People on the conservative side say Obama is taking away freedom at an alarming rate. People on the liberal side say he’s not doing enough to protect freedoms from the Tea Party or restore any of the freedoms Bush stripped away. All of which puts us in the unfortunate position of agreeing that freedom is slipping away. Conservatives and liberals can’t seem to agree on anything but they seem to agree that things are less free today than they were in the past.
Social conservatives think gay marriage limits their freedom in some (yet to make sense to me) way. Fiscal conservatives think having to pay any kind of taxes is tyranny and Obama’s new regulations in the banking and healthcare sectors have started us toward a slippery slope that ends in communism. Social liberals say even having to beg so hard for gay marriage shows how behind the US is, not to mention the fight to keep illegal immigrants from receiving the most extreme treatment in US history. Economic liberals are in a fight for their own survival against cuts to unions, collective bargaining, pension funds, pell grants, medicare, medicaid–deep breath, whoo–and social security.
And if you ask a military liberal or dovish liberal about things prepare to take the week off. Still, no matter how much they complain, nothing seems to change and most people aren’t upset with it. Reading emails, torture, wire tapping, using cell phones to track people (to be fair the work of Apple instead of Uncle Sam…that we know of), privatized prisons, detaining people without cause or trial, and the list is just endless. But the conversation has so shifted towards other topics of more pressing economic matters or breathlessly “urgent” social issues like abortion that no one even has the energy to talk Police State.
The outlook from people on all sides is pessimistic. Even science–so often the cause of optimism with new breakthroughs–says the future might be very bleak due to pollution, global warming, and over population. [Don’t even ask a Christian about the future unless you want to creeped out by hearing about the upcoming Armageddon they believe in. But of course if you say the world is ending long enough, you’ll eventually be right.] All of which makes you wonder where my generation’s freedom is heading, and if the majority is right. “There will be no freedom.”