The above quotation comes from the brilliant mind of Thomas Jefferson, way back in 1788. As true as these words were back then, so written at the inception of these United States; for a certainty we live and feel its truth even more so today, for that government which is ostensibly of, for, and by the people has wrested away from the people significant swaths of its liberty and replaced such with such dubious things in return such as safety and security, if even that.
This government knows everything about us, but in return has provided us with a minimal number of benefits for us having ceded such knowledge and therefore power to that government. The liberty that this country once so nobly represented, has been replaced by, at best, a benign police state, and at worse, for those that are particularly unfavored and unprivileged, an oppressive police state, that steals liberty from its citizens, and puts them effectively in chains; for the United States has no place for the poor and un-championed, other than to keep them intimidated, at bay, and under its forceful control.
So too, the liberty to be about one’s business and simply to travel along the streets of this powerful nation, is problematic for all those that are not immune to the perils of being out in the public, susceptible to being pulled over, questioned, searched, and harassed, for often no real good or valid reason, other than to put the fear of this authoritarian government into the hearts and minds of all those that have the audacity to believe that they are free agents, when in reality, they are not.
The reason that liberty so often yields to government, is that governments and the actuators of those governments, not only enjoy having the awesome privilege and power so placed into their hands to effect this or that, but they allow that power to subsequently seduce and to addle their minds in a way in which they forget that the power that they have is so provided and is authorized to them, by the people, for the good of those people; but somehow this government and its representatives thereby twist and turn that into a belief that a citizenry with liberty, choice, and freedom, is an ever present danger to the stability of that government, and because of that belief, therefore these governmental representatives consistently make those decisions that will yield the people’s liberty to that government.
The problem with this government, is that it doesn’t actually care for any sort of meaningful dissent, and to circumvent such, the political parties of this day and age, that ostensibly represent the people’s interests, are in reality, more akin to two sides of the same coin, of which, that very coinage is always in the full control of that government. Anytime that a government is not properly restrained by its Constitution and/or the elected representatives of such, then that government will keep on taking what it so can take, knowing that there is no other source or power that has the ability to pushback upon them, and so therefore, the people yield.