How can you have any Freedom without any Responsibility?

I am so glad Rep. Miller is in Washington working to uncover the corruption and end the abuse of this Administration. Still, I so wish we could all get our families and neighbors to care more. I believe The corruption and abuse will stop on the day that the American people wake up and say, "Stop."

This post is my reaction to this article posted by the incredible Betsy Muse.

Please don't skip it. If you do, you'll have no idea how bad it actually has gotten or why this post is even being written. Okay, you read blueNC, maybe you would have an idea without reading the article, but at least go back sometime and read it ... if for no other reason that to illicit a few good curses of the darkness from your righteous American soul.

At the risk of being a bore I'll repeat myself ... this kind of corruption and abuse in government will end on the day that the American people -- you -- say it does, and not a minute sooner.

It will end when more than 45% of the American people begin to understand that our Freedom is our Responsibility and begin to pay attention and to vote.

Our freedom did not drop out of the sky into our laps. Our forebears created this government, this freedom that we enjoy and they passed it down to us -- not to abuse or to ignore or to take for granted -- but to keep for the next generation. It is not ours. We have no right to squander it away by action or neglect. It is an eternal and sacred trust, intended not only for us, but for our posterity ... our descendants ... equally.

I would submit that we have only one job as American citizens when we reach the age of emancipation, and that is to keep and expand this freedom, our Liberty, for those who come after us.

And we are failing in our duty.

Likewise, we do not teach our children that this is their task to see through.

Mark my word, your grandchildren will not have the Freedom you've enjoyed unless we all do more to keep it. Keeping it requires that we listen, care, vote, get involved and even run for office. Because it is a fantasy to hope that any government will ever be better than the general quality (heart, mind and soul) of people who manage it and work in it.

We as a moral and idealistic people must teach our children better. We must teach them to listen to what goes on in the halls of government, to care about what goes on in the halls of government, to educate themselves about the good things government can do and the bad things government can do, that they do indeed have the power to correct the bad and encourage the good in government, and at the very least -- to vote.

Each generation took care of our freedom as best they knew how. It has gone in fits and starts, but ever the march through time has been towards expansion of liberty, justice and the common good. Our living and dead ancestors expanded it to include peoples who before, had no freedom at all. They strengthened laws that protect the common citizen from abuse by the powerful. They plugged holes in the shields of liberty to ensure that all of us could live free no matter who in our midst didn't want "all" to live free. They tried to fix weaknesses in our checks-and-balances to ensure that power could never corrupt our government absolutely ... because no one person or group could ever hold absolute power.

And they have each, in turn, passed this freedom, our Liberty, our Freedom down to us.

No friends, our Freedom is not a thing that simply materialized out of thin air or came down to us off a mountain.

Our Freedom is a thing fashioned by human minds, hands, courage and backbone.

Our Freedom was forged by men and women of long memory and far reaching foresight.

Therefore, keeping it requires good minds, hands, hearts, spines, memories and understanding.

If our Founders and ancestors, living and dead, could find the will and the skill to create our Liberty and pass it on, surely we, a well educated first-world nation, can find the will and the skill to keep it from the machinations of small minds and shriveled souls.

To paraphrase Pink Floyd;

How can you have any Freedom, without any Responsibility?