Land of the Not Free

As I surf from one post waving the flag to another I can not help but be slightly uncomfortable with all the nationalism when our country is clearly in a time of great challenges that test the American resolve to truly be the land of the free.

Nationally America incarcerates more people than any other country on earth. One in 18 American males are in prison or on court supervision. This rate of punitive legal restrictions has led us to a place where we have more people under supervision than China, a country with four times our population. Frankly these facts don’t lend themselves to the concept of the “land of the free”.

Across our nation states are enacting laws that are restrictive of civil liberties. Legislation that is homophobic or racist is common place in our state houses. Locally governments are enacting ordinances that suspend the right to protest, practice religion freely and engage in other “protected” free speech.

On the international stage our government remains bound to it’s own financial interests in the face of human tragedy, costing hundreds of lives, in the middle east.

Do I love my country, yes, yet my responsibility as a member of the human race drives me to view my nation through a lens of reality, not a nationalist filter that celebrates regardless of the truths that surround me.