1/1/11

Freedoms? What Freedoms?

Conservatives never tire of telling us that a vote for bigger government means less freedom. But what exactly do they mean by freedom? What freedoms does an unemployed, bankrupt American citizen nowadays stand to lose? The freedom to write an occasional letter to a newspaper that, assuming it ever gets published, no one would read? To fire off emails to TV entertainers posing as sages that are immediately deleted? To phone elected officials that, at best, respond with a pro forma recorded message irrelevant to your question? To vote for one of two equally aloof, inept or corrupt career politicos? To hire a lawyer to defend you in court when you couldn’t begin to pay his astronomical fee? To start a business when you, like the vast majority of people, have no entrepreneurial skills or instincts and are too overwhelmed with daily survival to acquire them, even if you could? To apply for jobs that do not exist? To move to a place where jobs are plentiful when you are tied down to an unsalable house worth less than what you paid for it? To rant and rave to no avail? To forgo a simple inguinal hernia procedure because you can't afford health insurance? To hope against hope? Let’s be realistic. What, exactly, are those freedoms conservatives are talking about?

I wager that not many private-sector, free-market advocates, unless they happened to be financially secure, would be inclined to turn down a cushy government job if it were offered to them.

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