Opus 2021-194: One Month Notice

The Fourth of July is approaching.  We are all hoping that the current occupant of the White House will be benevolent enough to allow us to celebrate that day.

It has now come down to ignoring the First Amendment’s statement about free assembly.  We now seem to need the President’s permission to gather together.  This is the next to final stroke of despotism.

The first stroke I can remember was the enactment of laws making it illegal to shoot off certain types of fireworks.  Are you old enough to remember when our independence was celebrated with joy and reckless abandon.  We would actually light fire crackers.  Sure, we had some people who did not seem to understand that you were not supposed to hold on to them.  We still have people like that.  They vote Democrat.  We used to get the band-aids and patch them back together.  If it was really serious we might take them to get sewn up at the doctor.  It is like horses.  Just because some of us always fall off, you don’t make it illegal to ride a horse.  Come to think about it, they do that in some towns.  If, however, your long term goal is to remove the joy of celebrating freedom from the hearts of today’s young people, then take away the risk of freedom.

So it starts with the “dangerous” things.  It is for our safety.  Government knows best.  The next step was to start making it illegal to shoot off fireworks in any form.  Fire danger, you know.  Keep in mind that the government has your best interest in their hearts.  Right beside that is an overwhelming lust for power and control, but you can’t see that.  Then they began to make it illegal to sell them or buy them.  They start locally.  I can remember situations where in one town it was illegal to sell them but you could shoot them.  In the next town you could buy them but not shoot them.  So we had the booths on one side of the street and people lighting sparklers on the other side.  Another technique of despots is to point out the dangers of local freedom and work to limit our freedom one step up the political ladder.  Thus the preferred city ordinances move to the county level, then the state and eventually to the federal.  On the positive side, history shows how the right for women to vote started and progressed that way.

Eventually you celebration of freedom a spectator sport.  Let someone else wave the sparkler.  Let someone else run away before things explode.  Clap for them and surrender your freedom of choice.  Thus freedom itself becomes a spectator sport.  Think about the ways that the government limits and controls your First and Second Amendment freedoms.  Does your church need a permit from the fire marshal to use your building?  Do you need a permit to hold a parade?  Do you need a permit to drive a car?  Do you need a permit to own, let alone buy, a gun?  Is it illegal to produce your own moonshine?  Did you know that most of the price of a pack of cigarettes is taxes?

The Fourth is coming.  It is time to do a little homework.  It is time to read the Declaration of Independence again.  I read it before I wrote this.  It doesn’t take long unless you don’t do it.  I am giving you a month.  

homo unius libri