“Give me liberty, or give me death,” Patrick Henry said. These are among the most famous words in American history. How, then, have we so rapidly forgotten them? Perhaps to some, life is so dear and peace so sweet that chains and slavery are preferable. But what kind of people are we if this is so? What kind of future do we leave ourselves and our children? We need freedom and security and should not allow our nation to be forced to choose between the two.

But how to have both? It is a simple formula: freedom leads to security. True, tyranny can lead to a form of security but only though two methods. Either it can be built upon the bodies of those who opposed tyranny’s rise, or it can slowly erode people’s freedoms by any and all means possible: threats, promises, subterfuge and other schemes. America’s government has succeeded in the latter to the extreme.

Did we lose freedoms after 9/11 under the Bush administration? I confess it is a much more frustrating and irksome task to board a plane these days. For example, only so much liquid in three-ounce containers or smaller may be carried onto the plane. A minor detail, but who is government to say what I may and may not carry with me with the exception of a clear danger like, say, an assault rifle or another instrument of obvious destructive power? This regulation only does one thing — suppress my and fellow travelers' freedom. It will not stop even a small group of terrorists as anyone who travels by air knows you can buy and then empty a large bottle of water after you have passed through the security gates. What, you think the terrorists don’t already know this?

No doubt the left wing is cheering now as I’ve just blamed Bush for something else. But that’s just one more chip into our collective freedom. One more rule, one more regulation. But it isn’t just, or even mostly, conservatives or Republicans (these terms are not interchangeable, of course) to blame. It is also, indeed more so, liberals and Democrats (also not interchangeable terms). How much more government do we need? We’ve been building upon it now for over 200 years and it is getting to the point to where many do not even care anymore how enormous it has grown.

Things go badly, we need more government to solve the problem. Things are going fine, we need more government to keep them that way. Such is what the politicians wish you to think.

Obama may scare the right wing (and with good reason), but Obama didn’t just pop out of nowhere. Had it not been him it would have been another president. We as a nation have been moving closer and closer to this moment, baby step-by-baby step, stride-by-stride, and now we are at the leaping stage. Government has just taken over GM; ABC will present little more than an Obama infomercial from the White House itself on the administration’s health care “plan” and the president is even seeking authority to take over other companies.

All the steps along the way, an income tax, Social Security, government hiring quotas, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, government bailouts, government subsidies, government housing and more. We’ve taken from the rich and given to the poor; we’ve taken from the poor and middle class and given to the rich. We’ve all been taken from to provide lifetime careers to politicians and lobbyists who are more parasites than anything else.

Is this truth falling on deaf ears? Are you so comfortable that injustice does not move you? Are you so well-fed that the assault upon your liberty is of no concern to you? Do you have so much money that you think you are beyond caring about how dangerous your government is becoming to your liberty? Do you believe that government has your best interests at heart to the point where you would relinquish your precious freedoms for their empty promises?

The response to Katrina was a disaster not because of Bush, but because government itself is inherently inefficient. Our current economic woes are not because of some inherent problem of capitalism, but because government interfered and made possible loans to people who were not qualified to obtain them. Our healthcare system isn’t in crisis — it works just fine if you are willing to work and live responsibly.

But there is the crux. We do not want to live responsibly. We want what we want and therefore not only allow government to act as a safety net when we screw up but to “give” us “free” stuff as well. “Give me liberty” has turned into give me everything. But this “give me, give me” attitude where we expect our mistakes to be cleaned up by government, our security to be provided for when we retire, lose our job or mess our own lives up by being irresponsible, and other more subtle but no less real losses of our liberty are unmistakably a danger to the wellbeing of our nation and of ourselves.

As stated above, many do not even care that we have arrived at this point. Will they care when we lose more freedoms? Will they even realize their loss? However many more freedoms Americans give up (willingly or otherwise), it seems as if it will never be enough to satisfy Washington.

Jeff O’Bryant is the author of “Up into the Hills — A Brief History of Catoosa County” and holds two degrees: a bachelor’s in education and a bachelor’s with honors in history. He can be contacted at jeffobryant@catt.com.