We are no longer free. In the beginning, our country was founded on the belief that everyone has the freedom to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Today, we find that some of these rights are being compromised to promote fairness and equal opportunity throughout the country. While these are noble goals, many of them impede our original three freedoms.

This was not what our country was created to protect. A large government and partial political groups have entwined their own beliefs into a view of how this country should be run. We must be able to see past our biased views to be objective: how can we organize our country to continue to protect “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness?”

Let’s look at an example of one of these limitations of the government: Gay marriage. This is an increasingly hot topic in today’s culture. The government has taken the authority to define what is marriage and what is not; this is not their job to define. In a truly free country, we would not have the government dictate cultural definitions. While this would open the door to a loose definition of marriage, if a person wants to marry someone of the same sex, who are we to stop them from pursing liberty in their particular lifestyle? As simple as that sounds, the implications leak through in many other government-run arenas, specifically education.

A homosexual lifestyle has already been accepted as a norm in many public education textbooks today. If a parent disagrees with this stance, then our kids should not have it enforced as truth in school. In nearly any set of beliefs taught, there will be those who disagree. The overarching power of government in education (and beyond) must be limited.

This appears to be only one of the steps needed to truly back away from protecting equality to protecting our freedoms. Glancing at the financial realm, government has a right to tax people, however when they tax people for things beyond the government’s intended reach, they are abusing their power. Again, this steps on our original rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness; we should not be required to give money to things that go beyond the basic essentials of our government.

While I believe philanthropy is important, it is not something that is the government’s responsibility. The more the government is forcibly involved in education, health care, and retirement (i.e. social security), we receive more equality at the sacrifice of our liberty. Based on our Constitution, we should have the power in our own hands whether or not we prosper or diminish.

What about those who try so hard and do not have jobs? While there are exceptions, greed on governmental, corporate, and individual levels is rampant. With this infested self-indulgence, we will never have a perfect system. However, our currently flawed system is not working. The government did not guarantee us freedom of success, wealth and comfort, but of the freedom and ability to pursue those on our own, and this is to what our country must return.

The issue might be raised in question to our military. In response to the military, the answer seems quite apparent: they are protecting our freedoms from outside invaders, but some of the uses of our military force go beyond what our Constitution would dictate. In such a time of confusion and dismal fiscal outlook, we must return to our Constitutional foundations or else, as Adrian Roger explains:

“When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half get the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation.”

Having corrupted the foundations of our country by expanding the use of our government beyond its intended purpose, we must make a radical change to put our country back on track by limiting the government to its original intention. America has proven to be an ingenious country, and when we were given our basic rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, we created the most powerful, creative and wealthy country in the world today. We must secure these rights, and once our decisions are our own, as a country, we can start the process of correcting our swerving path.

Kurt Stultz, of Windham, is a Cedarville University student.