Freedom is a great concept, but it doesn't always work

A lot of people have been complaining that government keeps encroaching on our freedoms. They say we're heading toward a totalitarian state.

The problem is far more complex than most people seem to believe, though.

The real problem is that we have more freedom than we can handle.

When the Founding Fathers put together our government, someone asked Benjamin Franklin what sort of government it would be. "A republic, if you can keep it," Franklin reportedly said.

But how do you keep a republic when 20 percent of adults are functionally illiterate and another 20 percent aren't even literate enough to balance a checkbook or read a prescription? When 65 percent of adults proudly say they haven't read a book since finishing high school?

You see, along with freedom comes responsibility. I have quoted the late great H.L. Mencken time and again about his 1922 essay in which he said the American republic would not last another 100 years. Mencken cited ignorance and greed as the two factors that would cause our downfall.

Ignorance is by far the bigger problem. I don't have any problem with anyone who decided not to vote for Barack Obama, but anybody who claims he wasn't born in this country or that he's secretly a Muslim loses my respect.

The more ignorant voters are, the easier it is to sell them on ridiculous ideas like tax cuts for the rich helping everyone. In 2002, when President Dubya Bush was pushing massive tax cuts that reserved 48 percent of its benefits for the top 1 percent, Gallup did a fascinating survey. Seventeen percent of those polled thought they were part of the top 1 percent and another 25 percent thought they would be someday.

Of course, you can't require intelligence tests for voting. For one thing, there isn't any test that could be devised that wouldn't discriminate against someone. We live in a country where people are educated more to follow the rules than to challenge them. A country where more people could identify Honey Boo Boo or the Kardashians than members of the president's cabinet.

But what does all this have to do with too much freedom?

Well, surprisingly, the people and entities that inform us are not required by any sort of laws to tell us the truth. Obviously some issues are matters of opinion and without absolute truth, but there are other things that are proven facts and we ought to be able to accept them.

But whether it's a cable news channel, a squawk radio commentator or someone writing on the Internet, anyone can lie with impunity and probably never have it come back to haunt them. And if someone is considered a public figure, it's possible to say all sorts of vile things about them and never have to pay a price.

Back during Bill Clinton's first term, the Rev. Jerry Falwell was hawking a truly disgusting film called "The Clinton Chronicles" in which the president was accused of dealing cocaine and killing dozens of people while he was governor of Arkansas.

Of course, Falwell took it in the shorts himself in the '80s when Larry Flynt ran a fairly distasteful parody in his "Hustler" magazine in which Falwell was accused of losing his virginity in an outhouse with his mother.

Too much freedom?

Maybe, but you certainly have to ask yourself if we're a better country because we're free to read almost anything anyone wants to write. Particularly in the case of the Internet, where it is so easy for people to remain anonymous, people who live far beyond the pale -- child molesters, for example -- are able to communicate with others like them. There's no possible way that sort of freedom makes us a better country.

Franklin was right.

It's a republic, but I think we may be on the verge of losing it.

We need to get smarter -- and maybe a little less greedy too.