"It's a Free Country": A phrase that is used by Americans. Sadly it is no longer true, but to this day the Government forces people to believe it is. Sincerely Signed, Your Friendly Neighborhood Conspiracy Theorist
-- Seen on UrbanDictionary.com
So this weekend we're celebrating the USA's independence and all the things that have enabled us to use that slogan we are so quick to quip when somebody calls us out for doing something boorish: "It's a free country."
These days, the retort to that slogan might well be, "How 'free' is it? And how long before someone comes along and considers it offensive that I'm exercising what I thought all along was my freedom?"
Those questions are getting harder to answer.
Yeah, yeah, we already realize that nothing is ever "free." Small print always comes with the stuff. That small print usually drives home the fact that -- to borrow from the title of my old journalism ethics textbook -- with freedom comes responsibility. (Or that it's not to be used by children under a certain age or that it shouldn't be exercised while operating machinery. Whatever.)
We've always had those, like our Urban Dictionary contributor above, who list nefarious reasons we're not really free. A discussion on this topic would doubtless be full of names and phrases like "Big Brother," "Patriot Act," "Bilderbergs" or "Kardashians."
We learned in journalism school that the right to swing one's arm ends at the other man's nose. Some would argue that the other man's nose has gotten so close, we can't seem to wiggle our fingers without offending him.
It's hard to know what to do, isn't it? It's like being stuck between Scylla and Charybdis.
Especially with recent headlines, there should be one giant graphics chart, partitioned off into little sections darn-near defying the law of geometry, published in respectable intervals and showing:
• Old rights (Constitution, amendments and such)
• New rights (especially, those that used to be wrongs)
• New interpretations of old rights, and vice versa
• Prominent groups that are for/against new rights.
• Prominent groups that are for/against old rights.
• Groups who might be hacked off by a new or old right.
• Rights given to detractors to protest or circumvent the offensive right.
• The right of exercisers of a given right to protest or circumvent the rights given to the detractors of a right.
• The right that was a right a while back, but which is now a new wrong. (This would have its own slogan "A Right, You Say? Riiiiiiight.'')
• The if-lovin'-you-is-wrong-I-don't-wanna-be rights.
• A list of all the clandestine government agencies and powerful secret puppetmaster organizations whose folks may be watching/recording us as we try to make sense of this chart.
So whereas we have celebrated the country's freedom, we have to acknowledge that this melting-pot country sometimes appears to be the ring for a never-ending free-for-all.
What we can take comfort from is the fact that despite its growing bumps and warts, the good old U.S. of A. still allows its citizens more liberty than a lot of other countries out there. (At least here I can, as a woman, grumble about having to deal with the pain-in-the-rear aspects of driving rather than live in Saudi Arabia and be frowned upon for driving so, if not prohibited by law.) And despite the laws that try to temper our unbridled passions, prurient interests, nut-job tendencies or unwillingness to stand in line and wait our turn to get into Disney World, we are still pretty much given enough rope in this country to either hang ourselves or go bungee-jumping.
The United States: Yeah. Still technically free. Just one big game of Twister.
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Style on 07/05/2015