Ticked Off Tuesday: Freedom Edition

If you listen to conservatives these days, you hear a lot about freedom. And how the Obama administration is infringing upon it. And I want to ask them, how are you less free now than you were?

Can you still vote?

Marry the person you love? 

Wear what you want to wear?

Buy what you want to buy?

Target shoot?

Hunt? 

Drive what car you want to drive? 

Attend the church the you want? 

Choose which medical procedures to undergo? 

Have Viagra covered by your insurance company?

Get a vasectomy without harassment? 

You see, freedom lovers, some people - some citizens of this very country that you claim to love - are not free to do these things. Gay citizens can't marry the people they love in most states. Female citizens can't wear what they want to wear without fear of harassment (racial if they cover up in a hijab, sexual if they dress however you assume "sluts" dress) or being blamed for their own rapes. Citizens without driver's licenses aren't allowed to vote in some areas. Citizens who don't believe in God have to swear on a Bible in court, see "God" on their money and hear it in their pledge of allegiance. Citizens who need birth control pills, which aren't even always for birth control, can't get them because of their insurance company or because they don't live near a Planned Parenthood. I could go on, but I'm hoping you get my point. 

You don't really give a shit about freedom, do you? You like to yell that Obama's a tyrant, but what you're really pissed off about is that he wants EVERYONE to feel free, not just you. 

You want to be free from things that make you uncomfortable, be they gay families, loud women, sexually empowered women, atheists, people of color who don't sound just like you and who knows what else. 

You love to talk about our Founding Fathers and what they wanted for this country. None of them could see into the future, so it's pretty hard to strictly interpret their intentions in a world with electricity, cars, the internet, nuclear weapons and Lena Dunham. 

One thing, though, that you need to remember about our Founding Fathers is that they were revolutionaries. Actual revolutionaries. Extraordinarily progressive for their time. 

Do you think they would have wanted the country to go backwards? Or stay exactly the same? Really? 

They talked this being a Christian nation because they literally didn't know anyone who wasn't a Christian. Can you say the same? 

They talked about (white) men being created equal because that was a COMPLETELY RADICAL notion at the time - it doesn't mean they meant for the country to stay for white men only. 

You hate the changes in our country and want to run to Glenn Beck's fortified town in Idaho? Go ahead. But don't pretend the Founding Fathers would have been proud of you, or that you're standing up for freedom in your walled city where the citizens are required to be armed.