“No oppression is so heavy or lasting as that which is inflicted by the perversion and exorbitance of legal authority.” –Joseph Addison

We all love freedom. However, the concept of freedom is something that politicians and pundits use and abuse for their benefit. The Founding Fathers never intended freedom to be a spectator sport or something that professional politicians would usurp for political gain.

One problem we have is a tendency toward excessive political correctness. We’re all so worried about not offending anyone and we shrink away from having any opinions. This means we don’t learn how to argue our points and don’t have to defend our beliefs. And therefore, we aren’t empowered or informed to the extent that we could be. When you truly know an issue, only then can you defend what you believe to be true. And only by engaging others can we learn and understand our differences.

Instead of engaging and possibly offending, we have become a nation of mutes. We go along to get along instead of making our voices heard. It’s a strange submissiveness. Those in power take advantage of our silence and frame the issues, they foist rules upon us, and we’re supposed to sit back and acquiesce.

The biggest offenders of our seemingly required submission to authority is the police. Their duty is to protect and serve, yet they seem to have forgotten this and instead believe they are around to seem how much compliance they can get out of each and every person they come into contact with.

The following story illustrates what I mean.

I came across an article in The Oregonian recently called “Four Sue Police, Alleging ‘Dirty Tactics’”.

One of the four plaintiffs, Frank Waterhouse, is suing the police department for unlawful seizure with excessive force. In his allegations he states that the police fired a Taser at him and bean bag rounds as he was videotaping the police search his friend’s property.

The claimant alleges that the police came after him, yelling at him to put the camera down. As he was running away, he said, ‘don’t come after me’ at which point the police shot him with a bean bag and Taser.

One officer wrote, “He had refused to drop the camera which could be used as a weapon.”

Okay. .. so let me get this straight. He was running away but somehow was seen as threat? It’s absurd.

When good people keep quiet then they get whatever the authority figures give them. I’d say it’s high time to begin using your persuasion skills to let others know what you think. Don’t let this happen to you.