I spent almost the entirety of my adult life in the Marine Corps. I joined ROTC when I was 17, graduated college and became a Second Lieutenant at the ripe ol’ age of 21, and now 24 years later, having just left the Corps, I can tell you that much of my life has been spent thinking about Liberty. (Marines & Sailors will get the double-entendre. “Liberty” is also the term given to the time that a servicemember gets off of work. There are two kinds: Normal and Special Liberty.)
I’ve been a lot of places in the last 24 years. When I started, the Cold War was still going on. Hell, when I signed up, I joined Ronald Reagan’s military!
I’ve been to shitty countries held together by little more than fear of a despot. I’ve been to religious countries, places where Match.com is blocked and your IP address can be logged if you try to watch porn. (No joke – I didn’t even try).
I’ve been places where you have to carry a gun – always. There isn’t even discussion of “gun control” because even with a gun it’s still very possible a group of armed men might try to kidnap you or settle some old familial score. Guns aren’t the problem there, either – it’s lawlessness. It’s a lack of respect for the Rule of Law.
I’ve been to places so poor that a family of four might feed itself on the equivalent of $20-$30 US – per month, yet they’ll willingly open their doors and cook you the best meal they can with what they have. It’s their cultural and religious obligation to do so.
I’ve been to places where prostitution isn’t really a big deal. And it’s treated very differently. Single (and sometimes even married) women will agree to extended liaisons, acting as “escorts” for an extended time while their boyfriends/husbands are away, in return for no fixed sum, but rather being treated well for their time: wined, dined, taken out dancing, and sex is an expected end-game for the whole transaction, but it’s not treated with moral opprobrium. It seemed to me that people accepted that if a woman wants to “charge” a man for sex to make some extra money, or not, if she really likes him, that no one cares, either way. And I found this in an openly devout Muslim country.
It struck me as far more “liberated” and feminist an attitude than what feminists do to their own here in the U.S.
I’ve seen places that have alcohol and drug prohibition with the same kinds of problems that plagued – and still plagues – the U.S., as a result of Prohibition-type policies.
I’ve been places where drugs are decriminalized. They’re not bad. They’re not nearly the mess that moralists here would have you believe they MUST be.
I’ve been to places where countries were on the verge of discovering Freedom, of coming out from behind the Iron Curtain. I remember conducting the first exercise ever with Albania of a non-Soviet bloc country. We flew over live SA-2 missile sites, things I had only seen pictures of when studying Soviet anti-air weapons and tactics in school and training, yet there I was, at 300 feet over the top of the spiderweb array of the central fire control radar and the outer missile emplacements, giant, telephone-pole length missiles on railed vehicles. The country would later dissolve into chaos, but I was there at a time to see the beginnings of Freedom.
I was off the coast when Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady was shot down over Bosnia and it was my squadron that eventually rescued him, by one of those odd twists of fate that never show up in the history books.
I was on Marine Corps Base Quantico as the Chief Prosecutor in 2001 when the Twin Towers came down and eventually I managed to spend almost 17 months on the ground in Afghanistan.
I twice flew into Baghdad International Airport – while the war was going on – on a regular civilian flight from Amman, Jordan. I was a civilian then, defending a soldier charged with ordering the execution of two terrorists during that war.
Liberty. It meant almost nothing to me when I was young.
I got out of the Marine Corps and I realized I no longer had to take orders from anyone, other than maybe my boss. But even that was optional. I’d had my own law practice and done fine. I could go back to that if I really wanted complete autonomy.
It was weird. I could grow my hair long. I could just…skip shaving for a few days and not be in violation of grooming standards. I could wear PT gear into the store. (In the Marine Corps, one is not authorized to go to the exchange or any store in “PT gear” – like shorts and sneakers.) I could now smoke weed (in some states) and not go to jail or face the opprobrium of my peers. Fuck it!
I can’t say that I was particular patriotic when I started out in the Marine Corps, but boy, it’s amazing how spending some time in far off lands – where people are trying to kill either each other or you – changes one’s perspective.
But then I looked around and started noticing an odd trend in American political life. Everywhere I turned – in every aspect of daily life – we were moving away from Liberty. And when I say we, I suppose I mean “our government” that we elected – and have continued to let push us in this direction. I started noticing things like the NSA monitoring not just emails sent overseas, not just emails from foreign sources, but all of our emails. ALL OF OUR EMAILS. Not just that, but cell phone calls could be monitored on a whim, with no probable cause, no particularized suspicion, nothing more than LOVEINT as a justification.
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
When the fuck did we give away that right, I wonder? Why have we so willingly acquiesced to that flagrant destruction of our Liberty? The “GWOT”? Really??
Let me stand up on behalf of Freedom loving Americans and say if this is the price the government says must be paid for my security, I respectfully decline their offer. No Fucking Thank You. I’ll defend myself and my family should the terrorists show up in my neighborhood. I’m perfectly confident of my ability to do so and, should the need arise, to rally any number of my neighbors and friends to that same cause. I’ll defend their Freedom with my life – and that is no bravado, I’ve already made good on that commitment for the last 24 years, paying for it with my daughters’ childhoods, with lost friends, with the death of young men and women way before their time – and I didn’t expect to come back and have my private writings subject to the scrutiny of some dink GS-9 at NSA. (Sorry, guys and gals, I appreciate what you do, but this is wrong. And you’re way off in doing this to your fellow Americans.) In order to defend myself, however, I’ll need one of those other rights the Constitution guaranteed us:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
So all of you gun-grabbers: please sit down and shut up. Stop telling the rest of us, many of whom have been handling weapons for most of our life quite capably in defense of the Nation (you’re fucking welcome, by the way), about what we can or can’t do. I’d like to have at least one in my house. And maybe one on me, too. You know why?
- Not just because our Forefathers agreed and enshrined that right in our Constitution that I swore a sacred oath to uphold and protect;
- Not just because that right existed even further back in England in 1689;
- Not just because it had already been the subject of legal commentary by the great Blackstone as a part of the right of self-defense;
- Not just because it has been a staple of western civilization for self-defense since the invention of gunpowder (and a chamber for propelling a piece of lead faster than any arm could ever throw it);
No, I want that right because I’ve seen up close and personal what happens when bad men have guns and good men don’t.
When did our First Amendment rights to free association go away, too? Okay, sure, we’re finally getting the homosexual thing sorted out, that’s progress, but why is the government targeting political groups it doesn’t like for increased scrutiny – by any number of government agencies? And I don’t care which side is doing it – it is patently illegal. It violates the very heart of what the First Amendment was supposed to protect. You don’t know of what I speak? Re-read some history regarding the origins of that clause.
And then there are the No Knock Warrants. What fucking genius thinks it is a good idea for the police to be able to bust into the house in the middle of the night unannounced, where we have a right to have guns, because they can get a judge to sign off on the snitch report that there are drugs in the house? When did “officer safety” get written into the Constitution as a trump on the Fourth Amendment? And so now we have flash bangs being thrown into the cribs of innocent children, like in this case, over what? What is the possible justification for police thinking that is a good way to conduct business? I know, some Supreme Court justice said this bit of idiocy that shows he knows nothing about either drug raids or logic. I don’t care if the evidence might be flushed in the time after the cops knock. If the only quantity of drugs present is enough to be flushed, then maybe we should wonder why they need to bust down the fucking door of this house in the first place? Is no Supreme Court justice smart enough to think of that? Or, how about this gem: you’re the government – cut off the water to the house before you bust in. Now the flushing problem is over.
I love my brothers in law enforcement; my best friend since high school is a state trooper on a SWAT Team. I know and have trained and trained alongside more LEOs than I can recall. But, Boys, this is wrong. You signed up for a little danger. You get to wear a badge, carry guns, use dogs, and have all manner of training and resources on your side. That’s what you signed up for, just like I did when I started flying helicopters. I am not surprised that I crashed, nor terribly surprised that a lot of my friends died, long before we ever got to war.
The highest year in all of US history I could find of officer deaths was 1930 – 297 officers died (ALL CAUSES). You’ve not topped 200 for the last ten years (191 was the highest in the last decade. Last year in 2013 you had 102.) I know it’s dangerous, but please. Cut it out. You’re embarrassing yourselves with all the drama about how dangerous it is. I do not trivialize the loss of any one man, but don’t bitch to me about officer deaths as a justification for taking away essential freedoms – and fragging innocent sleeping children while you’re at it for the “War on Drugs”. I’ve buried way too many friends in war and peace for that argument to hold much sway with me. By the way, for the 32 shooting deaths and 2 stabbings in 2013, how many innocent people were shot or injured during SWAT-style raids for that same year? Wait, what do you mean you don’t track that information? Holy shit. That seems kinda odd. You keep assiduous numbers of cops who are killed by civilians, but you…just don’t track it the other way? Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m going to respectfully request a recalibration: you’re supposed to be protecting We, the People. Not your own asses.
By the way, it turns out someone else did keep track. Look at this map.
http://www.cato.org/raidmap
Then read this quote from another idiot on the Supreme Court.
“If a widespread pattern of [knock-and-announce] violations were shown . . . there would be reason for grave concern.”
—Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, in Hudson v. Michigan, June 15, 2006.
Guess what, Your Honor. There’s reason for grave concern. Moron. There now, by some estimates, as many as 40,000 SWAT-style raids being conducted by police annually. I’ll let that sink in a bit.
And for what it’s worth, while we normally average 51 people a year killed by being struck by lightning, last year we had a record low of 28. There were just six more police officers than that killed in the entirety of the country by violent means. So, for all the “danger” of the job, we lose more people over a ten year average to lightning strikes than police officers do to the “dangerousness” of the job (I don’t include car accidents, Gents, because that’s just a fact of being in a car. You lose almost as many to car accidents as you do to violence – either by being shot, stabbed, etc.). We lose 10,000 citizens annually in cars. Welcome to the club).
So, I’m standing there in the parking garage, talking to my colleague about Liberty. And all of this…stuff is just kicking around in my head. And it occurs to me that Liberty, Individual Freedom, is what’s missing in our lives. Plain ol’ Leave-Me-the-Fuck-Alone Liberty and Mind-Your-Own-Fucking-Business American values are what’s missing. It happened in my lifetime, too, which is weird, because it’s like while I was away risking my life for Liberty and Freedom, as enshrined and protected in our Constitution, it was systematically being pissed away. And I got out and was overjoyed to finally be able to enjoy the very Freedoms I had committed to protecting and preserving with my life – and they’re all gone. Or severely diminished. Did you ever notice that no one uses the phrase “it’s a free country!” anymore? It used to be a popular part of the American lexicon. I never hear it from kids – or adults – any more.
It strikes me that we’ve completely lost the conception of what Liberty is: the right to be left alone and exercise your Freedom to its fullest extent so long as it doesn’t impinge on someone else’s. It is almost coexistent with the idea of Rights. As my Law School Property Professor, Orlando Delogu, was wont to say: “My right to swing my arm in a circle ends somewhere just before the tip of your nose.”
I don’t impinge on anyone else’s Rights. Most times my neighbors – other than that yappy fucking dog that still doesn’t recognize me after a year – don’t impinge on mine. We all get along. If I see something wrong, I try to fix it, whether it’s picking up a little trash on the street, holding open a door, occasionally picking up the tab on someone else’s coffee in line (that’s one of my favorite $2.50 investments. Try it. Just buy the guy or gal behind you in line their morning coffee once. You won’t believe how good it will make you feel.). Or whatever.
Freedom is not some abstract concept, it is a very real and concrete thing. And we can’t possibly have too much of it. In the best possible world, we would be free to do as we pleased so long as our exercise of our Liberty didn’t impinge on anyone else’s and they wouldn’t impinge on Ours – the ultimate Golden Rule! And if we felt aggrieved in some way, we would have recourse to either the civil courts for most economic harms or the criminal processes – yes, and the aforementioned police – for more severe harms to our person or property. In cases where we judged we had risks that were significant enough, we might insure against the potential loss, whether it was from catastrophic accident or injury (health insurance), or death (life insurance), or car accident (car insurance), or some other calamity (home owner’s insurance, flood/fire insurance, etc.). And in a place that maximized Freedom, I could choose to associate with particular risk pools – like I’m a non-smoking CrossFitter of 45, I carry about 14% bodyfat, exercise 5 times a week, and my family has a history of living well into their 90’s. I rarely go to a doctor and could probably even take a chance and not have health insurance…AH, but wait! Now I’ve been told that there is a new piece of legislation that says by merely being born in these United States I am now legally required, under penalty of fine or imprisonment, to buy health insurance… because… Well, because evidently the “health care system” is all fucked up. I don’t know who did it, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t me.
So why do I need to pay almost 40% of what I earn to the State and Feds again? At some point, we must ask ourselves, is the cost of government worth it? Seriously. Think about it. Government is something WE, The People, pay for. It is supposed to be here to help us. This Great Nation was founded upon a revolutionary (pun intended) concept, even today: that Freedom, and Liberty, of Individuals, should be the starting point for discussion. Government – or at least Our Government – would exist to serve individuals, not the other way around. So, if government is a service (and it is), and given what you pay for it – all of its costs – do you feel like you’re getting your money’s worth? Hold that answer for a second.
Speaking of economic Liberty, a friend of mine once said that “Slavery, from an economics standpoint, is a 100% marginal tax rate.” He paused and let it sink in.
Set aside all of the other horrors of slavery for a moment: the buying and selling of other humans, breaking up families, all of that stuff. From the labor cost perspective, a slave would work all day long, every day, every week, and be paid exactly – Zero Point Fucking Zero. They likely got some crappy rations and crappy shelter. But that’s the mathematical equivalent of being taxed at a hundred percent (100%) marginal rate.
Now, take the converse of that: I am economically free to the exact extent I get to keep the product of my labor. If I keep all that I earn, I am completely (economically) free. Thus, I – who came from poverty – worked as hard as I could in school. I got straight A’s for four years in Middle School. I graduated 6th in my class from high school. I went on to college (only the second person in my family, on either side), right behind my older sister, to earn a Bachelor’s Degree. We also rank 1 and 2 EVER in our families at getting advanced degrees. She has a Master’s and I have a Juris Doctor. And now I keep something around (maybe a little less) than 2/3 of what I earn. I am like, 63% Free. Or 63% away from being a slave. Mathematically speaking. Yet I’m told by my President, in a bit of Populist rhetoric that makes me nauseated, that I’m somehow now a piece-of-shit “One Percenter.” I’ve suddenly become morally blameworthy for having struggled my whole life to be successful. And I’m told that the “rich” don’t pay their “fair share” of taxes, at the same time that the top 10% of income earners pay 70% of all of the federal income tax collected – while 47% pay none at all.
And he brags when he “keeps the deficit down” to 488 BILLION (with a giant fucking B!) dollars. Like I’m supposed to stand up and give him -a dn his asshole friends in Congress – a round of fucking applause for only overspending the 2.7 TRILLION (yes, that’s right, Trilion) by another half of a trillion dollars. While we’re already in debt to the tune of 18 Trillion.
Do you know what a Trillion means? The human mind kinda blanches and just shuts off at those kind of numbers, so let me try this. If you started counting every second, right now, and I gave you a dollar bill for every second, do you know how long it would take you to get to 1 BILLION seconds – and thus 1 Billion dollars? Think about how many seconds are in a day. Now how many seconds in a week. Now how many in a month. Now how many seconds in a YEAR?!
You’d need 31.6 years. For just one Billion Seconds, during which you got a dollar for every second.
He – and his cronies – collected two-thousand seven-hundred (2,700) times that much money – and then spent it all. And then another 488 times a Billion more.
Now, my point about economic freedom before? Well, it applies to all of you, too. All of us. Who is going to pay down that 18 Trillion dollars? How? What does it mean? Well, if you’re reading this, you should understand it’s a lien against your Freedom. And when you die, it will be passed on to your children. It will be a debt of servitude they owe to whomever has bought up our country’s debt. You will have bequeathed your kids some share of an $18 Trillion debt, 18% of which is owned by Social Security (yes, that Social Security owns government securities, which seems very strange…) but 1/3 of our debt is owned by foreign countries, with China holding 7.2% and Japan holding 7%.
How good does that make you feel?
I know this, we’re not getting more Freedom as I get older. Since when has government ever backed away from intervening in our lives and decided that we should have MORE Freedom – and less of other people telling us what we can and can’t do, how we can or can’t spend our time, where we can and can’t go, what we can and can’t drink, or eat, or smoke? With whom we can or can’t fornicate, with whom we can or can’t associate without fear of retribution from our government, how much of our labor we get to keep, or even how much we can give to our children, or even if I can just be left alone in my house?
Nope, my doors can now be kicked in, while the NSA is reading my emails, or listening to my cell phone calls, or reading my sexts to my girlfriend, and I have no recourse against any of it.
America, when do we decide to “Let Freedom Ring” again? I’m home now. I’d like some of what I gave up in the military for the last half of my life.