Death by a Thousand Cuts

There are risks inherent in a free society. A society which places too much value on security runs the great risk of benevolent dictatorship; in the interest of making people safe they will either ban or make compulsory every conceivable thing, and the individual has his choices eliminated by the Nanny State. Freedom means making your own decisions, planning what is best for you and your family. Laws were intended to prevent flagrant violations of another person`s right to make those decisions for themselves.

Benjamin Franklin once said that ``Those who would trade freedom for security deserve neither`` and this view was held by Americans until Liberalism, with such silly concepts as ``freedom from want`` (thank you FDR) bought enough people off with guarantees of money and free goodies. The ``Great Commoner``,William Pitt, coined the phrase which would be applied to the Patriots prior to the American Revolution ``Sons of Liberty``; this meant a zealous defender of freedom, and Pitt applied it to all Colonials because of their jealous defense of the rights as Englishmen. Americans would not accept such minor aggravations as taxes to pay for their defense by English soldiers.

That is why it is so astounding to see what we have wrought, and how spineless the American people have become when it comes to their liberties. Every April 15 we allow our government to force us to fill out these long, complicated forms to assist them in accounting for the taxes they have forcibly removed from our paychecks. Many of us have to hire professional form-fillers to comply with the requirements of our government-a requirement once proposed by none other than Karl Marx. If we fail to do this we will be arrested at gunpoint and sent to prison. If we make a mistake, something easily done considering the tax code is 26,000 pages long and nobody on this Earth can claim to understand it, we must pay penalties. If we refuse we go to jail. America fought a revolution for far less indignities than those imposed by our own government.

We permit government to dictate to us in ways the Founders would not believe; a bottle of whiskey would cost about 20 cents if not for the massive taxation, a carton of cigarettes would be a couple of dollars, gasoline would be a fraction of what they charge without the heavy burden of taxation. People lose their homes to property taxes every day, or to eminent domain. Don`t forget, it`s not just taxes, but benevolent laws which rob us of our freedom to guide our own lives. We have anti-smoking laws, seat belt laws, child safety seat laws, anti-discrimination laws of every sort, laws governing nutrition, how much salt to put in, how much sugar to leave out, etc. We are drowning in a sea of regulation-all ``for our own good`` and each and every one of them a gross violation of our right to be left alone.

That is why I find this business of putting cameras on stoplights so disturbing; while they may help prevent accidents, and the state has to regulate traffic to some degree, it sets a bad precedent. Currently, traffic cameras can only give non-moving violations (since there is no actual witness to confront the speeder in court) but the move is afoot to give these cameras the full force of the law, to allow technology to , essentially, arrest you.

This may do some good in the moment, but it is a slippery slope; how long before those cameras are used to catch people smoking in their cars? Not wearing seat belts? Not paying attention? Perhaps even (gasp) swatting their ill-behaved children? Once that principle is established, once it becomes accepted that government can constantly watch you, where will it lead? Will we have the home cameras of Orwell`s nightmare?

With cameras at every intersection government can follow you wherever you go-you no longer have any privacy. Yet millions of Americans, confident that they will live into eternity if properly protected, gladly trade their freedom for the security offered by that pseudo-deity we pay every April 15. That every camera put on a stoplight is a flagrant violation of your freedom never occurs to them. We have lost the spirit of `76, the Sons of Liberty have become the Daughters of Submissivity, and America finds many of her children unwilling to defend our way of life. Why?

It should come as no surprise that a nation willing to allow such things does not have the determination to resist a foreign enemy. If we won`t fight our neighbors over seat belts we surely won`t fight Jihadists over Sharia. Defense of Liberty is a matter of zeal; if you don`t have the zeal to stop the Fabian creep of well-intentioned paternalism you certainly don`t have it to stop the lions from devouring your freedom.

So think about that when you sign your income tax forms; you have surrendered a piece of the liberty our Founding Fathers bled and died to obtain. Think about that every time you pass through the watchful eye of Big Brother hanging so silently on that lightpost. Think about that when the polls say Americans want to pull out of Iraq and leave that country to those who wish to kill us and enslave us to the tyranny of Sharia.

As Patrick Henry said, ``give me Liberty, or give me Death!``

We`re dying by a thousand cuts.