When Thomas Jefferson was writing the Declaration of Independence, he was clearly thinking about “life liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” Likewise, when James Madison drafted the Bill of Rights, the word that was uppermost on his mind was “freedom.”
Both men would surely be stunned at the degree to which liberty and freedom are being eroded in America today.
Recently, the Colorado legislature was trying to dictate which snacks could be available for our children in school. In a world of liberty and freedom, that would seem to be a decision for kids and their parents.
If government is to be involved at all in such decisions, it should be the locally elected school board, not busybodies in the State legislature and their duly appointed bureaucratic chums.
At the same time, Governor Ritter and the legislature are toying with the idea of requiring us all to have a GPS device in our cars so they can keep track of the number of miles we drive and tax us accordingly – punishing us appropriately for driving too much.
Since there is already a camera at every major intersection to record our faces and license numbers, the involuntary addition of addition of GPS would make it possible for someone in government, at some level, to track us 2-4/7/365. George Orwell would be pleased; Jefferson and Madison would be horrified.
Want another example? There are so many to choose from. How about this one? Regulations spawned by Nancy Pelosi’s “Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act” are about to put hundreds of businesses out of business by imposing draconian new restrictions on the amount of lead that can be in toys (on top of the regulations already in place.)
With respect to lead in toys, I stay in close contact with a group of eight people I went to the first grade with. All of us had toys with lead in them; our houses were painted with leaded paint and our gasoline was full of the stuff.
According to the “lead police” we should all be neurologically deficient, or worse. Yet, two of my friends are physicians, two are computer wizards, and all are highly successful. I can’t say that lead did any of us any harm.
It was the same with our parent’s generation. That generation, perhaps the most “leaded” in history, produced Winston Churchill, Franklin Roosevelt, Ike, Einstein, JFK – and it won WWII, invented the technology that we enjoy today and produced wealth and prosperity beyond the wildest dreams of any other population in history.
Come to think of it, maybe what makes Pelosi and her 30 and 40 year old chums in Congress unable to deal with today’s devastating economic, social and security problems in any meaningful way is a lead deficiency.
Nah, of course I jest – more likely it is simply their desire to have government intrude into every facet of every life, until liberty and freedom, as those terms were understood by Jefferson and Madison, no longer exist.
“Laws abridging the natural rights of the citizen should be restrained by rigorous constructions within their narrowest limits.” – Thomas Jefferson
“I believe there are more instances of the abridgment of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachment by those in power than by violent and sudden usurpations.” – James Madison
Think about it. If we sit on our hands as our freedoms disappear, we have no one to blame but ourselves.
Richard Stacy (usawyo@gmail.com) is a retired former federal prosecutor and a self-described “general curmudgeon.” EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an online-only column and has not been edited.
