Where is your freedom?

Who owns you? Are you a slave? Are you truly free?

These are some of the questions I asked myself some years ago and I now find myself asking others.  Many times the immediate answers are, Me, NO and Yes! But are we really being truthful with ourselves? Are we truly free? Do you really have the freedom of choice to do as you please as long as you aren’t harming others? Well of course you don’t, there are laws and if you do as you please you might break a few laws. But that’s ok isn’t it? I mean we need those laws to have the things we do, right? If we don’t have laws we won’t have freedom right? Well that’s what we are told to believe anyway. But have you ever stopped to think for yourself and ask if that is really true? I mean how can laws enacted by someone else telling us what we can and cannot do make us free? Do you ever stop and question what we are told to think? The first step in making the government mad at you is doing just that, thinking for yourself.

Well let me answer some of those questions. NO, government and laws don’t make us free and NO, we don’t need them to be free. This is something that has been told to people by those wanting to control those people for about as long as there has been people wanting to control others. All one must do is stop believing what you are being fed and start thinking for yourself and questioning what you are told.

Do you understand that you are already free? Your freedom is intrinsic to your humanity. Yes, simply put because you are human you are free. You already have free will and free thought. So stop asking for freedom and start living a free life! Now I assume right about now there are a few reading this that are starting to wonder what kind of crap are you reading? Yes, I know it just sounds too simple. How could man have lived under oppression for thousands of years when all he had to do was just say “I am Free.” You do own yourself and no one has the right to control you or your thoughts but yet everyday someone does. We have been conditioned for many generations now to accept that authority over us and obey it. Why, because we live in fear of it. We are afraid to live as we choose because someone may come and take that life away or take us away. Freedom is not living your life to the extent that you are told to live. If you think you are so free then begin to live outside of those bounds and see just how free you are.

I have a 170lbs Great Dane and she has a large back yard to roam and live in. She is fed well and receives shelter and protection from outside danger but is she really free? No she isn’t. She is only as free as the fence allows her to be. She cannot roam freely where ever she chooses and even when she is outside of the fence she knows she should stay around the house because that is where her safety and security is found. Now this dog is the size of a full grown man and if she wanted to go against me I have no doubt she could overcome me but she doesn’t. Why, because she has been raised to know that she should stay on her property and obey me simply because I say so.

Are we like my dog Maggie? Do we do what we are told simply because we are told to or because of the fear of what punishment we could receive if we do not obey? Do we obey because if we do we can be safe and secure? If you find yourself answering yes to any of these then maybe you should ask yourself if you are really free. Are you truly living your life to the fullest and with the freest expression? I think most of us would have to be honest with ourselves and say that at least on some level we are not living free, that we are complying out of fear. If this is true then I ask you to begin to question your beliefs and loyalty to a system that only wishes to control you and offers you no freedom. Our system of government always continues to grow and control more and even though at times it may seem to slow down for a while in the end it is growing, however slow that may be.

So what do we do about it?  The classic answer is to elect someone fix it and restore liberty. But how can our freedom be restored if the government doesn’t own it in the first place? Well maybe this newly elected official can cut back on the infringement of our liberty, right? Yes, that’s possible but really highly unlikely. For even if we were to elect a person of true integrity that person would be fighting against hundreds of other elected officials focused on controlling more. So what if we elected all new officials that were moral and just and focused on restoring liberty? There are still those “men behind the curtain” to deal with. Yes, they exist and no, they will not give up control willingly or easily. So is the election process a waste? Possibly yes but I will acknowledge that some small victories still could be made through it. Overall though, I do not believe individual liberty can be found through electing someone, no matter how good that someone is.

So now that I have probably made a lot of people mad I will offer a solution to the remaining readers of this article. After 17 years of activism and reading countless books and articles and studying philosophers of the past I have finally come up with a solution, a way we can attain and experience true individual liberty. Ready? Here it is: Just ignore the government! That’s right, live your life without them, act as if they don’t exist. Ok, no I didn’t come up with that on my own. It is something many people before me have been saying for eons. But the question is can it work? I say yes and for several reasons. First and the most obvious is the personal satisfaction of living truly free is possibly one of the greatest benefits. You will come to know that only you own yourself and only you will make the decisions on what you may do. Second, if you do this and if more and more follow then, over time we can see true change. There is evidence all around us of this being successful.  Once the government realizes you’ve called their bluff and refuse to comply and decide to live your life without them they know that they’ve lost power and many times will move on to other things or dry up completely. Now this isn’t to say that they might choose to fight back and try to hold onto what power they believe they have over you but this is where we show them we do not need them any longer and we are living our lives without them.

I like to call it cultural secession, where we turn away from the “American and World Culture” and form our own culture and new societies. We must cut that umbilical we have allowed to keep us tethered to the government teat for far too long. With freedom comes responsibility and work so this is not easy or cheap but in the end we can work to build a new future for ourselves and our future generations. I know at first many will say it can’t work but I say it is our only hope left.  Let me give you a couple of examples of how this has worked in the past to help bring freedom from government to some people. Now I know there will be critics because there are other reasons the following examples won their freedom but these people making a choice to live a life without the government did play a big role.

Example 1. Home schooling: I was homes schooled back in the 80’s; in fact I have never attended a government indoctrination center. Back then home schooling was still a pretty knew idea for most people, there was nothing popular about it. We had to hide to do it. We feared at any moment being hauled off to school or jail for not complying with the “rules”. We made excuses and were careful where we went and who we told like many others during that time. Even people you would think would be accepting thought what we were doing was horrible, so called freedom loving patriotic people and the church crowd were some of the harshest critics of what my parents were doing and yet we pressed on like many others. Yes, along the way laws were changed and court cases were won that alleviated some of the fears. But the biggest reason homeschooling has grown and now viewed as the smart thing to do for your children is because people wouldn’t stop homeschooling. Even though there were dangers for those in the beginning and they faced ridicule they kept doing it and more joined them and I believe that when the system realized they could not win this battle they began to give up and turn their focus to other things. 

Example 2. Gay and Lesbian rights: The year is now 2012 and only the most extreme haters feels a gay person should be locked up in prison for being gay but did you know that just 9 years ago some states still has laws on the books criminalizing living an open life as a gay person. Before 1962 it was a felony in every state to be gay and have a relationship with a same sex partner. What changed? Of course several things, court cases were won over throwing previous laws, legislative actions were taken to change laws, public opinions changed and society became more opened minded but the biggest reason why things changed? Many, many people began to make the decision to live their lives out in the open the way they were meant to. There was danger in this and many we persecuted because of this but they did not give up and when those in power realized they could not win this fight they began backing down and focusing elsewhere.

There are many other examples I could give and I do realize both of the above examples still fight for the freedoms they desire to express but both have won tremendously and are definitely ahead in the battle simply because people never gave up and made the choice to live freely whether they were allowed to or not.

So how do we use this as an example to live our own lives freely? First and foremost we must break away from this system of comfort, safety and security. We must accept the responsibility for our own lives and understand no one is responsible for ourselves and the decisions we make. We must understand that this is not an easy road ahead but in the end the benefits of freedom cannot be compared to any kind of comfort or security. We must come to realize government isn’t a necessary evil in your life and that you can go on and even prosper without it. Know this that you and only you own yourself and you are no slave and will not submit yourself as a slave to anyone. Once you realize and accept these facts you will be well on your way to enjoying the complete freedom of self-ownership.

To get there, there will be few things along the way we must do to separate ourselves from this system of control. You see it’s not just the state that is part of this system but banking, corporate farming, international and large corporate merchandisers, the compulsory education system, most modern health care, media and most of the entertainment industry as well as most churches are part of this system of control.  I will not go into details on these things in this article because they in themselves are lengthy to discuss so I will save that for a later article but the point is to begin now to look to ways to end your dependency on this system. This is a growing movement so there are more and more ways to do this and even create new societies with other like-minded people in your area and around the world.

I too am personal working on this along with my family. This is not an overnight change and no one should expect it to be. We are daily looking for ways to be more independent and realize the easiest isn’t always the best. My wife and I are currently working on a website that we hope will help others wanting to live the same and help bring people together not based on political affiliation or religion but on how they chose to live their lives.

I truly believe we are all on the brink of something great. Maybe that something is to pave the way so that someday future generations can live free from control, advancing beyond the archaic idea of this need of government and knowing through truth and fact that our humanity establishes that we are free and that none have the right to take that from us.