America: closing her door to freedom
So many laws have eroded our Second Amendment gun rights that, as P.J. O'Rourke notes, if Massachusetts had the same gun laws in 1775 that it has now, we would all be Canadians.
Even political campaign speech is constricted. The Obama administration argued at the U.S. Supreme Court that the McCain-Feingold Act can ban books about ongoing election campaigns. Yet Justice Hugo Black warned that:
"The freedoms of speech, press, petition, and assembly guaranteed by the First Amendment must be accorded to the ideas we hate, or sooner or later they will be denied to the ideas we cherish."
Almost half of all U.S. income is taxed today which means we have lost about half our economic freedom. With record government spending and soaring debt, we are set to lose a lot more. And to think the Boston Tea Party was waged over a three-cent-a-pound tax on tea. Government regulations on business cost us well over $1 trillion a year in higher consumer prices, and there are exactly 26,911 government words policing the sale of a head of cabbage.
In recent years, obsessive-compulsive environmental regulations halted a Massachusetts town from using fireworks on Independence Day since an 'endangered' bird's nest was found near it. News flash: on July 4 we celebrate independence from a tyrannical government. Yet George III never taxed, regulated, or policed us remotely as much as Washington, D.C. does today. U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says "Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory".
Everywhere rules and paperwork mushroom as nit-picking bureaucrats grow in numbers and power. As a buddy bemoaned, the increasingly shrill message of the establishment is “Sit down - and shut up". No wonder so many Americans feel frustrated and impotent.
Why has our liberty eroded so badly?