On Liberty
There is a point of rhetoric I would like to poke a hole in right now: “We must support our troops who are out defending our liberty.”
The first part of the phrase aside*, for now, sending our troops abroad does not ‘defend our liberty’. If we said such a thing to our Founders, they would have scoffed (Franklin would have laughed). It would be essentially nonsense. It still is.
Liberty’s opponent is Tyranny. Our ruling organizations are what dictate how free or oppressed we are. To defend our Liberty is to take up protest or, at worst, arms against our own government.
The French fought for Liberty against their kings. The Indians fought for Liberty against foreign British rule. Blacks fought for Liberty against our institutionalized Jim Crow. Even right now, Iranians are fighting for their Liberty to elect their leaders.
The governments of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been remotely capable of threatening our freedoms. Not even Al-Qaeda terrorists came close to ruling us, or even off-setting our power.
The only place that can erode Liberty in the United States is Congress. That body politic holds the key to fighting Tyranny. It is the bastion of our great Republic, the one that gives us voice in how we govern ourselves.
Congress is a body designed to be slow and deliberative, to put much time and thought before levying taxes or entering us into wars. And in that time, the people are to go about their business, knowingly free from government intrusion.
Our Liberties have been lost at the hands of our own fear-fed representatives. We can be listened to, imprisoned without trial, and even tortured. All this because our Great Legislature deigned to give unchecked powers to the Executive.
Liberty is not defended by sending troops abroad, because Liberty can only be defended at home. It requires constant vigilance and participation. At most what we are doing is sending our troops to protect our interests or hunting criminals. We defend our Liberty against the forces of our Tyrannical government, though it is with damn good feeling that our volunteer military would side with the people.
*Back to the former point: Supporting our troops is a double-edged sword. Technically, supporting our military means paying for their engagements. Not supporting them would be to cut off funds and would bring them back home. And really, we have yet to pay a dime for our two invasions, so we haven’t even supported them at all yet. Technically. This is a semantic argument all around after all.