FREEDOMS APLENTY Some people who are critical of our way of living can often be heard to say we have far too many freedoms.
It makes a measure of good sense, too, when they point to individuals – even to whole groups of non-thinking persons who enjoy freedom without realizing how costly they can be.
Just let anyone try to eliminate any of our choice freedoms and you, too, will be ready to raise the royal roof, wouldn't you?
Then, while we will not accept any changes in our many of our established freedoms we don't always objects other more subtle ways of controlling how we use the freedoms we have. They are called rules and regulations and they are given to fits of yeast-like proliferation quite frequently.
You can drive whatever make of car you can afford to own, rent or acquire by other means, bu be sure you have a permit which allows to drive it. Connecticutt started the driver license in 1907 and it caught on.
Work anywhere you like, but the last time I looked, the Labor Department listed over three hundred and fifty occupations that are now licensed by state authorities and there are five hundred more jobs from which you may choose freely which require only a certificate or registration.
Connecticut restricted automobile speed limits to 12 m.p.h. in the cities and 15 m.p.h. in the country. By 1973 President Nixon asked us to travel at no more than 55 m.p.h. on our national highways. In 1919 Oregon adopted a gasoline tax and ten years later all the states found out about it within the next decade. The first federal gasoline tax was set up in 1932. The tax was set at less than one cent per gallon and i too has been noted for its steady growth.
When our federal income tax was established in 1913 the “normal tax” one per cent our freedoms were not harmed even though tax rate ran up that first year to 7 per cent on larger incomes. Fewer than one half of one per-cent of the population of the nation had to pay any tax at all. That one, too, has shown a somewhat rapid rate of growth.
I think most of us can see and even know from personal experiences - how the rules and regulations we make in order to bring proper order and discipline the exercise of our treasury of freedoms. We have yet to learn how to pass this vital bit of information along to those we are seeking to lead to freedom.
Andrew McCaskey amccsr@adelphia.net 8-18-06 [c447wds]
