The Life of a Slave

"Freedom is an illusion," as the song goes. I've contemplated on that idea. Looking back of the last 50 years, I see that as much as Americans scream of being free, we aren't. It's an empty promise that we have been forced to believe has been fulfilled. If you look, you can see the degrees that freedom has been given, taken away with the illusion that they have been returned. We have become dependent on others for our lives.

After the ratification of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights, Americans were the most free they have ever been. There is the exception that not all men are truly made equal. Until after the Civil War, Blacks living in the United States were slaves by most definitions. After the surrender at Appomattox. freedom was taking away from some Americans and given to others. There can be little argument that the Reconstruction deprived many Southern Americans from freedoms they had enjoyed before the war.

With the coming of the railroads, America spanned the continent. White Americans seized the opportunities to press Chinese laborers in to deep holes in the ground in which to run the tracks. There was no freedom for them. Likewise, the Mexicans became second class citizens in the region their Spanish ancestors had taken. There was no freedom for them either. The immigrants from Europe felt the harsh reality of being free in America. They were treated with contempt and forced to do jobs 'beneath' others. Black Americans were still forced to live under a thinly, veiled belief in freedom, only to be denied it's full meaning.

The Great Depression brought huge engineering works. In the Tennessee River valley, the government forced thousands of families away from their homes so dams could be built. Generations of farming families were forced to relocate, some against their will, into cities or to unfamiliar farm land. The freedom won by their ancestors at King's Mountain was taken away from the very government it created.

Now, we have the internet. We just can't live without it. We are forced by the government to pay for garbage collection that we do not want. The money saved in Social Security accounts is being used by the government as a carte blanche to fund wars, while the money put away for retirements is being given to those who have not earned it. The rights of States noted so importantly in the Constitution have been replaced with the larger, non-localized federal bureaucracy that has lost touch with the individual. The government is taking land under the guise of immanent domain for the general good. You can't drill for water on  your own land.

We are no longer free men. We have become slaves to our government. The country that has given us freedom from one tyrannical government for another. We have become slaves.