The opening of each episode starts out with this voice-over:
"You are being watched. The government has a secret system: a machine that spies on you every hour of every day. I know because I built it. I designed the machine to detect acts of terror, but it sees everything. Violent crimes involving ordinary people, people like you. Crimes the government considered irrelevant.......You'll never find us, but victim or perpetrator, if your number's up... we'll find you".
I loved this show. Super cool, these guys fighting off the bad guys.
Why am I bringing this up? It probably has to do with the whole someone leaked confidential information
about how our government has been accessing our phone records and internet use without our knowledge. A little bit of an invasion of privacy. It's a little bit like that TV show, right?!? So why did I have absolutely no problem with the TV show? Because they weren't corrupt. They were using this knowledge for good. Because it wasn't real. However, we all know that absolute power leads to absolute corruption. I'm afraid that the more power we give to the government, the more they'll think it's okay to control things that are currently our choices.
Let's break things down for a second. We like the word "liberty" because that is what our founding fathers fought for--freedom. We don't like tyranny, because that's an absolute control that is oppressive.
We often hear the United States described as a Capitalistic government. Although this is mostly true, we don't practice a purely capitalistic economy. However, without things like minimum wage and worker's unions, people would find it very hard to support themselves. So I'd say our government is a mix between capitalism and socialism. We practice Welfarism by traditional food stamps and modern EBT cards. Which, again, that can't be all bad. Personally, I'm not complaining that, thanks to Obama-care, the girl with a million health problems will still be able to be on my parents' health insurance plan until I'm 26.
Now, I want you to study these two graphs below. I'll define a few words for clarity.
Socialism: Any economic or political theory that advocates the collective or governmental ownership and administration of the production and distribution of goods.
Autonomy: the state of being self-governed
Capitalism: an economic system based on the private ownership of production, with the goal of making a profit.
Statism: the belief that a government should control either economic or social policy (or both) to some degree. The opposite of anarchy.
It's a crazy balance that we try to maintain. Who's to say which is best? Granted, I tend to be more of a moderate. Again, the health insurance example. I don't like that my co-pay has risen from $20 to $35 for a doctor's visit, but I also am happy that I still have insurance. I'm glad that they're making companies provide insurance if the people that work for them clock in for at least 30 hours, but now companies are cracking down and not allowing employees to work as many hours because they can't afford to give so many people insurance.
Anyway, I'll leave you with one last quote to ponder, "Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety." --Benjamin Franklin.
Now the question becomes, what do YOU define as an essential liberty?
Just personally, I feel like an essential liberty would be, oh, the fourth amendment of the constitution...the one that keeps us from unwarranted searches and seizures.
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