What is the definition of "freedom" that applies to America? Is it the "freedom" to walk down the street without being arrested? Freedom to
practice whatever religion you like? Or is it something else? Last time I checked, we are no more free than any other "civilized" country in the
world in those regards.
So, what exactly is it that is "free" in America and when has anything ever been free?
For one, our country has its roots in slavery, our founding fathers owned them while they were writing the Declaration of Independence and the
Constitution. That seems like a pretty big contradiction within itself. "All men are created equal", except for those guys we're holding against
their will to do our field work every day without pay.
Secondly, we have the highest incarceration rate in the world, we have more people behind bars than any other country. "Land of the free" indeed, we
imprison more people than any other nation, many being non-violent offenders. We then use our prisoners for cheap labor to clean our roadsides and to
do other odd jobs, a modern form of slavery. This is not to ignore other countries who do this, I'm aware that they do, but the focus here is on
America and its claim to "freedom".
Thirdly, nothing in this country (or world) is "free". Try going to a grocery store and loading up your grocery cart with food and walk out without
paying and see how well that goes. You'll become another statistic in the largest prison system in the world. Try to go watch a movie and walk in the
front door without buying a ticket and see if you don't get kicked out. Try to take a vacation somewhere without paying for it and see how far you
get. My point is nothing in America is free, so I find it very ironic that America claims to be free.
We forced young men to go to a country halfway across the world and die during the World Wars and Vietnam. What happened if they refused to fight a
war they disagreed with or simply didn't want to participate in? They were put in jail. That's not freedom. Yes, that was in the past but it is
still part of our history and cannot be ignored.
The economy is another form of modern day slavery, no we aren't exactly forced to work but the alternative is much much worse. If you don't have a
job you have a pretty crappy life.
Usually it is those who do the least manual labor who get paid the most, those who do the most manual labor get paid the least. Retail is a perfect
example of this, though not the only one. What does that sound a lot like? Slavery. Slave owners benefiting the most while the slaves are thrown
scraps off of the table.
I used to work for a roofing company that went door to door selling jobs, I was part of the manual labor division of the company,
I was one of the guys who got on the roof and did all of the manual work. There were those who were the door to door salesman, all they did was knock
on doors, climb on the roof for a 5 minute inspection then would handle the phone calls and paper work. I was on the roof all day in the sun sweating
my ass off yet these guys who did hardly any manual labor were getting paid 3 and 4 times what we the manual laborers were getting paid. Does that
seem fair to you? I don't think it was fair. If money is supposed to be representative of how much work you do, I should have been paid 10 times what
those other guys got paid, but as it worked out it was the opposite.
It seems as though our economy encourages this type of pay scale. The hardest workers get paid the least.
This is a perfect analogy for America's form of capitalism. Those who push paper and bark orders get paid exorbitant salaries while those who do the
REAL work get thrown the scraps. That sounds a lot like modern day slavery to me. No, America is not the only one who does this, but the focus here is
on America claiming to be "the land of the free".
So I ask again, how has America ever been more "free" than any other civilized country? We may not have it as bad as some people in the world, but
those slaves that our founding fathers owned didn't have it as bad as some other people either, yet they were still slaves.
In my opinion, America being a beacon of "freedom" seems to be an oxymoron of epic proportions. We are far from being free and what little freedom
we do have has slowly been eroding for the past 30 or so years. Nothing about America does or ever has represented the true definition of freedom.
This is all just my opinion, so try not to get all butt hurt over it.