Freedom Keeps Slipping Away

Do you truly think that you are free? We do enjoy more freedom than most in people in the world but our liberty is slipping away more and more. It is noticeable. It is insidious. It is annoying and most importantly, it is dangerous. Take for example the anti smoking crusade in NYC. In addition to bans in restaurants, bars, etc. now they want to ban all outdoor smoking as well. Crazy. Do they not have anything better to do. I can recall when you could walk into a store and buy smokes no matter what your age. Occasionally you would run across a person behind the counter that would not sell them to minors but that was rare. In Texas there are actually "cops" whose sole job is to entrap clerks into selling an underage person tobacco products or beer. I would be embarrassed to say that was how I earned a living. What about underage drinking? I can remember a time when if you could look over the bar, then you could get a drink. Not saying that was a wise thing to do but what the hey, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Of course I lived in south Louisiana at the time.(That area is more like a friendly foreign country than a part of the U.S.). Now a defender of our freedom can not get a beer legally in any state in the Union. It is ok to die for your country but not to have a beer after a hard day in the field. Something wrong there. Have you recently tried to buy a gun or ammunition? You feel like you are joining the Army after filling out all the nonsensical paperwork. I don't believe it is any business of any government agency if I decide to buy at .410 shotgun. None whatsoever. How about the nonsense that one has to go through to get on an airplane? Well I guess that has become necessary.We can thank  Mohammedans for that. The longer we have people in government that "want to get things done" and leave their mark as it were, the more our freedoms are restricted. Sometimes it really is better for our elected officials to just do nothing.