“I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”
My Parker Grade School morning class pledge … kindergarten – 6th grade
FREEDOM-CONDITIONED EARLY ON
At an early age, most of us pledged our allegiance to the flag that represents the individual freedom characterizing the USA’s democratic republic. In New Castle, IN back in the days of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, a sense of freewill freedom was conditioned into our young identities.
I’m sure that the hand-over-heart parroting of this pledge was policy for all New Castle grade schools back then. We all did it. I venture to say that there were many schools throughout the USA that exhibited some form of reverence for the flag that represents the freedom pledged when drafting the constitutional Bill of Rights in this democratic republic.
While learning our kindergarten Sandbox Etiquette that conditioned us to the social graces of how to best relate to our new friends we internalized the taste for the untamed freedom our shared class-opening pledge instilled. This Sandbox Etiquette worked to shape each of our behaviors that would shape and form the individually unique characteristics of the behavioral traits that would evolve into and define who we were to be … who we are today.
DEMOCRACY’S PROTECTION TO THE BONE
I felt protected from any sort of freedom-limiting government. I never even considered it. It never threatened my sense of present-moment contentment. My unquestioned love for this country had never been diluted by any sense of threatened freedom. Our constitution’s 200-year-old pledge of freedom was entrenched in my conscious awareness.
Freedom-uncertainty loomed outside of my understanding of what I conceived the USA’s strength to be and the top-tier level of power I had been told this country had demonstrated and that I had experienced in my lifetime.
… UNTIL JUST A FEW YEARS AGO
The combination of things that go against individual freedom and the amount of in-your-face governmental corruption that gets supported by a significant amount of national nativity is frightening.
I’m 66 years old now and I plan on waiting until I’m 70 to draw on the Social Security that I’ve been paying into all of my working life. It’s mine. It’s not an entitlement payment.
However, in the 2024 election, if the candidate representing its party’s professed/outlined authoritarian design wins the election, I will start drawing my social security while it’s still available. Some politicians in this group plan on “sunsetting” Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid… voting yearly on whether or not to continue them.
IT’S A QUESTION OF “CONSTITUTION” … NOT THE POLITICS THAT ARE ALLOWED TO CHARACTERIZE IT
“Issues” are real. Politics just deals with the ways to handle those issues. It’s a government’s constitution that sets the legal boundaries of freedom that politics can operate in.
The level of freedom protected by a government determines the extent of the politics that characterize and are publically allowed in its daily debate. Some governments will put a citizen in jail for saying something out of line with what the leader allows. Citizen rights are greatly limited.
A government’s purpose can be constituted by laws that serve the interests of a dictator instead of serving that of the people. The people’s freedom is limited to where what they do has to fall in line with the ways that please the leader.
JUST PAY ATTENTION AND VOTE ! ! !
This post is not intended to generate any hate. Like I said, I have friends and family who are choosing to be naive about this 1st-ever form of threat to the freedom we enjoy afforded by our democratic republic.
I’m proud to be a member of the class of ’75 and care about my classmates as they go through these complicated times. I figured we’re all about the same age and all being fronted by decisions on how to best weather retirement and medical expenses.
The intent of this post is to encourage its readers to be curious about the effects that ongoing change of all kinds is having on this nearly 250-year-old democratic republic.
Do your research and determine who you feel best represents the sort of freedom presence you want to get political about and want to live in.
Freewill Matrix 