Submitted by Michael Snyder of The American Dream blog, [7]
On July 4th, the United States will celebrate Independence Day once again. But who in the world are we trying to kid? Our founders intended to create a society where freedom and liberty would be maximized, but that is not what America looks like today. Instead, we live in a country that literally has millions of laws, rules and regulations. We have a government that is obsessed with spying on the entire planet and that tries to watch, monitor, track and record as much information about all of us as it possibly can. A “Big Brother” surveillance grid is being constructed all around us, and our militarized police are becoming more brutal with each passing day. Sadly, most Americans don’t seem too alarmed by any of this. In fact, a new Gallup survey [8] has found that 79 percent of Americans are “satisfied” with the level of freedom in this nation. That is a very alarming statistic.
If most people believe that everything is “just fine”, then our leaders are going to feel free to keep doing the same things that they have been doing.
That is why it is so frustrating that so many American “sheeple” appear to be so apathetic about the loss of our freedoms and our liberties.
But it was not all bad news in the Gallup survey. Let’s take a look at the good news first…
The Good News
The good news is that Gallup has asked this question many times before, and over the years the percentage of Americans that are satisfied with the level of freedom in this country has been going down [8]. In fact, the latest figure of 79 percent is the lowest number that Gallup has ever recorded, and it puts us below 35 other countries [9]…
Seventy-nine percent of US residents are satisfied with their level of freedom, down from 91 percent in 2006, according to the Gallup survey, released Tuesday.
That 12-point drop pushes the United States [10] from among the highest in the world in terms of perceived freedom to 36th place, outside the top quartile of the 120 countries sampled, trailing Paraguay, Rwanda, and the autonomous region of Nagorno-Karabakh.
So yes, Americans are way too apathetic about the loss of our freedoms and liberties, but at least the numbers are going in the right direction.
That shows that we are making progress.
And other recent surveys show this progress as well.
For example, according to a new report [11] from the Pew Research Center, 74 percent of Americans do not believe that they have “to give up privacy in order to be safe from terrorism”.
That is a good sign.
And Americans are more dissatisfied with the federal government than ever before as well.
Gallup has found that a whopping 79 percent [8] of Americans believe that there is widespread corruption throughout the government.
That is a new all-time high.
And Gallup has also discovered [12] that confidence in Congress has fallen to a brand new all-time record low…
Americans’ confidence in Congress has sunk to a new low. Seven percent of Americans say they have “a great deal” or “quite a lot” of confidence in Congress as an American institution, down from the previous low of 10% in 2013. This confidence is starkly different from the 42% in 1973, the first year Gallup began asking the question.
In fact, Gallup found that confidence in all three branches of the federal government is declining.
So there are definitely signs that the American people are waking up.
But the numbers also show that there is still so much work to do.
The Bad News
The bad news is that most of the country still appears to be deeply asleep. Our liberties and freedoms are eroding with each passing day, and most Americans simply do not care.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the TSA is fondling thousands of women and children in airports all over the nation every single day.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the NSA is recording billions of our phone calls and emails [13].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that our police are becoming increasingly militarized. As I wrote about the other day [14], there were only about 3,000 SWAT raids in the United States back in 1980. But today, there are more than 80,000 SWAT raids per year [15] in this country.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that a baby was recently maimed for life [16] when a police officer threw a grenade into his crib during a SWAT team raid.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that police recently tasered a man 18 times [17]. In fact, it barely made a blip on the national news.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the Obama administration has discussed making gun owners wear RFID tracking bracelets [18].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that a new California law would allow police to confiscate guns based on accusation alone [19].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that our public schools have been transformed into “Big Brother” indoctrination centers [20].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the U.S. border is considered to be a “Constitution-free zone” where officials can freely grab your computer and copy your hard drive [21].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that people are being sent to prison [22] for collecting rain water on their own property.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that facial recognition technology is being installed all over the nation [23].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the Obama administration has expressed a desire to establish a national DNA database [24].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that our cell phones are essentially high tech surveillance devices [25].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that if you type the wrong thing into a search engine that the police could come knocking on your door [26].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that local governments all over the country are now using automated license plate readers [27] to scan our license plates.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the federal government is grabbing hundreds of thousands of acres of private land [28] all over the country.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that Bible-believing Christians are regularly identified as “religious extremists” in official government training materials [29].
Most Americans don’t seem to care that the federal government has identified dozens of different categories of Americans as “potential terrorists [30]“.
Most Americans don’t seem to care that we have a president that is treating the Constitution like a piece of toilet paper.
I could go on for hours, but I think that you get the point.
We are becoming a little bit more like tyrannical regimes such as Nazi Germany [31] and North Korea [32] with each passing day.
We aren’t there yet, but that is the path that we are on.
And once our liberties and freedoms are gone, they will be exceedingly difficult to ever get back.
So please help us wake up more Americans while we still can.
Time is running out.
