July 4, 2019 - Today is Independence Day, so it seems a good time to ask: How independent are we? Put another way: what are we free to do - and not do?
The dreary answer, of course, is not very much.
Orwell wrote that freedom “… is the right to tell people what they don’t want to hear.” Also that two plus two equals four rather than five.
But there is a more foundational freedom and it comes in two equal parts. The first part is the right to say No. The second part - without which the freedom to say No is a functional non sequitur - is that your No be respected. In law. By law.
Amerikans have lost this freedom almost completely.