Does freedom matter?

Editorial:  Just think for a moment.  If you have a decent crib, nice wheels, big screen TV and game system with a job that supports your hobbies; do really you need freedom?  After all, what else matters assuming any government will leave you alone to pursue your daily life?

To the naive; a job in a corporate cubical seems much the same as what is commonly understood about communism.  Many American workers do not see themselves as capitalists or even participatory in the free enterprise system, but merely slaves to that system.  To be that naive, however, one must have slept though all history at every level of education or have been taught by Marxists in most classes, but that could never happen in America. Right?

To most media workers, employment never means risking capital in a media property, struggling to meet payroll or other business basics.  What then is the difference between processing press releases for publication from some pompously named association and working for government owned media?

R. James Woolsey, former Director of Central Intelligence (a native Tulsan) recently wrote in  introduction of the book, "Disinformation" by Lt. Gen. Ion Mihai Pacepa and Prof. Ronald J. Raychlak that it "would change the way you look at intelligence, foreign affairs, the press and much else besides."

As a writer, publisher, and lifelong public policy geek, "Disinformation" has disrupted with disturbing clarity my perspective on how public perceptions are built and how media is often manipulated by those that lie for evil in attack, not just on America, but on all of Western Civilization as it has developed over hundreds of years worldwide.

Further, it makes clear that the most dangerous job communists could assign (they assign all) an intelligent worker would be working for their own government.  In short, as the power structure narrows towards the top, internal competition will kill you.

Woolsey writes, "The communists had something between no ideology and a dysfunctional one.  We have one that almost all Americans would sign on to: democracy, the rule of law, and America as, in Lincoln's words, the 'last, best hope of earth.'"

While a more in-depth review will be published on Tulsa Today as this writer finishes the book, even at mid-point today, July 4, 2013, it is clear that communists, socialists, and tyrants of all flavors continue to battle daily utilizing lies both subtle and bold to slander and dishonor democracy, the rule of law and all of what is known as Western Civilization.  While claiming to be serving the people they are in truth serving themselves - this the central lie of Marxism.

Maybe for many the cool crib, wheels and electronics rocks and "whatever" for the rest of life is fine.

However, if meaning matters and truth counts and freedom is more than a gilded cage then this July 4 celebrate Independence Day in consideration that individual freedom is more than fireworks, friends and food. Talk about it if it is important to you and yours.

It is the legacy our forefathers died to provide and our choice or not for our children.