There is a subject no one wants to discuss these days. And that includes conservative, libertarians and others who consider themselves on the right. The subject is our loss of freedom. I know, many groups and individuals talk about what freedoms we have lost and continue to lose. But that’s not the area I’m speaking of. I refer to the necessity of loss of life in order to retain freedom.
Yes, it was horrible for the deaths and injuries in Boston. Yes it was unspeakable, the deaths of all the children as well as the adults in Newtown. These and other loss of lives throughout our history are not pleasant to talk about in the terms I’m going to present. But here it is. This is the cost of freedom. Just as soldiers march off to foreign lands knowing they may never come back alive, doing it in the name of freedom, so must our internal population accept that some of us must die in order to preserve our freedom.
Instead, what we immediately talk about after such incidents is what the government must do to protect us better. With the Sandy Hooks it’s gun control. With bombings it’s stopping these evil people from doing it. What isn’t talked about is how we should protect without removing freedoms. The easy way out for the right is to blame the left for allowing laws to be made or society to deteriorate to a point where such things are possible. But the right has been just as guilty while laws get passed, edicts get handed down and so on, that limit freedom in the name of security. Where were those people when a hard right (in their opinion) president began the War on Drugs? Where are those people when laws that are on the books but that are not enforced contribute to these very problems? Where is the outrage when the president uses bogus statistics and calls all of you liars because, like a six year old stamping his feet, he didn’t get his way.
Automobiles are involved in 30,000 deaths a year. But just like guns, they don’t kill. People driving them do. And yet there is no hue and cry to eliminate automobiles. Why? Because that would infringe on too many peoples’ freedoms, freedom to drink and drive, freedom to text and drive, freedom to do all sorts of crazy things while speeding at 70 miles an hour down the highway. You see, it is possible to retain freedoms when they affect enough people or threaten to take away something they all cherish. We all know, including our friends on the left, that the overwhelming cause of death by gunshot is drugs and those are in the inner cities. There are easy solutions to that problem but nobody want to talk about that so we allow it to continue. Take away “assault” rifles, which have nothing to do with the real problem but leave the illegality of drugs in place. We all know the real problem for incidents like Boston and Fort Hood is allowing known extremists, people who have vowed to kill all of us, to intermingle with us. That is not freedom for we the people. That is freedom for people who want us dead. So we lose our freedom in the name of security while those people, through more immigration laws and in the name of diversity, are give there own freedom to kill us.
There are answers, easy answers that would allow us to remain free. Stop making more laws and enforce those that we now have. As a small example, put anyone who killed someone with a car while driving drunk in prison for life. Then see how many people drive drunk after that happens for awhile. Stop trying to find votes among illegals and send them to their own home. We must accept the hard fact that that freedom will continue to cost precious innocent lives from time to time. But it is a miniscule number in a truly free country like we are supposed to be. As an example, how long does anyone think Dhozhar would have lasted if, instead of shutting everyone up in their homes in Watertown, the police allowed people to walk about freely. Of course many would have stayed inside. But many others, not fearing death, would have been out and about doing their usual things. The man who found him in his boat may well have seen him sneaking into it in the first place, long before thousands of macho cops dressed for war converged on and spent hours hovering over the spot while others went house to house. Perhaps we the people have finally reached that point where, although many talk about freedom, we’re all ready to trade it for security. In Franklin’s wise words, “we have neither.”
