• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Bitterroot Star

Bitterroot Valley's best source for local news!

  • Home
  • News
  • Sports
  • Opinion
  • Classifieds
    • Buildings
    • Farm & Garden
    • For Rent
    • For Sale
    • Free
    • Help Wanted
    • Real Estate
    • Sales/Auctions
    • Services
  • Legal Notices
  • Obituaries
  • Calendar
  • Services
    • Letter to the Editor
    • Place Classified Ad
    • Submit a Press Release
    • Contact Us
    • About Us
  • Subscribe

Freedom

March 26, 2013 by Editor

 

What is freedom? Is it a figment of our minds, a desire like trust, like faith, like love, hope or is it perhaps something similar to all of these desires?

Psychologists use the following example: restrain a tiny baby’s hand or feet and the child will fly into a rage if it can’t move its limbs. This is a quality found in all small children from early birth. This is probably the basis for man’s love of freedom.

Watch animals in a zoo, or enclosure, they will pace back and forth for hours. They may be well fed and cared for, but will escape at the first opportunity. Likewise for birds. Release a captive bird and it will fly away immediately. Plants or trees react similarly, plant them too close together and they will grow away from each other. So perhaps all living things desire freedom.

Therefore, freedom is making choices, freedom is restraint, freedom is also respecting other people’s freedom.

Consider this, why did the ancient civilizations of the world fail? Take the Romans, or the Greeks. Freedoms were slowly taken from the general populace and transferred to the ruling class until the common man became enslaved by tyranny, until the civilization disappeared into oblivion.

Now fast forward to 2013, what do we see in the USA? Freedom slowly being transferred to a very powerful central government in Washington DC. We see executive order after executive order transferring our freedoms to a tyrannical government until the common man will also become enslaved. So it turns out the ruling class does not, or will not, respect the freedom of the general populace! Some time ago I wrote a letter explaining the difference between a dictator’s edict and an executive order – there is none!

Lately there has been a vicious attack on the 2nd Amendment, the freedom to bear arms. Well, I’ll tell you folks, “you can’t fight a bear with a switch,” your power is in your pen, your pen is more powerful than the sword, your vote is power, use them.

It is the voice of feudal lords, dictators, kings and powerful central governments that seek to destroy the immortal desire for freedom. A freedom which has inspired men and women through the ages. It is the freedom to think, to worship and express opinions, that men and women from earliest recorded history have been willing to lay down their lives for.

L.H. Marchuk

Victor

Share this:

Filed Under: Opinion

Primary Sidebar

Search This Website

Search this website…

Local Info

  • Bitterroot Chamber of Commerce
  • Ravalli County
  • Ravalli County Economic Development Authority
  • City of Hamilton
  • Town of Stevensville
  • Town of Darby
  • Bitterroot Public Library
  • North Valley Public Library
  • Stevensville Community Foundation
  • Ravalli County Council on Aging
  • Bitterroot Producers Directory
  • Ravalli County Schools
  • Real Estate
  • Montana Works

Like us

Read our e-edition!

Montana Info

  • Montana Ski Report
  • Montana Fish, Wildlife, & Parks
  • National Parks in Montana
  • Montana Wildfires – INCIWEB
  • US Forest Service – Missoula
  • Firewise USA
  • Recreation.gov

Check Road Conditions

Road Conditions

Footer

Services

  • Place Classified Ad
  • Submit a Press Release
  • Letter to the Editor
  • Submit an Event
  • Subscribe
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

Our location:

PO Box 133

115 W. 3rd Street
Stevensville, MT  59870
Phone: (406) 777-3928
Fax: (406) 777-4265

Archives – May 2011 to Present

Archives Prior to May 2011

Click here for archives prior to May 2011.

The Bitterroot Star Newspaper Co: ISSN 1050-8724 (Print) ISSN 2994-0273 (Online)
Copyright © 2026 · Bitterroot Star · Maintenance · Site by Linda Lancaster at Bitterroot Web Designs