It's Freedom Week. Much like a St. Patrick's Day falling in the middle of the week (which is Drinking Week, I think), a four day holiday (for many) makes this Freedom Week. Happy birthday America! Let's blow up some shit and get drunk.

Our government celebrated its freedom in grand style last week. By blasting our freedoms. By crying "Tyranny!" at the top of their lungs because a few newspapers told the world we were tracking the finances of terrorists. Y'know, because no one ever thought that was going on--even though the administration itself has crowed about this "tool against the evilness of evil men" many times in the past.

"Where are the checks and balances on the press?" dozens of politicians and their bullhorns yell. Because they have no one better to blame. They certainly don't want to blame themselves for the mess they're in. That's no way to get re-elected.

I have to ask, "Where are the checks and balances we used to have on our government?" It doesn't seem like there's much difference between the knob heads at the White House and the bubble heads in Congress. The Prez and his cronies get knocked down by the Supreme Court, and Congress says we need to pass new laws to make the illegal things the administration has been doing legal (um, if it's illegal, wouldn't that make the new law illegal?). It's like passing around a little sister to all of your friends and then getting mad when no one knows who knocked her up.

Which is downright ugly, when you think about it. But these politicians like it ugly. It gives them something to blame everyone else for.

It seems like the average person, when it comes to freedom, is rather short-sighted. I am, too. For instance, I love the freedom of speech thing. Say what you want. Bitch, moan, cry havoc against the monolithic incompetence. I wonder about the freedom to bear arms thing. Not because no one should have guns (although I'm not sure what good they do most of the time), but all of those guns? Do we need them all?

Of course we do. We need it all. We need the freedom to go through a drive-thru at two in the morning. We need the freedom to buy too many lottery tickets. We need the freedom to get depressed, buy a bottle of liquor and drown in our own piss. We need porno, and we need the 700 Club. One freedom washes the other, so to speak.

I'm not going to fire off my gun this Freedom Week. I'm probably not going to blow up any fireworks. I know, Star-Spangled Banner and all. The fireworks are representatives of the sights and sounds of war. But we're already at war. We're already blowing up places around the world celebrating our freedom. We could stand to cool it in our own country.

But people like fireworks (and I do too, on occasion), so we'll simulate air attacks around the country in the next few days. Because we're free.

I'd love to pronounce, as some have, that we are at a critical junction in our nation's history. Are we going to tilt to a dictator-esque government, or will we swing back a little to the middle? Will the 2006 elections be a turning point or just another vote to steal?

We'll always have the vestiges of freedom adorning every tyrannical tirade. Like bunting at the ballpark. We applaud those who are able to reign in our free spirit, and then we make do with a smaller backyard. We rail against those we don't like, and we want to snuggle with those who agree. It's like the Nazis said, "Feel free to talk shit...we've got a present for you after your shower."

I guess that was more of a paraphrase.

Someday, I like to hope, we will raise our heads again. Regain our sense of freedom inside our intense nationality. Government is not here to control our lives. It is not God. It is not our default morality. It should serve us, not demand subservience.

If you feel like you've been on the short shift from our "leaders," let me give you a little advice about this big election in November everyone keeps talking about: Feel free to vote the bums out. All the bums, because they are all guilty of extreme hubris and bad accounting practices. And, if we get new bums, let's make sure they're serving us. They are, after all, our employees.

Matt Worley feels free whenever he wants.