playing catch up with your Democrats and the rest of the socialist world - so I am starting to understand where you are coming from.
Mel