Clarion Ledger: “Freedom is not free. As someone with a grandfather and great-grandfather interred at Arlington and who has had, according to family lore, a relative serve in every American major war since the Spanish American conflict (now with the exception of Afghanistan), I know this viscerally.
While I come from a family deeply enmeshed with America’s armed forces for over a century, I do think of the phrase only in the context of military sacrifice.
Indeed, freedom is not free: It also requires putting up with a lot of behavior you may never want to engage in or even that you morally disapprove of….It doesn’t matter what we feel about it (I, for one, think most parlays are sucker’s bets), instead it matters whether it is worth using state violence to control the behavior. Usually, no. This libertarianism is fundamental to my conception of this month’s holiday and the Republic itself.
So, in this month of the 249th Fourth of July, let us celebrate. Let us remember that freedom is not free. And let us mind our own business — because all three acts are root and branch of the same tree of liberty.”