The United States of America, at 245 years old this July 4th, is mere baby compared to many of the European or Far Eastern countries. And at its root is the US Constitution, which is younger still at merely 234 years old. It is a unique experiment—government of the people, by the people. Not a monarchy, not a military junta, but a country founded as a Constitutional Republic, with absolute rights for everyone, including the ultimate minority: the individual. It took a few Amendments to that Constitution to include minorities (14th and 15th), and women (19th). Over the last two centuries, the US has come to the aid of just about anyone else, whether to assist folks in the aftermath of natural disasters (floods, earthquakes, droughts, tsunamis, whatever), or disasters of a manmade variety (see: WWI, WWII, and Kuwait). But the underlying premise of our entire country has been that of FREEDOM—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom to own and bear arms, and freedom from an intrusive, overbearing government. But I don’t think that anyone, outside of the Civil Rights movement, or Women’s Rights movement, would consider us freer now than we were 100 years ago. We now require licensing (governmental permission) for HUNDREDS of activities that used to not have such limitations. Everything from collecting rainwater to erecting a building, even on our own property, now require permission. Heck, with the advent of property tax, we never really own property anymore—skip that tax bill, even on paid-in-full property, and you’ll see what I mean. Inch by inch, we have given away (or had taken away) many of our minor freedoms. This latest approach of having travel potentially limited by a ‘vaccine ID’ got me thinking: what if we forget how to be free?
America of the 1600s, 1700s, even into the 1800s, was a dangerous, wild environment. Much of the continental US West of the Appalachian Mountains was still quite uncivilized. It was open, wild, and could literally kill you. There were some outposts of civilization, but they were quite spread apart, all the way from Kansas City to San Francisco, from Chicago to Seattle. Anything in between the scattered cities was nearly all wilderness. It was tamed by true pioneers. People consisting of hearty, self-sufficient (and self-policing and self-protecting) ‘rugged individualists.’ These people grew ranches, homesteads, farms, and eventually cities out of literally NOTHING. There was no ‘social safety net’. If you didn’t survive, it was on you. Not an environment for the weak of anything. I’ve heard that much of the State of Alaska is similar to ‘the West’ of the 1850s, but that is hearsay—I’ve never been there.
But fast-forward to modern-day America. We rely on government a few thousand percent more than we did back then. We need the FDA to tell us if our drugs and food are safe. We need the USDA to tell us how good our meat and eggs are. We need the FAA to keep the aviation industry from colliding with itself. We need so many government bureaus to assure us of…well, anything! And in return for that safety is a lessening of freedom. We allow cities to tell us if our homes are safe enough to occupy, or if any new additions or big repairs are ‘up to code’. We allow State government to dictate how and how much tax revenue they can extract from us, with almost no pushback. In most of 2020, we allowed State governments to SHUT DOWN much of our lives, bankrupting many, throwing many more out of work, in response to the COVID-19 virus. Now, we have the aforementioned ‘vaccine IDs’, that may possibly limit our travel options. And we have President Biden threatening gun control via Executive Order, up to and including confiscating ‘assault weapons’ from law-abiding citizens, in direct violation of our 2nd and 4th Amendment Constitutional rights.
Note: I am not bashing the benefits of civilization. Not only do we have incredible health care, technology, transportation, and various other systems that would not be possible without a civil society, it is the only social framework that allows the coexistence of the weak and small with the large and strong. Just as our Constitution protects the rights of individuals, a civil society also allows for the flourishing potential of non-aggressors. The Wild West style social setup was not likely to foster many standard of living improvements, other than for those who were the craftiest or best gunslingers. Just as pacifists exist because of the protection of a strong military, intellectuals are allowed to prosper because of our social, legal, and justice structures.
My question is this: have we simply forgotten how to be free? Has the incremental ratcheting of governmental intrusion into our lives erased the feeling of ‘rugged individualism’? Has the safety of all of the bureaus been an acceptable trade-off of the freedom to fail? I ask this because I wonder if the generations after us will have any inkling at all what freedom was like? Will they look back at this time period, and view it as the ‘end of personal freedom’? Will they view our pre-civilized time frame as imaginary and wonderous as when dinosaurs walked the earth—potentially fabulous, but with a hint of imaginary belief?
