If you love your freedom thank Ben Joravsky

So often we are told something like "if you love your freedom thank the troops".

Thank the troops. Thank the soldiers. Thank the military. Thank the vets. Without them we would not have freedom.

Funny but Saddam Hussein had lots of troops and Iraqi's were never free under him.

General Noriega had lots of troops but Panama was not free under him.

The Soviet Union had lots and lots and LOTS of troops but they were never free.

The truth is that troops are tools of the state. Tools that can be used for good, bad or indifferent purposes. It's pretty obvious if you look around that a large supply of available troops is not really the deciding factor in whether a nation is free or not.

Arguably the nation with the greatest relative supply of willing troops -in all of history- and a potent high tech military machine to effectively use them was Nazi Germany.

Generally when a nation indulges in excess militarism it's a bad sign. Right now the U.S. spends more on military expenditures than the rest of the world combined.

Saying "if you love your freedom thank a vet" is kind of like "We Americans are the good guys". It's a sign that you have "drank the cool aid". Obviously we are not inherently good or bad, we are what we make ourselves to be. We have the same DNA as all other humans and the same needs and passions. We are a very powerful country that has done a lot of good and (of course)some bad.

This brings us to Ben Joravsky. My opinion is that it's guys like Joravsky who are the real difference between free societies and and totalitarian societies or just corrupt societies. Jaravsky has spent considerable time and effort in examining the TIF system in Chicago. A system that was justified on the basis of "helping the poor" but whose benefits have gone overwhelmingly to the rich and well connected. In fact it has clearly redistributed (property tax) wealth from the poor to the rich all the while politicians tell us (over and over again) that it's for the benefit of the poor. The TIF system is corrupt. The way it is structured almost guarantees it will benefit the wealthy areas of the city because only they typically have the means to create a TIF district - which is the nucleus of the TIFF benefit system. Ben Joravsky has been pounding away on this for quite some time. Exposing the truth and the exposing the hypocrisy and lies. Without guys like Joravsky there would be no counterbalance to this kind of thing.

How does this bring us to war and freedoom? Little corruptions lead to big corruptions and the biggest corruption of all is unnecessary war.

A nation at war cannot be a free nation. War and freedom cannot exist simultaneously for long. Actually this idea (freedom or war not both) would make for another whole post.

Guys like Joravsky were there before and during the American Revolution. They were there fighting slavery. They were there in the labor movement. They were opposing the Vietnam war. It' is THEY and not "the troops" who have made and kept us free so far. It is THEY who have steadfastly fought corruption and that fight has for the most part prevented our freedom from evaporating.