America: The Land of the Free or A Nation of Slaves?

My people, my family, or at least lines of my family, have resided in America since the early colonial days.   They came for the promise of a better life, free from the political entanglements and intrigues , from European politics, and the shackles of class.  They came seeking, in a word, liberty, and here they found it, albeit at the expense of the eastern Native American tribes.  They understood at a deep, near subliminal level what freedom and liberty meant.

American’s today know the words liberty and freedom.  Indeed, our national anthem extols “the land of the free.”  Our politicians mouth the words liberty and freedom ad nauseum, but do Americans truly have a clear understanding of these words.  I think not.  We have liberty and freedom in this country only in so much as the government permits us.

If one has liberty, one has a right to one’s person and ones property, and along with that, the right to protect ones person and ones  property.  This is the fundamental libertarian or classical liberal principle of  self-ownership, and it is from this single fundamental principle from which libertarian ideology proceeds.   Another term for this state of liberty is individualism.  To better understand this idea of self-ownership, let us look at what it means to be a slave.  First, a slave has no right to his person.  A slave is property.  Before the civil war, many slave owners spoke of abolition (in a convoluted and disingenuous fashion, mind you) as an attack on property rights.  As property, as a slave, you have no self-ownership, you are owned by a “master.”  Your entire life is lived at your master’s bidding.  You work, you eat, you sleep when told, and the produce of your labor belongs to the master.  Even the children of the unions which the master might demand in order to create more beautiful or stronger slaves belong to the master.

In opposition to this, if one has liberty, one chooses where and when to work, where and when to sleep, with whom they sleep, and the produce of your labor is yours, and yours alone to do with as you please.  Given these two distinct states of being, where on the scale from absolute slavery to absolute liberty are Americans today, or can be no admixture of the two?  Is it possible for one tobe partly free or partly a slave?

I tend to conceive of liberty as a positive term, as an absolute term because it encompasses the simple and singular right of self-ownership.   Slavery, however, may have numerous states in which it more nearly approaches liberty, or is further removed from liberty.

I am told that it takes the average American about four months of their labor to work of their debt to pay their income taxes.  This is simply an indenture, a form of slavery.  The government decides how much of my hard earned money they want to take, and they take it under threat of  my punishment, of my imprisonment.

Now, some would say, the government does good things with that money… they build roads and ports, they protect our shores from invasion, they feed the poor…, but let me ask a question.  If your neighbor came into your home, put a gun to your head, and told you to give him one third of all your money, but not to worry, that he was going to go out and do good things in the community with it.  What would you do?   After writing the check to avoid being shot in the head, and after your neighbors departure, you would go to the phone, call the police, and have him arrested.  Theft is theft, no matter how it is carried out.

A gentleman by the name of Frederick Bastiat called this “legalized plunder,” and that is precisely what it is.  There is no moral coherency between the government and the people.  The government operates under a different set of rules.  They are the master, and we the slaves.

America… a nation of slaves