Opinion: Country has strayed from Founding Father’s concept of liberty

By JUSTIN CARWILE
Guest columnist

Monday, April 21, 2014, 2:20 p.m. — Our country has been led grossly astray from the principles on which it was founded. If there was one thing the Founding Fathers valued, and sought to obtain by escaping the oppression of the British, it was liberty. So much so that they described this right to be unalienable. This concept has seemed to have eluded our government for numerous years, blatantly disregarding the oath they swore before God, and the country it has sworn to protect.

We now live in a nation where the very ones we have chosen to ensure our freedoms are abusing this privilege in almost every way imaginable. Liberty is not seen on the list of priorities among them, despite the empty promises and alluring speeches you may hear in campaigns.

You see, within the very premise of liberty lies one very big problem. Greed. When granted the opportunity of freedom and the “pursuit of happiness,” you will undoubtedly have those who seek to abuse it.

There will always exist individuals who put personal gain over the gain of a nation. Why can we not have liberty for the sake of liberty instead of projecting the idea of liberty, only to further pervert and misuse it for the gain of the individual?

As a result, liberty is now considered a radical idea. How far into dismay do you have to fall that the very basis of our existence as a nation is considered unorthodox, and even frowned upon by what has now become the majority

We as a people have forfeited our right to challenge our government. “That whenever any form of government becomes destructive… it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it.”

Are we as a country so apathetic or so ignorant to it all that we are falling into the same oppression that we once fought so hard to escape? Or perhaps we are too far removed to see its consequences.

We, indeed, have lost sight of liberty. And with that, we have relinquished every aspect of our lives to the ambitions of the select few who lead us.

The idea of liberty simply comes down to individual freedoms. The government derives its powers from the consent of the governed. Not the other way around.

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