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I see a lot of regulations these days, and my mind constantly retreats to a specific dream I once had. The dream was of a man and his wife, living in the foothills of a discrete mountain. He and his family had lived here for years, decades even, after his ancestors arrived in the push across this great country. He and his wife were happy people; they lived in a cottage they built themselves, heated their house through the cold winters with wood they cut and split, and ate the food they grew and killed on their property. It is obvious that this was merely a dream, because these people paid no property taxes! Their lives were a constant - never bothering anyone and never bothered. They just...were.
In today's world, however, this sort of ideology would never last. You see, one has to question, when skimming the news headlines for all of 15 minutes, how we as humans made it to the year 2011 without the invention of such institutions as the post-1920s American Government, the Food & Drug Administration (FDA), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), and similar agencies. Surely life before these came about, life was filled with terrible, disease-ridden people who lived only until they drank some raw milk, or perhaps burned an outdoor fire without a permit. Afterwards, they were sure to fall over dead.
Give me a break! People have lived for thousands upon thousands of years without these invasive agencies and will continue to once these agencies are gone. I don't deny that the agencies were formed in good reason, but the monster they have morphed into is an all-consuming, all-regulating giant.
Recently I began thinking, "what is true liberty?" Liberty is defined as: freedom from arbitrary or despotic government or control. I much prefer an alternate definition, though: freedom from control, interference,obligation, restriction, hampering conditions, etc.; power or right of doing, thinking, speaking, etc., according to choice.
When we think back to the American pioneers and frontiersmen, we think of men, women, and children who lived nearly as if they were the only ones on the Earth. I'm sure they had interaction with others, occasionally, but for the most part they lived alone, working to provide a better means for themselves. They used America's natural resources to provide sustenance and life - and they did so without applying for permits, taking OSHA approved safety courses on how to operate their tools/machinery, and they did so completely free of being told how to do it. Why is this so important to me, and others like me? Because at that point in time, and only a few years beyond it, did Americans exhibit pure liberty. I believe that if we, as Americans, want to regain control of one of our founding virtues, then we need to return to an Agrarian type of life. The caveat to this is that it would undoubtedly require work. Work is seen by the lazy as unnecessary - something that can be done by others. And because this laziness infiltrates just about every nook and cranny of America (more specifically the cities), America has very few options to correct it. I would like to venture out more into that topic, but I am limiting this essay to, mostly, defining liberty. I have a strong feeling that America will either be forced to enter an agrarian lifestyle, out of an incredible economic depression, or that America will become a country no longer based on independence and liberty, but rather on a Socialist/Communistic style of economy & government. I am not intending to make some sort of political statement; I just feel that in order to satisfy the overwhelming (and growing) lazy portion of the population, things will change.
Liberty was once at the core of the American soul. It was something that was respected and loved, but most of all, Americans were liberty. When the country at risk of being run over by tyrants, it was the liberty that kept them going, kept them fighting. Liberty was not granted to them by an agency. It wasn't something one could apply for and exercise at another's discretion. Liberty was, simply because interference was not.
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