The 4th of July is my Christmas. This is the holiday that I really care about. I find myself as a very Captain America type of citizen hero. It's about what America is supposed to be. Not what it is, not what it is becoming, but what Thomas Jefferson and James Madison actually made way back on July 4, 1776 when they literally risked their lives by saying; Divine Right is no way to establish a government. The only way to fairly govern is by consent. By the consent of those governed alone. Even then there are certain rights and privileges that can never be taken away. That one's very existence as a human being grants them certain rights. Among those, life, liberty, property, pursuit of happiness, privacy, self-defense, and protection FROM the tyrannical nature of all governments.

I find myself distressed at the trajectory we're on. I tell myself "1976, 1977... 1980 is coming", but I do not really believe it.
Like Cap has recognized in his past (and very recently) - America and the United States Federal Government are not one in the same. Thing is the Constitution and Declaration describe both. It always describes the former exactly, sometimes the latter gets away.
Liberty is always worth defending. You stand up for what is right, and you do say no. You don't just go with it. For is living with chains and bonded servitude really living at all?
I fear that I no longer live in the America I grew up in. I do not feel free to do what I please so long as I do not infringe on the free exercise of liberty of another. I do not feel free to use the resources I have gathered and created as I see fit, I see larger and larger amounts of my toil taken from me, at gunpoint mind you, to do things that I do not support or think are necessary. In some ways I find that my money is being taken for the purpose of creating programs and enforcement to restrict my liberty further! That just seems disgusting.

This isn't a new thing. I just used to have hope, we've just entered into this crazy clip now where I don't even recognize the legal foundation of what made America stand out from the rest of the world as the last bastion of liberty and freedom. I no longer see the self-regulating system.

I wonder what it is that I am supposed to defend now? Defense might be my strength, but I can do other things too. I know that I'm not in the America I grew up in when I have reservations about publishing something like this for fear of reprisal or inconvenience by the State. That fear should not exist...

Part Captain America, part Sam Fisher, part something new and different. Probably not the second coming of Jefferson unfortunately.