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Take Responsibility!
I believe that the many difficulties facing our nation
come down to a single root problem - the unwillingness of people to take responsibility for their actions.
One of the things which the founders of this nation were accutely
aware of and which we seem to have forgotten is that freedom isn't really free.
The price of freedom is responsibility.
Everyone wants a better life and wants to enjoy the benefits
of society, but it's human nature to want to get the best deal and get your
liberties at a discount. The problem is that most of us got freedom at no cost
when we were born, and don't realize that it actually has value until after
we trade it away for the things we want.
The catch to this is that if you don't pay for the
benefits of society by accepting responsibility you pay for them in
other ways. You trade away little bits of freedom to get the priveleges
which government chooses to grant you in exchange. You go from
being a free individual to becoming a client of the state.
Responsibility is scary. It means not being able to blame
someone else when something goes wrong for you. It's a lot easier to give up
the responsibility and give up your freedom with it for the guiltless security
and protection of a higher power.
In the society which America has become, we have given up many
of our freedoms for the protection of government, and we expect government to
give back priveleges and benefits in exchange. People are right to cry for
their entitlements and government programs. They paid the highest price for
them. What they didn't realize when they paid that price was that government
has overhead - it has politicians and bureaucrats to feed. It never gives back
as much as it takes, be it money or benefits.
Can you stand up and say that you choose not to take drugs,
that you will pay your own way, that you will fight for your nation if called on,
that you will work to better yourself and your community? If you can do these things for
yourself, then maybe you don't need government to do them for you. If you can take
responsibility, maybe you deserve to have your freedom back.
The trick is going to be getting that freedom back. Once
government has something it's awfully tenacious. It's going to be harder to take
freedom back than it would have been to keep it in the first place, and the longer
you wait to take action the more the process of entropy eats away at those
freedoms you have left.
Because we're a society, to some degree freedom is held in common.
Each person who chooses to surrender freedom and responsibility to the government
gives up a little of your liberty as well. By the same measure, each person who
sits complacently and does nothing to take back their rights makes it a little bit harder
for you to regain your freedom.
There may have been a time long ago, when defending your
freedom was an act of individualism, but today it will demand the much more difficult
task of going beyond accepting individual responsibility to awakening society - your
friends and neighbors - to the freedom they have lost and the hard price they have to pay to
regain it.
"Is life so dear or peace so sweet as to be purchased at the price of chains
and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
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