In life, there are easy words and easy sayings that make us to feel good about what we are reading and what we are hearing. Nevertheless, as it has been wisely said, actions speak louder than words, so those then that declaim that this is indeed the land of the free, have the inherent obligation to prove that very point, because as it stands right now, America doesn’t seem to be all that free, but rather seems to be determined to limit one’s freedom, under the guise such is necessary for the protection and safety of the state and its people.
When we think of God, and thus our creation by that beneficial God, it should be recognized that, as in the story of Adam and Eve, God bestowed upon us, perhaps God’s greatest gift, which was freedom of choice, and to the degree that we don’t make good choices, we thus suffer the fair consequences of that poor choice. This thus indicates that God believed that in our creation, it was necessary to provide us with that free choice, for how else could God determine that when given a choice, we voluntarily made the right choice; and when tempted, we did not give in to temptation -- for to simply have created automatons would have been of no good purpose whatsoever.
It so follows, therefore, that those who are quick to take away our freedom should recognize that while restrictions and laws have their necessary place, at the end of the day, though, people and societies need to have agency in order to prove or disprove their character. Additionally, some of the finest human beings have been, at least for some period of time, on the wrong side of the law or of ethics, but were subsequently able to turn it around and become great paragons of virtue and accomplishments, signifying that controlling people, supposedly for the greater good is not necessarily the only way to look upon how we should govern one another.
Also, it needs to be noted that, as much as we want to believe that our parents always knew best, they really didn’t. It therefore follows that as much as we wish that our government knows best, for a certainty, they do not, for they don’t really know us, but rather many a government seems to decay into favoring the few over the many, and therefore are for a certainty, respecter of persons; whereas our Creator is no respecter of persons, and until such a time as a government is run under the same sort of criteria as our God, in which all are equally created and therefore all should be dealt with, under the same ethical umbrella, then we aren’t really free at all.
To be free, is to have not only a true freedom of choice, but to also be responsibly limited by our governance in the choices that are available to us, of which, then, the type of government that we should aspire to have is that government that lives up to the highest moral code possible, of thereby treating its people as we wish to be treated, and to be uphold thereby the virtues of love, integrity, and neighborly respect.