Many, if not most of us were brought up with the notion that the United States is the freest country in the world. After all, why else would so many people risk their lives to flee ancestral homes in Europe, Asia, Africa, Latin America and elsewhere to voluntarily settle here and make new and better lives for themselves and their descendants?

As the lyric line in Steppenwolf’s “Monster/Suicide/America” goes:

“Once the religious, the hunted and weary
Chasing the promise of freedom and hope
Came to this country to build a new vision
Far from the reaches of kingdom and pope…”

But something went wrong, even from the beginning. The lyric continues:

“Like good Christians, some would burn the witches
Later some got slaves to gather riches…”

Yet, despite the institutional slavery of blacks, the attempted genocide of the indigenous population, and other displays of religious and ethnic hatred, the United States prevailed in becoming the greatest hope for freedom and liberty people had ever known. For many years, we here in the states could legitimately chant, “We’re number one; we’re number one.” But mostly, we had enough sense not to.

That’s history, though. Now, the United States is no longer the freest country in the world, and it hasn’t been for a while. The 2022 Liberty Index by The Cato Institute was released earlier this year. The U.S. had been ranked number 17 for several years, but as of the latest report, we’re now number 23.

Sadly, the report notes, the general trend worldwide is for diminishing freedom. From the executive summary of the report:

“Human freedom deteriorated severely in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. Most areas of freedom fell, including significant declines in the rule of law; freedom of movement, expression, association and assembly; and freedom to trade.”

There are questions about why and how countries were rated, and that’s expected. The report — 427 pages long — goes into those things. But the question that ultimately needs to be answered is why people allow others to take away their freedom. Why do ostensibly free people allow their liberties to be eroded?

As the report acknowledges, “The contest between liberty and power has been ongoing for millennia.”

Indeed, our Founding Fathers understood the tendency. Speaking about good governments, Jefferson said, “…experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny...”

And, as Ben Franklin is famously quoted as saying, “Those who give up essential liberty for perceived security will have neither liberty nor security.”

Perhaps it’s the negative side of the human condition.

The story of Exodus tells us that the Israelites became worried when Moses hadn’t returned from the mountain in a long time. They got scared, melted their valuable gold, and turned it into a golden calf that they worshipped. In the U.S. today, people have given up their precious liberty and now worship the government. It’s no longer a golden calf, but a golden donkey for some, a golden elephant for others.

This country started with a great idea, but the foundation was flawed by not extending that great idea — liberty — to everyone. We were number one but have fallen to the detriment of future generations.

Flawed foundation or human nature? We can’t change the latter. That was tried by the Communist Party under Lenin and Stalin. Their ideal was the “New Soviet man” who was supposedly free of selfishness and worked only to serve others. That never happened, no matter how many guns the Soviet government pointed at its people.

But we can learn from the former. It wasn’t what the federal government did that made this country a destination for those seeking to live free, it was what it didn’t do. It didn’t meddle in the affairs of other nations and, for the majority of people at least, it didn’t interfere in the everyday lives of men and women here at home. It wasn’t perfect; it was grossly unjust in not extending liberty to all, but it worked to the point where millions came to the United States seeking liberty.

But with more intrusion from the government as it grows beyond its legitimate functions of defending against the initiation of force and fraud, as it grows beyond its constitutional limits, the less the condition of liberty.

As the Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu wrote: “The more laws and restrictions there are, the poorer people become…The more rules and regulations, the more thieves and robbers.”

In Europe, there was Cicero: “When a government becomes powerful...it is a usurper which takes bread from innocent mouths and deprives honorable men of their substance for votes with which to perpetuate itself.”

What might Cicero have said about a government deciding what type of stoves people can use? Well, he did say “The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.”

And to paraphrase Machiavelli, power‘s purpose is to increase itself. Centuries later, Lord Acton made the same point with his famous quote: “Power tends to corrupt, but absolute power corrupts absolutely.”

This brings us back to Steppenwolf and that group’s take on an ever-growing government:

“And though the past has its share of injustice
Kind was the spirit in many a way
But its protectors and friends have been sleeping
Now it's a monster and will not obey.”

Happy Independence Day.