An Essay on Freedom

At first glance, it strikes me odd that our forefathers rebelled against England over such things as the Stamp Act, the tax on tea, restrictions on trade with their Caribbean neighbors, and other egregious acts of the Crown. I find myself thinking at times, what a bunch of wusses, a miserable group of complaining wienies. Still, I know that in many respects, times were unbelievably difficult for the colonists. There were health issues, poverty, economic jangling, problems for the aged and the young, crime, many of the same struggles we tangle with today. Nevertheless, we struggle under a regulatory burden many times greater with little or no overt rebellion. Some would have us labor under ever greater restrictions and limitations in favor of environmental concerns.

The battle cry early on in the American Revolution was "No taxation without representation". It seems the early colonists didn't object solely to various government regulations and taxes but objected on the basis that they had no voice in the legislative process of England's monarchy and parliament. After two hundred thirty some odd years, one has to look back to those early years of the Republic and wonder if we wouldn't have been better off as subjects of the Crown.

Those early stalwart freedom loving colonists had no sooner won their independence than the newly formed Congress set about constructing a host of regulations and amendments to govern its eager constituents. 1799 saw the Continental Congress pass a total of 44 laws found today in the United States Statutes At Large. (According to the Government Printing Office Access webpage (http://www.gpoaccess.gov/), the 108^th Congress passed a whopping 498 public and private laws.) The resulting labors produced greater limitations by far than anything King George had imposed.

Legislative labors in the hallowed halls of Congress continued their growth unabated until, in 1860, the nation revolted a second time. The Civil War erupted over States rights (And you thought it was over slavery!) splitting our ancestors apart; the wound has taken more than a century to heal.