Freedom?

Let me throw some quotes out there:

You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.
-- Clarence Darrow

When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.
-- Dorothy Thompson

We cannot defend freedom abroad by deserting it at home.
-- Edward R. Murrow

The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe.
-- H. L. Mencken

None are so hopelessly enslaved as those who falsely believe they are free.
-- Goethe

The point I am making is this: We in the USA are a people with a strong belief in the fact that we are free, and a strong sense of national pride in being more free than any other on earth. I believe that the freedom we are so proud of no longer exists - we gave it away over the course of many years, a little at a time, until it is now only a ghost, an illusion, a memory of glories long past and become dust.

There is no doubt that we are powerful and rich. But the appellation of "free" is no longer accurately applicable to a citizen of the United States of America, unless banks start giving them away with new checking accounts like toasters.

That's just my opinion, which I think I still have the freedom to express. For now.