Can people learn the difference between freedom and license?

We have a big problem in this country.

No, not him. He's an entirely different story.

We have lost the distinction between liberty and license.

In fact, I'd be willing to bet that half the country doesn't even know the meaning of the word, especially if you tell them it isn't preceded by the words "fishing" or "driver's" or followed by the words "plates" or "to kill."

No, the license that needs to be considered here is this one from Google:

"LICENSE -- Freedom to behave as one wishes, especially in a way that results in excessive or unacceptable behavior.
 As: "The government was criticized for giving the army too much license."
 Synonyms: permission, authority, right, a free hand, leave, authorization, entitlement, privilege, prerogative.

Free speech used to mean standing up for unpopular points of view.

Now it's lunatics picketing funerals and and people spreading lies about where the president was born.

Freedom of the press used to mean newspapers could take political views in opposition to power and tell the truth about the powerful.

Now the press is almost gone and blow-dried morons lie about anything their owner wants to attack.

Freedom of religion used to mean the right to worship God as you saw fit, and the right to be left alone if you didn't believe in a Supreme Being.


Now we're so hung up on not offending anyone that the most innocuous, non-sectarian prayers are banned.

Freedom to assemble peaceably and to present grievances to the government meant exactly that, but try going to a political convention and you'll find yourself shuffled off to a Free Speech Area.

In fact, we seem to have acquired new rights along the way that the Founders certainly never intended.

One is a codicil to the Second Amendment. Little did the Founders know that in addition to the right to keep and bear arms, they created the right of people wishing to buy guns never to be inconvenienced.

When people ask for background checks to help prevent criminals from buying guns, the Ammosexuals say it isn't fair that law-abiding gun buyers should not have to be inconvenienced by waiting through a background check.

Wow. Maybe they could expand that to the DMV.

The other new right is sort of a perversion of various First Amendment rights. Call it Freedom of Expression. There's some free speech and some freedom of religion in there, but except for the fact that it would have left me on the same side of the issue as the late Jesse Helms, I could probably have lived happily for a long time without seeing a guy with the handle of a bullwhip stuck up his ...

You get the picture.

"Love Actually"

I did get a kick out of the art gallery in "Love Actually," but that wasn't quite as explicit and it was in a more civilized country.

We used to argue over important things, whether books like "Ulysses" were pornography.

News flash -- It wasn't.

If we're not having that argument anymore, it's because an appalling number of people don't -- or can't -- read.

Everything is video now, and we've really come a long way now that we can see explicit sex and violence anytime we want.

We make historical movies and say they're "based on a true story" so we can change the facts to bring in more bucks at the box office.

It really isn't freedom.

It's license.

And it's killing us.