IMNSHO, the biggest threat to freedom lies in the mirror.
As I expect most people here have figured out, I don't have many warm feelings about the state. I tend to think we'd be better off without it, and I'd rather let all the fruitcakes out of the asylums and put all those interested in political office in.
But, that said, I don't think the state, or politicians, even Obamoids and Bushites, are the greatest threat to freedom.
I think the greatest threat to freedom is ourselves, and our willingness to restrict the freedom of others. It is we who have asked and expect those politicians to deal with all our problems. And invariably, we ask them to act on our behalf to the detriment of others' exercising their freedom. (That, after all, is how the state has its effects, by threatening those who might choose other than we'd wish.)
Freedom only works when each person with it is willing to forego some of what they are entitled to. When each of us is willing to say, "God (or the Constitution, or Nature, or the State of Iowa, or whatever) has given me the right to do this. But today, I choose to forego what I have the right to do and have protected." And when we're willing to do that even though "the law" says we don't have to.
And that willingness to forego is in mighty short supply these days.
Don't believe me? Look at the stories in your newspapers or on the news. And count how many of the stories involve someone going to the state for an entitlement or bitching about how the state has fallen short. And count how few of the stories don't.
Freedom is about being able to do what you want. But it's also about the other guy being able to do what he wants, even if it offends the crap out of you. Spend too much time, as, IMO, Americans of all political ideologies do, trying to get the state or "society" to protect your freedom against the other guy, and pretty soon you wake up and discover...
In the eyes of society, *you* are the other guy.
And because you have been unwilling to forebear in the pursuit of "your" rights, you have no moral ground upon which to stand anymore.
What has this to do with the original post? I need to be careful here -- as I wasn't yet a PackersHome member when the original thread was going, and I'm not sure the setting of the time. But while I agree with Shawn's epigram, I also believe that an unacknowledged component of real freedom is how and when we don't fight for it.
I would never want to claim the moral authority that those who have stood against live fire have. Indeed, I've always found Robert Heinlein's
Starship Troopers (the book, not the idiotic movie) provocative, almost compelling: the notion that voting citizenship should follow upon service, not precede it. I didn't serve, and regardless of the fact that I probably would have been rejected, not only for W.Point and ROTC (as I found when I looked into each) but for basic grunt (eyes), frankly I consider that a failure of mine.
But IMO we threaten what all that those who
have served have fought for with our constant harping on our entitlements. I'll always remember laughing at Bill Murray in
Stripes when he had the line about the constitutional right to cable TV. But when I read the paper, or watch the news, or go into the political part of the blogosphere, what I see is a nation of people who *believe* Murray's dictum.
Farce threatens to become tragedy.
And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
Romans 12:2 (NKJV)