Do you really want to be free?

Very likely this is my natural doom and gloom coming out, but I am not sure. Lately, when I look at what is going on in the country and the world today, something seems increasingly 0ut of whack, and I have had some difficulty in putting my finger on what may be behind it.

While it seems, and I can indeed see anecdotal evidence of economic struggles, overall the economy seems to be ok. Not Great, but not "the worst economy since Herbert Hoover.", aka the usual hyperbolic talking down of the economy that the MSM seems to spew every four years heading into a Presidential election. But that is not what is bothering me.

It could be the conduct of the Bush Administration on the "War on Terror" but again that is not what is on my mind. (With the stipulation that I wish the execution of the war was much more Sherman like from the get go. In other words, if you are going to fight a war - fight the damn war. This is not to disparage the efforts of the frontline soldier or Marine which is magnificent by and large, but to question the wisdom of a strategy of winning hearts and minds that was pursued for far too long. And 1 day of this strategy is too long)

However it seems to me that this sense of unease runs at a much deeper level that - and the only way I can think of to describe it is the apparent ease at which too many of my countrymen have traded their God given freedom for a mess of taxpayer paid pottage. Or at the very least have expressed a willingness to do so. And no, I am not talking about the accusations flying around the internet about how the President is shredding our Constitution. Rather the evidence of this willing slavery goes back much farther than November 2000, and it is much much deeper than the shallow political world.

This idea started germinating in my head in October of this year, at least to the point where I became aware of it doing so. See here and here. Since then, on several occasions, I have been mulling this train of thought over, and following where it leads, and I am coming back to one central theme, which is "Freedom good - slavery bad" .

Out of that theme I am coming to understand some unexpected ramifications.

More to come later.....