OK so what liberties do you not have today?
Please be specific.
For one, self governance and consent, I would like to decide what form of government i live under instead of having it forced upon me. I would rather not be fined or go to jail for not complying with laws i had no hand in making and did not desire nor agreed to.
I would rather not my money be taken from me to fund this government that does what I think is evil, such as teach student atheism, progressivism indoctrination etc in school, bombs foreign nation killing men women children and more.
I would rather not fund a state that kicks Christianity and Christ out of the public sphere, funds killing of babies, upkeeps an unbiblical judicial, prison, police state persecutes people for doing good while endorsing evil actions.
I would rather not the government manipulate the economy, force everyone into the capitalist system, tax my own property, housing, tell me what I can eat, restrict access to the market. Tax literally everything under the sun.
To save time, if i may
Today the government is involved in every aspect of our lives. We are regulated to a level the most tyrannical Monarch could not dream of. Food, sex, family, health, economics, morality, politics, education, religion, origins, substances, recreation, media, control of the financial market, and numerous other categories are under government influence today. It manages your trash and regulates your modes of behavior and your speech. It gives us lists of safety regulations on travel and food. Girl scouts are fined hundreds of dollars for selling lemonade in the wrong zoning area. Our superiors tell us what cooking oil we can use, what foods we can eat, what health care we can have, where and what animals we can raise on our property, what light bulbs we can use, and what buildings we are allowed to construct. The government gives us numerous safety and workplace regulations and controls housing zones, racial quotas, population density, and more.
Bureaucrats, politicians, and corporations often create regulations to limit competition in the market, maintaining their own dominance. For example, regarding food regulations, Charles Watters wrote, "Sell a chicken, a pound of beef, fresh milk, and chances are you’re performing an illegal act." Likewise, local free-range organic farmer Joel Salatin complains "Everything I want to do is illegal."
Natural, free-range farmers wanting to treat animals well rather than as products, and provide healthy food devoid of drugs while caring for the environment, face a hostile army of bureaucrats at every turn, propped up by the industrial food backers. Speaking of the numerous encounters with agents he and other pasture farmers have had to endure, Salatin wrote, "These health inspection bureaucrats have almost absolute power in many ways. They rule fiefdoms and enjoy a complacent, duplicitous American populace that assumes all is well as long as the fridge is full of beer, the toilet flushes, the TV remote works." With this, I agree. Unfortunately, Americans are horrifically unaware of (or worse, compliant with ) numerous forms of government tyranny going on daily in America; actions the founders would have been roused by instantly.
There is a reason self-sufficient local farming has been eradicated across the West. It was not by choice. Bureaucracies, special interests and politicians make it nearly impossible to survive in such a life. As a non-industrial farmer, like Salatin, you must be extremely creative and perhaps be willing to commit illegal acts just to survive. Industrial corporations violate laws and avoid regulations by paying off bureaucrats, hiring lawyers etc., while local natural farmers are tyrannized on their own land. Salatin wrote, "Bureaucrats bend over backwards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate."When a society has more prisoners than farmers, something has gone horribly wrong.
The only thing needed to return to an environmentally friendly healthier food system treating animals well would be to remove the USDA and all government involvement with the food system. They don't just punish and put out of business farmers who could challenge the market by confiscating their property or taxing or regulating them out of business. They also subsidize the industrial farming system. Further, they prevent others from starting new farms which challenge their monopoly. Many would move into natural farming but see it as an impossible adventure once they encounter the costs and regulations involved.
The market, the food you purchase, the availability of the kinds of food you eat and the costs of the products are all heavily regulated, and all controlled by large industrial corporations. You think you have a choice in what to eat because you go to the grocery store and select your items. But the availability, the price, and the nutrition content are predetermined before you enter the store. It is not the consumer who decides but the producers. Their financial interests are what is prioritized, not your health or the happiness of an animal.
Our language is severely regulated, and you go to jail when your parenting goes against the state's most cherished ideologies. A Canadian father could not only not prevent the "transition" of his daughter, but the court ordered him not to call his daughter a "she" within his own home. He refused and was sentenced to six months in prison. In NYC, you can be fined $250,000 for refusing to refer to someone by their preferred pronoun. You can parent (for now), but only so long as you cooperate. In Norway, if you call someone a name an LGBT individual thinks is "hateful," you go to jail for a year if it was said in private and three years if it is public heresy—the same penalty they issue for third-degree murder. In Scotland, a feminist activist was threatened with imprisonment for an anti-trans tweet.
One place where democratic governments do show diversity is in how many areas of our lives they regulate. Almost 30% of workers must pay a fine to attain a permission slip (or, as we call them, a license) to perform their job. Citizens have been jailed for collecting rainwater on their own property. Politicians are seeking ways to outlaw praying. Perhaps it will begin sooner than anticipated. A woman in Great Britain was arrested for "anti-social behavior" because she was on a public sidewalk praying in her mind.
The Patriot Act, now thankfully expired, denied due process and eased the process for federal agents to obtain search warrants and conduct wiretapping operations. Under the National Defense Authorization Act you can be detained indefinitely without trial. The government wants to label citizens they disagree with as domestic terrorists. We are strip-searched at airports, our phone conversations are listened to, and the government can access private financial records. The government regulates how much and what kind of work you can allow your kids to do. It mandates "education" and not only financially punishes you for homeschooling but forces you to comply with testing and other checks to gain permission in the first place.
The government controls and regulates you on "your" own property. We are all serfs to our overlords. Like a serf, your property tax is your dues, and if you do not faithfully fulfill your obligations, you will be removed and replaced by another who will. The land you’re renting is also more controlled than a serf’s. You must comply with rules regarding the animals you are allowed to raise, what buildings you erect and how you may build them, and what purposes you can use your land for. If you commit such a heinous crime as selling raw milk in the wrong state, they invade "your" land with armed SWAT teams, confiscate your property, and fine you thousands of dollars. You must not improve the land, or you will be punished by a raising of the "rent" you pay, called your property tax. You must not rise above serfdom. You may not have certain pets or livestock, and if a fox eats your chickens (if you are allowed chickens), you must not do anything to prevent it. He is protected on your land; your property is not.
Your passport is a "privilege" revocable by the government whenever it desires. We are not even allowed to leave our manor freely; like serfs, we need permission to travel outside our master's borders. Our master’s manors are much larger, but our status within them remains the same.
An oft-given example of medieval tyranny is found in post-Norman Conquest England where the king declared huge areas of land, the "Royal Forests," to be his property, preventing peasants from freely hunting in them as they had previously done. These have long passed into history, yet even today in the US state governments own all wild animals, allowing a select number of their serfs to pay a tax (license) to gain permission to hunt a set number of certain species during a specific time.
Modern copyright laws were non-existent in the Middle Ages and are contrary to liberty. In our era, they are only really an issue in America, supposedly the land of the free! They are often used as a corruption scam. The "crime" of plagiarism did not exist in the Middle Ages, and writing became "public" material once it was introduced. Each new bard would adapt poems, legends, and tales as they made them their own. Authors would use others’ material often without citing them. Works were written to improve humanity's knowledge. We have copyright laws today because we elevate money over knowledge. Imagine if the apostles had copyrighted the gospels.
More laws and regulations could be adduced but surely this is enough to dismiss any idea about the United States being "the land of the free and home of the brave." We must choose liberty or our sacred American cow of democracy. If you attempt to keep both, your idol will devour your freedom
