What Does Freedom Mean to You?????

True freedom is an abstraction. The best we can hope for is relative freedom.

As RightHand, Tikka, Brokor, and others have pointed out; true freedom doesn't exist, and we all pay a price for the relative freedom that is available to us.

Even if we sit in our mountain hide-away, off the electric grid, our larder stocked with preps, defended by our arsenal of weapons, growing our own food; we aren't free, because we didn't get there by ourselves. Our home was built with materials generated by the larger society, as were most of our preps, and our weapons and ammunition. Our solar panels and batteries were built by someone, as were the tools to work our garden.

As Thadius pointed out in another thread, towns and communities were our ancestors' answer to the freedom to starve to death, the freedom to freeze to death, and the freedom to be slaughtered by others. When our ancestors entered into those social contracts, they gave up a bit of their freedom. Safety and comfort has a price.

We live in, or interact with, communities; and we consume the goods and services created by those communities, and we pay the price. Absolute freedom is as elusive as absolute zero. You can have more freedom, or less freedom; but you will never have absolute freedom, until you die. Even then, you may still have to pay the ferryman.

 

The progress in America was made by Americans or some areas of this nation would still be without electricity, flood control dams, bridges, safe harbors, etc.

Just because we have a bunch of wasteful politicians doesn't mean we need to cut things we actually need when we can cut things we don't need.

We can start with illegal aliens, a federal workforce which has increased by over a third under 0bama, as that "stuff" ain't cheap the expense of militarizing our local law enforcement; in plain English cut government waste.

Investigate who are the people who make up the 132% increase in food stamps. No Medicare etc for 30 million illegals. Examine what we are paying for in rent subsidized housing. Stop handing out billions to foreign nations. I can go on and on almost ad infinitum with how they waste our tax dollars. Time to reign them in and big time before we pay even more in fees than we do in taxes to support the great nanny state.

Plus:

 

I just wish I could the the mother freakers out of my living room.
The 14th amendment to the consiiution guarantees the right to raise your own children.

Id like to buy a new car,,,,if it was leagal to make one without a BOMB in the steering wheel. I thing the goovernment are the terriorsts.

Id like to buy the macihinery parts from China without a half day of paper work from the USA dictators, let alone the fees.

Id like to drive 2 miles without seeing 5 gustapos or police cars.


Id like to sell my beer cans without ID.

ID like to fish without a license.

Id like to buy a gun on a handshake.

Id like to be represented by the axxholes who tax me into laziness.

I like t have a beer or cigar without a gooberment warning on the label

ANYONE THINK WERE FREE??????

 

To me, freedom means responsibility. It means I have to decide what's right and wrong and limit my wrong behavior.

Freedom also means I'm responsible for keeping it for the next generation. It's why I volunteered to serve during an unpopular war. As Yard Dart stated above, "freedom isn't free".

 

I would like that one explained in a manner that actually makes sense and isn't a bunch of bought into military industrialist propaganda; for example, how has any war fought since WW II have anything at all to do with preserving freedom and the American way of life? I see war as being a necessity for the continuance of the military industrial complex that governs our economy but nothing else. I have lost friends and family in these wars and participated in some of them myself in a variety of capacities but still can only see the flag as a covering for coffins and a platitude for those remaining or those that sacrificed. I will not thank you or anyone else for their "service", how ever honorable, until someone actually explains to me how and why even remotely protects our freedom, Liberty, and way of Life? Thank a Soldier? for what? Being an armed enforcement branch of a corrupt government that has usurped our Constitution?

 

As a further thought, I recognize that the sheer number of people in the human population cannot co-exist without concrete defined rules of governance and ultimately will require, if not a World government, at least a Universal set of rules. The ten Commandments used to work, but have been negated by those that rule and those that would throw the baby out with the bath water in denying the existence of an ultimate power, or God. When "Boo" worked, we were easily frightened and manipulated into divine coercion and later, into ducking and covering our heads in school during a nuclear attack, and now, into believing that somehow, fighting a bunch of goat herders in far away places makes more sense than assigning every goat-herder that crosses our border, a soldier or two to escort them 24/7. It is now that a significant portion of us have the courage to question what we have been "told". Truth varies in degree and application of it is bent to include a system of entitlements that feeds our aging parents rather than making us accept the responsibility for that. We bitch about those that live on the social tit but we see the need for our daughter with the less than successful husband to get food-stamps or our grand mother to require medic-aid. When we take care of our own, the mortality rate increases exponentially and the population not only regulates better but the laws of Nature work more efficiently and the species is improved rather than encouraging propagation of sheer numbers that do nothing but bleed the productive. It is my base opinion that Liberty or Freedom cannot exist in an over-crowded system.

 

Tomato or Tomato? Temper anything I said with personal feelings, example? Our "SS "Entitlements"? Yes, we paid into it but skip ahead to reality and see where it is pointed.

 

I think Brokor is actually Hannibal Lector

 

Honor lies in the intent of the individual performing the act, not in the act itself. As the old joke about the cat pulling the bird from the cow pie, “not everyone who pulls you out of the crap is there to help.”

Many military members joined for all of the wrong reasons, just as many LEOs join their departments for the wrong reasons – some want to be a bully with a badge, and some firefighters join their profession because they are pyromaniacs at heart. Some teachers are attracted to the profession because the thought of summers off seems divine, not because they want to give something back to the community. Some civilian contractors who operate in war zones do so because they feel that they are providing a necessary service under dangerous circumstances; others, because they are self serving bastidges, following the big bucks, willing to line their own pockets on the suffering and misfortune of others.

A military member doesn’t become honorable by putting on a uniform. He or she becomes honorable due to the intent in their heart when they donned that uniform. I wasn’t always happy with who was pulling the strings in Washington, and I wasn’t always happy with the orders that I carried out. I am satisfied though that my service was honorable, because that was always my intent. I felt that I was giving something back to my community, even if Bill Clinton happened to be my commander in chief during several years of my service.

If a person doesn’t believe in honor and sacrifice, then they should definitely not thank a service member, or a policeman, or a firefighter. If they don’t believe in the benefits of education, they shouldn’t thank a teacher. If they don’t believe that a civilian contractor in a war zone is providing a necessary service in difficult location, at great risk to themselves, then they shouldn’t thank that contractor.

As for me, I’ll continue to show my appreciation for service members, and teachers, and policemen, and firefighters, and civilian contractors in war zones, and just assume that their intentions were honorable.

 

This brings back old memories of hippies calling our returning Viet Nam combat vets killers. Not a pleasant memory but they and you have the freedom to say those things.

None of the Vets I know think of themselves as having usurped our Constitution by serving a corrupt government.

Forgive me for saying this but it seems to me you consider yourself to be at the center of the Universe where everything must be explained to your satisfaction.

My orders never came with detailed descriptions of what the expected result of my actions would produce. I trusted my superiors to have good intentions and still think that was their motivation.

Just the opposite. If anyone I served with had even a wiff of corruption they would have tried to ferret it out. Of course my case is unique in that I served as a Counterintelligence Special Agent for the 112th Military Intelligence group and corruption for us was like dirt to a Mexican maid.

Since I have no interest in explaining to you how and why my service even remotely protected your freedom, I'll not be expecting your thanks. As a Viet Nam era Vet, I'm used to not getting any and it almost doesn't hurt anymore.

Sorry about hijacking this thread but I found I couldn't let this go.

 

Not the center of any universe but still waiting for someone, anyone, to address my question with anything other than flag waving rhetoric, opinion, or emotional rationalizations. I do not have a problem with killing large amounts of third-world people for cheaper gasoline but I do not condone selling it as protecting your freedom. I do not mind killing tons of goat herders to keep Halliburton busy building airports, warehouses, hospitals, and infrastructure to support an invading army, but don't blow smoke up my ass and pretend that I owe you something for your choices to don a uniform and jump on the plane. And oh by the way, I volunteered for service in Southeast Asia too so you can kiss my hippy ass.

 

Thaks so much to all of you that are serving and have served, as well as law enforcement and fire and paramedics.

However, untill the USA CLEANS ITS OWN HOUSE, its not worth fight for or dying for.

The current president openly supports gay marrage, regulagaions on small business are nearly imposssible to comply with, the finincial debt this gooberment has incurred is unsurmountabe.

I could never in good conscious recomend anyone to fight "FOR" the current state of our goovernment run amuck country!!!!!!!!!

 

Because everything else is gone; war is where one learns all they have is Honor.

War is place where if you jump into the jaws of hell' you don't need to look to see if they are jumping in there with you.

 

Brings tears to my eyes dude, but still don't understand how it relates to defending our Freedom? That's the problem with that question because avoiding the answer with platitudes , sentiment, lost comrades, horrors of conflict, and honorable intent still just avoids answering the question i asked? It's like the racial issues in our Country; We can't directly discuss the issue because it offends or is less than PC so the problem never gets addressed and only half of the solution is ever approached. We can't get around to answering how any war we have fought since WW ll has had ****-all to do with defending Freedom because of all the flag-draped coffins of our friends, our children, our brothers, and our fathers...Sherman said best with "War is Hell" but politicians with hired professional publicists have sold us on the defending freedom campaign and we bought it because to do otherwise was impossible to conceive. I am not questioning anyone's motives for going off to war, just asking what it has to do with defending Freedom still nobody tries a legitimate answer.
at the end of WW ll, great and powerful leaders of men found themselves being returned to the farm but rather than tractors, they took positions of power in industry and began the Boeings, and Halliburtons, and Brown and Roots, and these people need wars in foriegn lands to build airports, warehouses, ships, planes, trains, trucks, hospitals, ****-treatment plants, uniforms, ammunition, bombs, bullets, baricades, MREs, ...without foriegn wars, this could not happen, without selling the American pubic that these wars are justified to preserve their freedom and security, these wars could not happen
The Emporer has no clothes...I can see his little pecker sticking up there on the way to my butt and everybody wants to pretend it is patriotic duty and preservation of freedom but it just feels like I'm getting corn-holed.

 

If you don't know; then I cannot explain it to you.

What is expected a lengthy here is what I'll do?

Then do what your Honor tells you to do.