One Man's Liberty is Another Man's Prison

As is tradition I played racquetball with my racquetball buddies in Minneapolis tonight followed by dinner at our regular restaurant -- Dan Kelly's -- which I like dining at but we are there so often the menu is over due for some new options such as that crazy food group known as FRUIT!!! :) I had the "Diablo Chicken" sandwich which in my mind resides in "sandwich purgatory" since it was not heaven or hell so I will award them a "2.5" (out of 5 possible) rating because I like the overall atmosphere.

That is enough discussion regarding food items so let's focus on food for thought for today. It almost never fails that the dinner conversation with my racquetball buddies turns to politics and tonight was no exception. The hot topic for tonight -- President Bush's use of the National Security Agency, http://www.nsa.gov, for surveillance of Americans. One of my friends stated he was very concerned regarding the impact of Bush's policies on civil liberties to which another friend replied, "I am not concerned about our liberties being violated by Bush's practices..........we are safe".

Upon hearing this last comment my immediate response was something along the lines of -- "we have already lost our freedoms, you have a government that knows what your source and amount of personal income is, your investment portfolio details, and via Social Security (see - "Ponzi Scheme") age requirements/age-dependent tax penalties on 401k funds the government tells you when you are theoretically free to retire..............Now that is NOT my definition of liberty."

I went on to comment that, "yea the people in the film, Logan's Run (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0074812/), thought they lived in a land of freedom like you believe in, a land managed by a central government which required citizens to submit themselves to "Carrousel" when they turned 30 years old -- I won't ruin the film for you but let me simply assure you that they never collected their Social Security benefits :)

Let me close with words of wisdom from the von Mises Institute --

"The freedoms won by Americans in 1776 were lost in the revolution of 1913," wrote Frank Chodorov. Indeed, a man's home used to be his castle. The income tax, however, gave the government the keys to every door and the sole right to change the locks.

(Source: http://www.mises.org/fullstory.aspx?control=1597) . For reference -- 1913 is when the US federal income tax was implemented by Congress.

We have a runner,

Todd