Freedom is the power to decide for yourself what to do with your time, talent, and treasure.
In the states we have a great deal of freedom. I am sure that this is true of many places throughout the world but am not qualified to make statements about all the places people live so will just leave what I said about the US as is.
One way that our freedom is restricted in the US is that we are stopped by law from using our freedoms to harm each other. This is as it should be. The role of government is to enforce the laws that carry out this goal.
Sadly, the government has overstepped it's bounds and attempts to legislate both morality and the economic agreements we have with each other even when there is no harm involved.
The left tends to see the legislation of morality and makes slippery slope arguments that this will lead to a complete loss of freedom. I see little in the way of anyone advocating a theocracy but will join anyone in opposing one.
The right tends to see the legislation of personal economics and makes slippery slope arguments that this will lead to a complete loss of freedom. I do however see much in the way of people advocating socialism which clearly is an insidious master that will enslave us if it can. I invite you to join me in opposing socialism as it attempts to become established more in the US.
I would add that the three areas of freedom that I listed above are inseparable. The old saying is "Time is money" and it reflects the recognition that these are intertwined. Take away a persons freedom to control how they spend their time and you are automatically restricting their freedom to earn and spend money.
Our founding fathers specifically thought that freedoms to say and think what you want was a special freedom and we are all aware of the various parts of the constitution that reflects their ideas. What we tend to be less aware of is that they felt equally strongly that restricting our economic freedoms was paramount to restricting our very thoughts. This idea, strange to us, is foundational to the writing of the constitution and deserves to be defended.
They spoke quite a bit about taxes and personal property to the point of equating the fruits of your labor to a sacred level. And of course we all can reflect and see that the revolution was about taxes. We all know the quote about taxation without representation but do we know the others about taxation?
Here are just a few:
"As a man is said to have a right to his property, he may be equally said to have a property in his rights. Where an excess of power prevails, property of no sort is duly respected. No man is safe in his opinions, his person, his faculties, or his possessions."
-- James Madison, National Gazette essay, March 27, 1792
"It is sufficiently obvious, that persons and property are the two great subjects on which Governments are to act; and that the rights of persons, and the rights of property, are the objects, for the protection of which Government was instituted. These rights cannot be separated."
-- James Madison, Speech at the Virginia Convention, December 2, 1829
"A wise and frugal government ... shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government."
-- Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address, March 4, 1801
"Government is instituted to protect property of every sort; as well that which lies in the various rights of individuals, as that which the term particularly expresses. This being the end of government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own."
-- James Madison, National Gazette, March 1792, in The Papers of James Madison, vol. 14 ed. R.A. Rutland (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), p. 266.
"The moment the idea is admitted into society that property is not as sacred as the laws of God, and that there is not a force of law and public justice to protect it, anarchy and tyranny commence. If 'Thou shalt not covet' and 'Thou shalt not steal' were not commandments of Heaven, they must be made inviolable precepts in every society before it can be civilized or made free."
-- John Adams, A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, 1787
"To take from one, because it is thought his own industry and that of his fathers has acquired too much, in order to spare to others, who, or whose fathers, have not exercised equal industry and skill, is to violate arbitrarily the first principle of association, the guarantee to everyone the free exercise of his industry and the fruits acquired by it."
-- Thomas Jefferson, letter to Joseph Milligan, April 6, 1816
