Saturday, June 28, 2014

I don't see the difference.

I just read an article concerning the militarization of police in America. The article was titled Walking the Line Between Freedom and Security and made a good point about all these recycled military vehicles going to small town America. Why not use them to secure our southern border?
But I digress. This post isn't about the police, or what vehicles they have. Its actually about that title.

'Walking the line between freedom and security'. I don't see the difference. I don't understand how you can have one without the other. To me, freedom means having security. And the right to defend it. And the reverse is true. If I am not secure in my home, then how am I free?
I don't mean that I expect to never face adversity, as I stated in my Tips, Tricks, and Tools post yesterday, I camp out. I feel freer there sleeping under a tarp on the ground, than I do in the house I rent in town. Yet I am more vulnerable to the elements, animals, and the occasional stray vermin. (By which I mean people...) I don't have locks on my doors out there. Hell, I don't HAVE any doors yet. When I do, yes, I will put locks on them. Because I have the right to protect what is mine. But locks do not secure your items. They just make it harder for others to get to them. And gives you the opportunity to personally secure these things while they fiddle with your defenses. Make no mistake; locks are a defense, they are not security. It doesn't matter whether its my person, my wife, my dog, or a single sheet from a roll of toilet paper. Its mine, and I have the right to protect it. And am free to do so.
Because I am free, I am able to be secure. Because I can be secure, I am free.
I can be free to starve. I can secure myself by growing, raising, preserving, and storing food. I am free to freeze, or die of heat exhaustion. Or, I can secure the means to heat my home, or pump my own water to cool off. It is my choice and my right to thrive or die. When government steps in and says you can not grow your own food, you can not eat your own stock, you cannot produce your own energy sources, or use the water that falls on your own roof, then you (and I) are NOT secure, nor are we free.
I actually believe in the 'kindness of strangers'. I feel that if we as Americans are left to our own devices, able to govern ourselves without laws designed to protect us from ourselves, we will thrive. Americans are innovative. We are resilient. We still have the blood of our revolutionary forefathers within us, we still feel the pull that spurred on our settler and pioneer ancestors. Albeit our blood has become pale and watered down in our current existence. Granted, there is no great frontier left in America to conquer. Yet the spirit is still within us. In emergencies, we band together to survive. We confront adversity, and those with the strongest of this spirit rise up and lead the rest through to restore order. Humans in general are orderly creatures. We as a species like routine. And we like things easy and comfortable. So we overcome adversity working together as needed, and being responsible for our own actions and the results thereof. WE secure our own freedoms in order to be left alone to pursue our own happiness.
Big government would take that from us. No freedom, and no security, unless the PTB provide it. Which means we are neither free nor secure.
That's the only difference I see.

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