MAKE AMERICA FREE AGAIN

                  I've had gnawing problems with the phrases MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN and MAKE AMERICA HEALTHY AGAIN.  Someone gave me a hat with MAKE AGRICULTURE GREAT AGAIN emblazoned on the front.  All of these have a problem.

                  MAGA sounds domineering and arrogant.  MAHA is hard to defend when in 1800 only half of all babies born in America did not reach five years old.  The Make Agriculture Great Again implies that America at one time had a great agriculture, but the truth is that from day one American agriculture exploited nature and damaged ecology.  All of these have problems that make me reluctant to even say them. 

                  So I've been fishing around for something that fits, that doesn't sound arrogant, that has enough room to recognize our historical faults, but that also appreciates how this cultural experiment launched so far so fast.  It finally hit me this morning:  the Statue of Liberty.  That was it.  From day one, what set our nation apart from every other in history was a yearning to be free.  And until recently, it was fairly free.

                  For more than half our nation's history, you could build a house however you wanted, without a building permit.  You could sell a glass of raw milk to a neighbor.  You could make chicken pot pie in your kitchen and sell it to friends without a government license.  You could keep your money without paying income taxes (1914).  An employer did not have to extract money from your wages to pay social security or medicare agencies.  You could hire whoever you wanted at whatever pay scale a voluntary negotiation created.

                  Children could pick apples on a neighbor's orchard . . . for pay.  Parents could apply the board of education to the seat of knowledge--spank without Child Protective Services stealing children.  You could start a hospital without a license.  You could concoct elixers and sell them to voluntary consenting adults exercising freedom of choice.  You could go to school or not go to school.  You could have chickens in your backyard without a license.  You could hire 14 year  olds to carry mail (Pony Express).  You could print scathing newspapers with prejudicial diatribes without fear of reprisal or censorship.

                  In short, what made America attractive and stirred patriotic frenzy was not greatness or health or agriculture; it was that we were the most free nation on the face of the earth.  Our Bill of Rights guaranteed freedoms unheard of in human history.  Every attractive thing America did germinated from the unprecedented liberties enshrined in our DNA.  That said, our founders warned that this level of liberty could only be successful with a sound moral base.   

                  An unsound moral base defines the greatest failures of our culture:  broken treaties with the Native Americans; slavery; Jim Crow; abortion; taking the 10 Commandments out of schools; Godlessness; unpunished crime; pornography; drugs.  These are all significant moral failings answered by incremental progress toward tyranny.  When a moral compass no longer provides personal restraint, society spins out of control and societal dysfunction demands governmental restraint. 

                  That means more and more laws.  The Romans had an axiom:  the weaker a civilization, the more laws.  Strong civilizations succeed in their own virility; their own git-'er-done energy; their own vision.  But when people become weak morally and emotionally; when they lose vision clarity, they demand government babysitting services.  That's where we are today, and that's what Tuesday's election was all about. 

                  The babies lost; the adults won.  Whether or not our nation will leverage this exchange is up to each of us to rediscover and reapply moral clarity in our convictions.  That starts with not using government guns to take money from neighbors to pay for your projects and desires.  It means allowing hateful speech.  It means respectfully listening to weirdos.  It means keeping your cotton pickin' hands out of my throat, my pocket, my head. 

                  What made America the envy of the world and the most blessed place to live and raise a family was not power, not health, not agriculture.  It was freedom.  So let's MAKE AMERICA FREE AGAIN (MAFA).

                  What's the greatest freedom we've lost throughout America's history?