The Morality of Freedom

The road to heaven is a path of choices. Choices between right and wrong. Of doing what is good for ones self or what is good for others. The choice to serve God or to wait for God and others to serve you. But these choices cannot be faced if they are taken away, restricted or made for us.

When the Soviet Union loomed over Asia and Europe, the communist regime attempted to portray a Utopian society of equals who relinquished their belief in the final judgment of a creator for a state run benefactor who treated all as equals. Choices were made for those who capitulated. Those who didn't were made to suffer the consequences of one who betrays their benefactor. The end result was, of course, a financially and morally bankrupt shell of a nation which fell to the opportunity of freedom and choice. The Russian Orthodox religion came out of their seventy years of hiding to flourish as the statues of false gods such as Lenin, Marx and Stalin were toppled by the power of the people.

As a nation whose roots run deep with the promise of a freedom to worship, to choose and to grow, we Americans often find ourselves having to decide if the state should usurp our choices so we don't have to make them. While we may have made the moral decision, we have a tendency to want to make that same decision for others. Rather than doing God's work by offering the answers, we opt for the easy way out by dictating through our legal system.

Our nation's greatest offering of freedom is at the ballot box when we put our over reaching politicians in check by taking away some of their power. The responsibility comes when the choices are given back to us. A government with less social outreach requires a greater individual conscious toward helping those in need. History shows that we have always opened our hearts and wallets when public funding through taxes is reduced. But when our government takes away our choices and our financial ability, we are left with a struggling populace and a government with more people to serve that is ever financially possible.

In our two party system we see evidence of both side's trying to take away our choices. To dictate their own morality on us. Neither sides 'social issues' has proven to be popular among the majority, though they seem to think a party victory is a validation of 100% of their ideals. And thus we make our choice at the ballot box, causing the pendulum to swing in the opposite direction.

Freedom with the weight of responsibility or restriction and the inability to create our own moral path? In our democracy, we should weigh the consequences of this question every time we cast a ballot. And the real results of our vote comes on reckoning day.