I've been seeing a lot of talk about "America isn't free anymore". Well, let's bring that here in a little discussion thread. So, from my perspective, it seems like the grasp of what freedom is is very loosely founded. There are many definitions to Freedom, the following are: 1. the power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. 2. absence of subjection to foreign domination or despotic government. 3. the state of not being imprisoned or enslaved. 4. the state of being physically unrestricted and able to move easily. 5. the state of not being subject to or affected by (a particular undesirable thing). 6. the power of self-determination attributed to the will; the quality of being independent of fate or necessity. 7. Unrestricted use of an item. 8. familiarity or openness in speech or behavior. From what I can see, I would say that this definition is very open to interpretation. From most of the arguments I've seen in the chat box, people seem to think it is mostly number 1 up there. The power or right to act, speak, or think as one wants without hindrance or restraint. This, however, is followed by the problem of people who are not accountable for their actions, and will kill, lie, cheat, and steal without punishment except from others around them who have, and most likely will do the same. The government steps in to stop this, but with a government as a full time job, comes taxes from people to keep it running. But what happens when people don't like the government keeping them from cheating, killing, and stealing? Well, the government needs a military to stop this, which causes more tax for the people. Now, our government has become greedy and have taxed anything and everything they could get their hands on. The people start abusing the system for personal gain, and are lying, cheating, stealing, and killing. Because of this, We have the government spying on us, each and every one of us, and blaming "terrorists", whom we provoked by the way, for them spying on us. They are lying to us about it aswell, but we are too busy talking about how bad it is that we don't really do anything about it. Eightnine made a very valid point, in which I liked, on the matter of freedom. He quoted "I am free, no matter what rules surround me. If I find them tolerable, I tolerate them; if I find them too obnoxious, I break them. I am free because I know that I alone am morally responsible for everything I do.”. This, is a demonstration of definition number 6 on Freedom. I'm going to go ahead and stop here so I don't make a gigantic wall of pure text, and let you people talk about what you believe freedom to be, and whether or not you find the american people to be free. NOTE: To keep this thread from being full of pitiful rage and hate, if anyone insults another just out of the form of retaliation to someone disagreeing with them, or marking their post as a disagree or dislike, this thread will be locked as soon as I see this has happened, and can get a staff member to lock the thread. (Sorry about the random dot, Copying and pasting dictionary definitions and I pasted the dot that I couldn't seem to erase.)
I saw this comment on the link Harry posted; "Did I miss something? When exactly was the US the land of the free? When we took Hawaii from the Hawaiians? Put the American Indians on reservations? Built an economy on slavery? Put Japanese Americans in prison camps? Arrested Rosa Parks for sitting on a bus (how dare she)? Deny people the right to love whom they choose to love? We have a great catch phrase with "home of the free...", but it's really only free for the few not the many." Even though I do find this a little overdone, don't blame government on everything, it's the citizens and the celeberities that define a country.
Like I said its a joke. I didn't make that comment, I mean the north of Ireland isn't part of the UK by MAGIC
The citizens of said country define the country just as much as the government does. Where did I loose you guys at? Like 1 horse sized duck and 100 duck sized horses. No?
We aren't lost at the citizens part, we are lost at why you wanted to add celebrities to it seeing as they are simply citizens aswell, not really sure why you specified them.
I personally don't listen to a single thing any celebrities say, because I find them to just be any other person, just better known. But since more people know celebrities, it can have an affect on what other people think of the country too. The famous aspect really gets out there.
