On December, 1, 1862, over 150 years ago, President Lincoln delivered a message to Congress in which he impressed the importance that in giving freedom to the slave, we would assure freedom for all, and concluded that "We hall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope on earth." Is the last best hope on earth, alive and true to its principles or has our freedom become compromised, corrupted, and a thing of the past? Is America truly free?
Many people are confused about the meaning and significance of freedom in which they believe that freedom is simply the right or desire to do whatever you want, whenever that you want. That isn't freedom at all; instead it is a form of chaos. True freedom is far more limiting than not having the right to yell "fire" in a crowded theatre. We are not free to do whatever we like, or to behave any way that we desire, that would be a childish world with only cries of "mine, mine.". Our individuality in a community implies a responsibility to that community and to a universal moral code that applies to all. That is not to say that we as individuals give up our freedom in order to be part of the community, the choices are still our own to make, but within those choices there are consequences to man, to man's law, and to moral law.
However, in America our real freedom is being compromised every day. When you are walking in New York City, for example, and you are stopped and frisked for no other reason than that you fit some predetermined profile that sure isn't equal freedom, equally applied. When you go to the airport and are randomly screened, even though you are old, crippled, disabled, and you are subjected to an intensive and invasive body pat-down, that isn't freedom properly administered, in which a rational person would not administer such a degradation and humiliation to a citizen of your stature as a needless necessary precaution before boarding an airplane.
The government butts its head into all sorts of things which are not legitimately government business. Who we talk to, who we message, who we visit, where we go, what we do, is really our own individual business and not the governments'. The government in conjunction with large mega-corporations wants to track and monitor all of its subjects, in the guise of safety. This is a smokescreen, the real purpose, is to exploit us, to manipulate us, to control us, to utilize us, to make money off of us and/or to compromise us. Our freedom to just be ourselves is now being tracked and monitored through massive databases that are controlled by entities that we have no power over.
The freedom and last best hope of earth that Lincoln referred to, was the freedom to do the things that we ought to do, to live up to that high standard of seeing that every man is a brother, and therefore should be treated as such, and further that we are all sons and daughters of God. The government should be our servant, and our ally, it should be a fortress to protect us from those that would destroy us from the outside, and a bulwark in defending morals, and right choices within.