This might be a good time to talk about slavery. Not self imposed slavery, as in addictive behavior; but true slavery, as in legal subjugation. Legal subjugation, as in 1860, when a minority of U.S. citizens owned approximately four million slaves. Although slave owners provided housing, rations and other essentials, they legally extorted the labor of their human property. Fast forward 152 years and you find another version of slavery in America — where the Federal Government confiscates (a big word for “steals”) the labor (and wealth) of millions of Americans. Between 1861 and 1865, some 620,000 Americans, primarily white men, died in the war that allegedly ended slavery. Let’s see, that’s one life per 6.4 slaves. You weren’t there; so you don’t know if each 6.4 slave-unit appreciated the soldier who died. Surely, some did. Surely. In 2012, you haven’t seen or heard that any ancestors of slaves have gathered to honor those who died. Maybe they have and you just haven’t heard about it. You haven’t heard of any memorial ceremony sponsored by the NAACP, except perhaps to honor black Civil War soldiers.  But, then, it can’t be easy to honor white men, dead or alive. Meanwhile, despite the Civil War carnage, slavery has made a vigorous comeback. Only this time the slaveholder is Uncle Sam. In year’s past, Uncle was famous for saying “I Want You” in war recruitment posters. Now he’s changed his tune by saying “I Want Your Money.” At the point of a gun, the Federal Government takes the earnings (and thus the labor) of law-abiding citizens and uses it to feed its ravenous appetite and pass around all manner of goodies. Obviously, millions of individual citizens (and aliens) are grateful to receive stolen property, as are foreign governments, government cronies, government bureaucrats, non-profit organizations and a host of other special interests “on the take.” As a slaveholder, the Federal Government has absolute power. In 1861, over nine million U.S. citizens objected to this power and seceded from the Union, but they were standing on the shaky, immoral ground of slavery. Today, millions of new slaves want to secede from the yoke of Government oppression but there are no armies to come to their rescue. You wonder now what Abraham Lincoln might have to say, if he could witness the outcome of his sacrifice. Today, his words echo sadly:

“. . . we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. . . The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here . . . It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us — that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion — that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain — that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom — and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Freedom.  It was, and is, never free.