Free

F R E E

These days, everyone is looking for free stuff; free energy, free healthcare, free food, free sex….the list goes on. Yet, everyone knows and agrees that nothing is actually free. People are stealing man-hole covers to sell the metal, they are stripping abandoned homes of copper pipes and have even gone so far as to steal the fittings off of fire hydrants. In the middle of winter every year, someone freezes to death because their gas or electricity was turned off. Even your organs are not safe these days; if you go on a leisurely walk you could return home missing a kidney.

Cars are sinking into house-sized pot holes on the highways, bridges are collapsing, sewers are leaking into fresh-water rivers. The disruption of ecosystems is causing plants and animals to go extinct. We are running out of all sorts of stuff, individual elements from the periodic table are dwindling fast: copper, zinc, and other lesser-known elements that are necessary for environmentally-friendly (green) technologies. Even elements used in computers and solar panels are evaporating.

Sick people are being removed from hospitals and dropped onto streets blocks away for lack of insurance; some are dying because their provider has refused to pay for expensive treatment. Swat teams are breaking down the doors of innocent people and sometimes someone gets shot, even killed. Children are being labeled sex-offenders if they send nude photos to each other on their cell phones, getting expelled for playing cops-and-robbers as early as 10yrs old, and God help the parent who has a child removed by child welfare services over a misunderstanding.

Far too many wars are being fought on the U.S.A. soil: we have a war on drugs, war on pollution, war on religion, war on parents, war on “domestic terror”; everyone seems to be after someone for something. Scald yourself with hot coffee from a drive-through? Sue them! Trip on a broken sidewalk on a commercial property? Sue them! Bitten by dog in home you were about to rob? Sue them! This trend of suing anyone over anything is a war on common sense.

It’s no wonder we have an obesity problem in America; if you can survive your daily transit to and from work, if you can make it through your work day and not lose your self control, then you’ve survived yet another day, why bother with anything else? You’ve got your own battle to fight, anyone else’s problem is theirs alone.

Nothing is free, and least of all freedom. In a nation with a population that is indebted, incarcerated, impoverished, and sickly; freedom is hard to come by. Politicians have bred a nation of ignorance and apathy and confusion. People who have some knowledge of what to do, are scared or powerless or can’t agree on the best “fix”. Some say the police state that we have become is our just reward for tolerating political corruption. It’s difficult to argue that point. We can point fingers at the politicians all day long, but at the end of the day, WE put them there.

Nothing is free. Thomas Jefferson said that every once in awhile the patriots have to rise up in arms and shake down the government, put them in their place. He knew freedom could not last forever, it’s not free, it needs to be maintained. Maintenance of our freedom is a dangerous job, it requires brave patriots. Freedom requires the blood of those patriots, there is no safe way to go about it. Freedom demands blood in the streets. It’s a messy job, but someone has to do it.