I know a strong economy is important to people, but it has been placed in such a primary position for so many decades, that it seems the American people are willing to forgive almost any violation of our rights, just as long as any particular administration is delivering a “good economy”. But when they prop up corporations with government subsidies and throw trillions of stimulus dollars into the economy, ultimately it isn’t a good economy, despite short term appearances, and it results in a debilitating effect on all individuals’ finances, which also ultimately has a marked effect on their individual liberty.

When you are living in squalor due to government regulations and intrusive policies that squash entrepreneurial innovation and the creation of new businesses and jobs, your choices for living are drastically reduced, much more so than when you are thriving and prosperous because you have been able to accumulate some great wealth under a government that let the free market and true capitalism loose to do what it has always done naturally.

We’re buying oil from Saudi Arabia, our “frenemies”, wearing denim jeans from China – where we’ve outsourced all our pharmaceuticals, and driving foreign cars, while we’ve allowed nearly all our meaningful manufacturing base to be destroyed and shipped overseas too. We would be immensely better off economically as a nation, and thus as a people and individuals, if we had maintained good, solid well-made products through technologically advanced manufacturing centers right here in America, even if it meant paying a bit more per item. It would still have resulted in less overall cost than what we are experiencing now, due to the shift in our overseas relationships and a mounting attack on the U.S. dollar by the BRICs nations, along with a litany of other factors.

I miss the days when American girls and American guys would always stand up and salute in some accepted form whenever they saw Old Glory flappin’ in the wind at any official event, or even just in their own front yards, much as I did each morning when I’d raise the American Flag up the pole in our front yard, when my Dad was teaching military science at Columbia Military Academy in Columbia, TN.

Isn’t it just sickening that we now see every anti-American dirtbag imaginable, from BLM and Antifa and elsewhere – illegal aliens too, stomping the American Flag into the dirt and burning it in our streets just before they burn our cities too, all in the name of their cultist death-loving Marxist-Maoist utopian worldview.

As I note in the body of this piece, freedom isn’t free; it never has been free, and it never will be free. It demands putting some skin in the game and very often a little bloodshed, even the sacrifice of the lives of America’s patriots.

I simply wish our countrymen would pay a great deal more attention to the many egregious acts by the federal government that regularly violate the Bill of Rights, such as The Patriot Act and the FISA Reauthorization Act, along with many others, like the National Defense Authorization Act which was reshaped in 2012 to grant the President virtually total power and control over every last facility and resource in the country if he deems there to be an emergency of enough significance to warrant its activation. Some of these things should scare the hell out of ordinary Americans, if only they would take the time to read what they actually allow authorities to do to them.

Things aren’t getting any better anytime soon, even if Trump wins in 2024. Everyone should remember that he grew government and added $8 trillion to the national debt. And he didn’t bat an eye over locking America down, something I’ll never forgive. Of course, everybody has already said “well … he’s better than Biden.” However true that may be, it is little comfort given what I know him to be.

I urge all Americans to follow their conscience and in all matters of government, always ask, “Does this thing grow liberty or squash liberty?” and decide on that one indicator. Because all bills do one or the other, directly or indirectly, One only need reason their way through the weeds of the thing.

Live fast, die young and leave a good lookin’ corpse seemed to be my motto for many of my early manhood years, since I always railed against the constraints of this modern world I was brought into by accident. It never seemed natural to allow others to tell me what to do, if what I was doing actually harmed no one else, and it absolutely wasn’t for any person who understands the sovereignty of the individual, and yet, everywhere I went there were people yelling at me not to do this thing or another, and there remain many who still try to limit me and others today, those self-important bastards and busy-bodies who had trouble being potty-trained and have nothing better to do.

Well, it appears I’ve long missed my chance for dying young, and I’m not certain I was ever going to leave a good lookin’ corpse, but decades later, I’m still standing and still trying to live a life well lived without the added aggravation of government intervention and dealing with the fat-ass bureaucrats I have so despised, after discovering the games they play so long ago, the “rules for thee but not for me” defacto status quo that has existed for far too long in America.

You know something is dreadfully wrong with your country and the regime running it, when it can tell you it controls part of your private property – your land – simply because a large puddle of water lingers for more than a day after a hard rain, as they disingenuously call a three or four foot puddle “a wetland” and take the surrounding five or ten acres, or whatever the hell they want. You have to know how wrong it is, when they tell you that it’s somehow “illegal” for you to catch rainwater in a 55 gallon barrel sitting under the downspout of your own home. And no matter how much sense it may make, it always stuck in my gut that the government forced grown adults to buckle their seatbelts, taking away their right of free will and choice.

Rules and regulations abound and fly hither, thither and yon, as they stifle business and do great damage to the economy overall and the individual’s ability to earn more specifically, as we see them enforced as if they were a “law” legally passed by Congress. This is the sort of deception played upon the American people that had us obeying arbitrary “sustainable development” rules, that were the machinations of Agenda 2021 and now 2030, circumventing or openly violating our own constitution and state constitutions and forcing us all to relinquish an unimaginable amount of our individual sovereignty to international organizations and international law and treaties not ratified by the U.S. Congress. Much of this has manifested in numerous “green deals” aimed at redistributing our wealth and that of the nation all across the Third World, to our detriment and chagrin.

I’ve always said that whenever faced with a bad [unconstitutional] or illegal “law” fight to have it repealed or rescinded as hard as you can, and depending on how much steel one has in one’s spine, if you’re anything like me, refuse to obey it with every waking day and tell the state or federal officials to take a hike.

But who among you saw a nation of wimps, when millions of Americans shrieked like old, fragile women who just saw a mouse and jumped on their chairs whenever a Covid particle was thought to have entered the room? – and they gave up their freedom and liberty to the Marxist-inspired Dr Fauci and Democratic Party Communists of the country, along with their corporate cronies, like it was nothing, the easiest choice they’d ever mad, as they succumbed to fear, just as the men behind the curtains hoped they would.

America and Her people haven’t been truly free for a long, long time.

Yes – refusing to comply with bad laws will also come with consequences that one may skirt for many days or months or altogether, if one has the time or money to fight them in what passes for a court of law these days, or one pleads their own case in a strong enough and accurate manner as to win over a jury of their peers. And although I wouldn’t recommend a life as an outlaw patriot, there is that choice too, if one has crossed too far over the Rubicon and a point of no return, depending on the gravity and seriousness of the issue at hand and the battle one has taken on as their own.

But it beats the hell out of living on one’s knees as a coward, meekly submitting to America’s tyrants.

And still, Congress regularly gathers to churn out one bad law after the next, just because “we have to do something”. Don’t worry about how bad the bill is; they’re at least doing something. We saw how terrible their legislative philosophy is with their recent “border deal” that actually codified allowing 1.8 million illegal aliens crossing into America each year, further facilitating Biden’s Open Borders Policy.

Most Americans are out in Fly Over Country, working hard every day and opening a cold beer from time to time, in pursuit of happiness and a good life, and those things that keep the blues at bay. And throughout the many decades of the Twentieth Century and this century too, the good and decent traditional Americans have time and again taken up the mantle and the cause of freedom, because freedom doesn’t just exist naturally where large populations of humans gather together, and it sure as hell doesn’t come free.

There isn’t any doubt that it’s become infinitely harder for anyone to make a decent life for themselves and achieve a sense of happiness. But by and large, Americans at the turn of the Twentieth Century set the ball in motion, especially during the Wilson administration’s era by accepting the implementation of a debt based economy and tenets, such as centralized banking and an income tax, straight out of the Marxist ideology; from that point on, the debasement of the U.S. dollar, cycles of high inflation and boom and bust markets did their dirty work of stealing hardworking American’s hard-earned dollars, and nothing has changed much, other than the schemes and the continued theft of American wealth has become exponentially worse than one can hardly fathom.

Many of us may have jobs we enjoy, perhaps even love, but I’m certain that no one landed there right out of the gate, unless they had deep existing connections prior to reaching adulthood. Most people have to take some menial entry level position, working several different jobs and studying and learning, long before ever attaining the career they desire, but no one looking at their prospects and their future wants to be some company’s work mule for the entirety of their life, trying to flourish under harsh economic conditions that force them to work sixty or more hours a week, take in roommates and basically living like cattle, without any real hope of owning their own home any time soon, as is the current state of affairs in America.

Currently, over twenty-two million Americans report they are struggling just to pay rent, and some thirty-five percent of Americans say that they can’t afford the simple bare necessities of life.

Sure, people often try to keep up with the Joneses and live far above their means, which contributes to whatever miserable situation they find themselves encapsulated within, but to just acquire the bare necessities today has become a mammoth endeavor, and too often requires every member of one’s family to have a job. This is a leap from the peak of the mountain of prosperity in the 1950s, when one man’s salary was sufficient to provide for his family’s needs, into the abyss and malaise of this out-of-control debt-based economy and economic slavery that has enabled the federal government to tighten its grasp and control over the individual in ways that simply should not exist, if our federal government truly gave two good shits about our individual liberty – which has continued to devolve to the point that now a Cyber Bank Digital Currency is being suggested, a move for total control over everyone and everything.

On the other side of the coin, we see the Federal Reserve Bank dangling easy credit and easy money in front of consumers who often approach it irresponsibly. They keep paying the minimum as the interest accrues, and once the balance grows beyond their means to pay the minimum payment, they want to scream “Foul” and demand relief from the government. And that’s just what Biden proposes to do for students who are currently in debt up to their eyeballs; it’s also pretty much what President Bush and Obama did for Corporate America during the 2008 economic collapse. a practice continued by Trump and Biden, once again to the detriment of all Americans.

Being an automaton on some assembly line, although honest and commendable work, isn’t what man was intended to be, if one looks at history, Mankind has always moved towards greatness; just look at all the great thinkers, outstanding poets and philosophers, amazing painters and sculptors, and the complex and infinitely talented architects and musicians who span the ages.

We used to be able to attain our basic necessities with a great deal less time involved, but as things became bigger and better or more technologically advanced and complex, it was people’s own greed and their willingness to tie themselves to debt for instant gratification and the next great toy or shiny car or too much house for their needs, that forced them to become debt-slaves. This same dynamic of grasping too much too soon beyond the real limits of their salaries is also what sometimes led to them losing everything, and even becoming homeless, if only temporarily.

The fact remains that with economic liberty comes a prodigious expanse of individual liberty throughout the population and across the country. How one achieves it is the riddle that has plagued the majority of people for centuries.

However, we all must also be realists and understand that there are times in the lives of all men and women that any series of unfortunate events can upset our plans, dashing our dreams and scattering them – sparkling and broken – like a million stars in the night sky. For me, I never minded too much, never fell into despair, probably because I understood at a very young age that one never loses sight of their dreams if they have hope and the will to keep working towards them, never broken and always with a fire burning in one’s mind and one’s heart.

In the end, true freedom doesn’t revolve around how much stuff you can accumulate. True freedom and liberty revolve around owning your own labor and being able to reap its full value from within any economic system to do with as you choose and please, so long as your actions do not violate the rights of others; and any regime or government that takes the product of your labor to simply hand to someone who hasn’t put forth any real effort to provide for themselves, it has violated the very core of your being and your Inalienable God-given Rights and trampled on your liberty.

No – America isn’t free. Even Her children have been indoctrinated and trained in the public “education” system, much like Hitler’s Youth, especially over the past two decades, to turn on their parents and betray them as “domestic terrorists” to our new mammoth Surveillance State for holding anti-communist, anti-abortion, anti-transgender, anti-CRT conservative and Christian views, although some of America’s children are currently following the principles of traditional America thanks to great parents who have either schooled them at home or sent them to fine private schools. For now, it usually only ends with job losses, but there are legal pitfalls, especially when parents object to a school facilitating their child’s gender change surreptitiously, in states where schools have been provided legal protections for violating parents’ rights.

Not only have the largest percentage of Americans been made dumber than they normally might have been through a public education, but on the whole the populations’ sense of the joy of living has been sucked out of each of these who have submitted to the current Marxist-Maoist anti-American, anti-liberty movement. I see this primarily in the men of our country, but of course, it has had its effect on our women too.

I imagine most of Americans don’t have it in them to become famous and wealthy entertainers, painters or poets, architects or stand-up comedians or some of the loftier pursuits many of us are wont to seek, but that doesn’t make it any less despicable and troubling for our government to keep putting roadblocks to success in our way, whatever form they take. It must get out of the way of the individual so they may freely pursue a flourishing sort of life, as they see fit, which comes with plenty of its own bumps in the road without any extra help from an intrusive federal government.

More than this, the federal government must stop attempting to manipulate and control our freedom of religion and speech, our freedom of assembly, our freedom to travel, our freedom to own property and our freedom to defend ourselves from them, whenever and wherever we find it necessary.

The free flow of words has been the key to human liberation, and freedom of association has often resulted in some of the most unexpected advancements of mankind, as someone stepped away from convention, the status quo, and found themselves working on a higher level of consciousness, much like when America’s Founders composed the Declaration of Independence and created the U.S. Constitution, for the first time joining the idea of liberty with the equality of all men in the eyes of the law. The notion of the principles of freedom and liberty gaining more influence in America makes the Biden regime sorely afraid and it has prompted a continual assault against the Founding, from all shades of authoritarian Marxist-Maoists, who need the people to fear government and what might happen with less of it. Freedom and individual liberty are dangerous to those who would be tyrants.

Every individual must make their life an experiment of sorts, to find their own path to the freedom and liberty they desire most, accompanied with the freedom of one’s spirit that puts one back in touch with the being God intended them to be.

Don’t let the amerikkan Marxist-Maoists turn you into a kulak, a serf.

Escape from the barbed-wire tangles that have been constructed around your minds from living under decades of propaganda, and fearlessly embrace the natural world and the sheer fluid beauty of God’s Creation with a new awareness of the raw, naked life of liberty all men and women were meant to live together, under years of soft moonlit nights and the chaos of the stars to await each new momentous sunrise, to marvel over how a sapling grows from a seed to a beautiful tree and a newborn baby grows to be a free born man or woman.

Standing in the ruins of the lives of millions of Americans today, Biden cries out for the nation to hear on all issues, from the border to the economy and energy and on to abortion, “I am death”.

Promise me a battle for freedom and liberty.

Promise me a battle for your soul and mine and the soul of all America.

February 15, 2024

~ The Author ~
Justin O. Smith has lived in Tennessee off and on most of his adult life, and graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1980, with a B.S. and a double major in International Relations and Cultural Geography – minors in Military Science and English, for what its worth. His real education started from that point on. Smith is a frequent contributor to the family of Kettle Moraine Publications.