When asking someone how they feel about the slow and steady decay of their individual liberty, you might be met with a blank stare.
They might say, "I have a car. I have a cell phone. I have wi-fi at home. Everything is fine."
Liberty is a thing, but it is not made up of things. Simply put, liberty can be defined as the ability of the individual to freely act and control their actions.
Ronald Reagan said in his 1989 farewell address, "As government expands, liberty contracts."
When liberty is taken abruptly, it usually brings a swift and sometimes violent response. When liberty is taken slowly, it often goes unnoticed.
Alexis de Tocqueville described the slow erosion of liberty this way:
"After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated, minute, and uniform rules, which the most original minds and the most vigorous souls cannot break through to go beyond the crowd; it does not break wills, but it softens them, bends them and directs them; it rarely forces action, but it constantly opposes your acting; it does not destroy, it prevents birth; it does not tyrannize, it hinders, it represses, it enervates, it extinguishes, it stupefies, and finally it reduces each nation to being nothing more than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd."
It's difficult to argue that this process hasn't been underway in America, for quite some time. We are at a point in time where our loss of liberty is being noticed.
What is more important is that people are doing something about it. Sign the Convention of States petition and help secure liberty in America.
