By Russell Turner

The Conservative View

Posted: July 28, 2012

STILWELL, Okla. -- Living in a rural area all of my life I have been involved in the hunting culture. In my area many people enjoy stalking and taking game; for a good portion of those people it is more than just a sport, it is one way that they feed their families. Some game hunting requires the use of dogs to be effective and successful in the hunt.

Over the years I have noticed how the hunters will train their dogs to be obedient and subservient to their masters. Often the hunter will take a young dog and teach him who the boss is. Often the young dog is full of energy and is used to be being completely free. The hunter will put a collar on the dog and will attach a chain to the collar to limit the movement of the dog. The hunter soon becomes the only source of food and water that the dog has available.

The dog soon develops a strong dependency to the hunter and it isn’t long until the dog is ready to obey any and all commands of the hunter. Very soon the dog has forgotten what it was like to be completely free and accepts the world only as far as the chain will allow him to go. Many people may think that the scenario I have just told may seem a little cruel to the dog; while we may have empathy for a dog losing its freedom, we seem to not care about the loss of freedoms that we Americans are experiencing every day.

It was Benjamin Franklin who once said when people are ready to trade security for freedom they will have neither and deserve neither. One of the most important lessons from history: freedom and prosperity are very closely linked. Free societies prosper... and as freedom declines, so does prosperity.  The more prosperity declines, the more politicians try to regulate the economy through wage controls, price controls, capital controls, etc. And the more they regulate the economy, the faster prosperity declines.

I recently read a comment by Butler D. Shaffer, Professor, Southwestern University School of Law.  He said, "Because we fear the responsibility for our actions, we have allowed ourselves to develop the mentality of slaves. Contrary to the stirring sentiments of the Declaration of Independence, we now pledge ‘our Lives, our Fortunes and our sacred Honor’ not to one another for our mutual protection, but to the state, whose actions continue to exploit, despoil, and destroy us."  We Americans are fortunate to have the ability to control our own destiny; if we continue to lick the hands of those who would be our masters let us hope that our chain will be very long.

Russell Turner lives in Adair County, Oklahoma and writes "The Conservative View" each week. 

Copyright 2012 Russell Turner