Should we really be celebrating the 4th?

Harry Browne at the Tenth Amendment Center doesn't think so. In fact, he thinks the oratory about freedom in the United States is deceitful.

[T]he America that’s celebrated no longer exists.

The holiday oratory deceitfully describes America as though it were the unique land of liberty that once was. Politicians thank the Almighty for conferring the blessings of liberty on a country that no longer enjoys those blessings. The original freedom and security have disappeared — even though the oratory lingers on.

What made America unique is now gone, and we are much the same as Germany, France, England, or Spain, with:

- confiscatory taxes,
- a Constitution and Bill of Rights that are symbolic only — merely documents used to justify governmental actions that are in fact prohibited by those documents,
- business regulated by the state in the most minute detail,
- no limits on what Congress or the President might decide to do.

Yes, there are some freedoms left, but nothing like the America that was — and nothing that you can’t find in a few dozen other countries...

Fortunately, in America a remnant has kept alive the ideas of liberty, peace, and self-respect — passing the concepts on from generation to generation.

And so today millions of Americans know that the present system isn’t the right system — that human beings aren’t born to serve the state and police the world.

Millions more would be receptive upon being shown that it’s possible to have better lives than what they’re living now.

Both groups need encouragement to quit supporting those who are taking freedom away from them.

If we do this, Mr. Browne writes, "The 4th will be worth celebrating again."

Virtual buckeye to my good friend Gabe McGranahan.