Kris Kristofferson wrote the song “Me and Bobby McGee” made famous by Janis Joplin back in the late 1960s. I always remember the lines:

“Freedom’s just another word for nothin’ left to lose
Nothin’, don’t mean nothin’ hon’ if it ain’t free, no no”

During those turbulent years, the United States had a half million military members fighting a war in Southeast Asia. Many of those enlisted personnel were draftees. Their choices were to be inducted into the army, flee to another country, or go to prison. That is a loss of freedom. Many felt they had everything to lose no matter their decision.

When you force someone to pick up a gun, shoot at another human being, and perhaps die, that is about as close as a government can get to depriving someone of his freedom. That citizen was ordered to do so for nothing more than being a nineteen-year-old American.

The drafting of young men has withstood constitutional challenges since the Civil War. With U.S. v. Arver in 1918, Chief Justice White wrote for a unanimous court that, indeed, the government had the right to conscript men into military service.

Fifty years ago, there was real consequence to what a citizen was asked to do by the government. There was a concrete and perhaps absolute meaning to the term depriving someone of his freedom. This act of forced military service was necessary to protect the rights of fellow Americans according to the government.

Kristofferson’s song and Joplin’s rendition began playing over and over in my head as I listened to the silliness being spewed regarding freedom and rights at last Thursday’s BOCC meeting. The wearing of a mask is far from a constitutional issue. It trivializes what the Framers bestowed on us. Those that think it is a depravation of constitutional rights for the government to issue an order for mandatory mask wearing are wrong. People’s ability to distinguish between rights and responsibilities are why the nation is in such a bad place.

A few other thoughts came to mind watching that meeting. Statues to men that led an insurrection against the Constitution are part of our history, but they are not to be revered as part of our proud heritage. No one, not even a police officer, can deprive another person of his life without just cause. Every American regardless of color, religion, ethnicity, sex, and now sexual orientation is the equal of any other American.

These should be the truths that are self-evident. They are Constitutional rights we need to defend. Men and women that gave their all from our national birth to today are what we need to preserve. We should not trivialize what freedom and the Constitution mean.

There are many that say that the Constitution and history are not taught adequately in our schools. I agree with that statement. It was quite evident at the last County Commission meeting that it was true.