If our destination is predictable even though the process of our journey is inscrutable, should we be concerned about the process at all? It seems to me that we should have a high level of concern for processes of which we are ignorant but which control our "free will", "Liberty" and "inherent Rights".

If, for example, you decide to travel somewhere by car, towing a trailer with much of your worldly personal goods behind, you would probably believe that you were the master of your fate, flying as freely to your destination as whim and resources might allow.

Well, that is certainly the theory, but is it really the practice? If you were to actually attempt your fanciful journey, I doubt that you would be a full day on the road without being accosted by one or more (usually) polite, but armed and highly dangerous young men or women who would demand that you prove to their satisfaction, who you are, where your journey originated, where you intend to go, who your companions are, why you are making the journey and further. They will also demand that you provide proof of permission to be traveling in a car, pulling a trailer and show documents that you are permitted to be in possession of both items and finally, proof that you have entered into an involuntary contract to assure the nice young man or woman that you have purchased financial responsibility for any unforeseen, but as yet imaginary, incident which might or might not involve a third person or some physical object. And just "any" proof is not adequate to satisfy the curious demands of these young people. The "proof" must at least appear to have originated from the presses of these young folks' employers and associates.

Whooo! Take a breath! Did I mention that they may also want to inspect your pockets and underwear?

Suppose for a moment that you presume that control of your life, liberty, property and travel and that the accompanying authoritarian conflict with your simple desire to go from one place to another was absolutely necessary to protect life, limb and property of innocent others. Suppose that all of this trivia costs quite a bit of your labor to acquire and maintain. Suppose that none of the benefits claimed are for your enjoyment. Suppose for a moment that the reasoning offered for your expense, discomfort and indisposition were a lie?

Suppose the reason for the impositions upon your liberty and property and the demands for your relinquishment of liberty, rights and property were actually intended to empower another class of people to control your activities with almost perfect efficiency and to extract for their use a large portion of your labor in the form of licenses, fees, penalties, assessments, charges and taxes. Would you as easily submit to the demands and presumptions? Well, yes, probably. We are all cowards when we test rights and liberty with armed coercion. Nobody values liberty or individual rights in our society. Those are "old-fashioned ideals", unfit for a modern society of uniform interdependence and mandatory diversity. "Self" has been redefined to mean "an individual in an anthill, fungible and subordinate in all fashion and substance to the will of the fat and prolific Queen". No one dare challenge the presumed right of the anthill to consume ants. We have to wonder at what we have done to ourselves. We are fish in a bowl of our own making, immersed in an ocean of unbound limits, but we will not leave our bowl. Why? We are told that we may not and so we obediently remain captive while we could be free.

Free? What is freedom? Is it a fight to find food for our table and a dry place to sleep? A constant fear and eye cast over our shoulder, wary of someone stronger, faster, smarter than we, who would take our stuff or enjoy our bodies at their pleasure? Is it constant hazard that some accident or illness might overtake us and we would expire in painful neglect? It is all that and more to the coward, the craven and the dull.

For the true human, liberty and freedom are the elixirs of life, prosperity, health and security. When our liberty and rights are traded or seized and replaced with the sorry substitutes of welfare, subsidy, mandate and regulation, we are a dead society. We are dying now. Our liberty flows in our regulated gutters. Our rights are flayed upon the altars of the village where our children are indoctrinated in the rites and rituals of submission of self to good community.

The process of civil enslavement is deliberate and conspiratorial. It will end when you and I choose life and liberty or submit to death inevitable.