[Jeff Higgins]

Doesn't anyone else notice that both "sides" accuse the other of attempting to limit freedoms? So how many new laws passed in this country actually add to our freedoms? Seems to me we have long since passed the point where most take a measure of freedom away from us. The only new laws that can actually "grant" freedoms are those that repeal or revise existing laws that took them away to begin with. That hardly ever happens. The noose only seems to be tightening.

Just to choose a couple of examples near and dear to both sides, let's look at gun laws and sexual freedoms. Both seem to really light up their respective proponents/opponents, and for good reason. Neither set of issues should even be addressed by law, but they have been. A man is inherently free to arm himself in any manner he sees fit. Likewise, he is free to have the sexual relations of his choosing. In neither case is it anyone else's damn business until it adversely affects some one else. Not just annoys, or disgusts, or worries - those are not valid reasons to impinge upon another man's freedoms. Yet we have allowed that to happen. It's because we have fallen for a ruse, a shell game, and have allowed ourselves to become distracted.

Both sides - the Left and the Right - are equally "guilty" as far as this little ruse works. Both espouse their versions of "freedom" while working to curtail those freedoms embraced by the "other side". The "default setting" of mankind is freedom to do as one wishes. Governments and the money/power structure behind them opperate to take those freedoms away. It's not a "liberal" or "conservative" issue until they start pointing fingers at each other, in hopes of diverting attention from their own particular flavor of impingement. "The other guys are worse..." still seems to be an effective diversion, however. Keeping the "liberals" and "conservatives" at loggerheads, while curtailing the freedoms of both, has proven an effective way for the real movers and shakers behind the scenes to bolster their power base. It's not a "liberal vs. conservative" issue, folks. At the grassroots it may be, but in the end both lose precious freedoms, and both have learned to ask permission of their government to do what no government has authority over to begin with. We are losing this one, kids, because we fight each other over it. It's time to wake up and recognize the real enemy of freedom.