Do you ever long for the days, long gone but not forgotten, the years between the signing of the United States Constitution and the Civil War, when men and their families were moving west. The years before progress came along. Many were going in search of gold, but most were simply seeking a new life where they could live in freedom. Life back east had already become too regimented for these hardy souls to enjoy any longer. From Kansas to California these pioneers built homesteads on rugged land that city dwellers of the day considered most unhospitable. These early pioneers were able to experience, for a while, much of the same degree of freedom the pilgrims had experienced when they first came to the shores of the east coast in the early 1600's.
The freedom of the Pioneers, like that of the pilgrims before them, was short lived. Just as the King of England had followed the pilgrims to the shores of America two hundred years earlier, the federal government also followed the pioneers out west. By the time of the Civil War, the federal government had agents, assessors, collectors, regulators, and officers of every conceivable kind stationed throughout the west. Life in the west was "progressing."
Families were being regularly robbed of their homesteads by rail road agents and local governing authorities. Stories of entire families being killed or dissapearing when they refused to sale or resisted so-called imminent domain were told. Farms and ranches that were build from nothing but the sweat and blood of the pioneers were now being systematically stolen on a large scale. Food shortages were manufactured by the federal government to drive homesteaders from their land and make those that remained dependent on a regulated system. Entire herds of buffalo were slaughtered and left to rot to ensure that no one would be able to eat untaxed meat.
This "progress" continued after the Civil War. Today, what those of us living out west call freedom is a mere shadow of the freedom enjoyed by the early pioneers. Myself, Living near 1,000 square miles of heavily forested land, I am told by the ministry of forestry whether of not I can pick up any fire wood, where I can pick it up, which trees I can take and which ones I can not take, how much I can take, when I can take it, and I am told that I am only allowed to burn it in my house and not sale it or give it to anyone else. I am also given a permission slip for xxx amount of wood that I must pay for before I go cut it, and I am warned in advance of the severe penalties I will have to pay if I fail to carry my permission slip, or fail to have the blanks properly filled in when transporting the dead wood, which includes confiscation of my personal property, heavy fines and imprisonment if they so desire.
This same type of "progress" has been made into every area of life today. But this type of progress is not progress at all. Progress makes things better, not worse. While technology and knowledge has increased to a certain degree, the applications and manner in which the government is using it is actually chocking the life out of any real technological advances that the brilliant minds of today and the past might have acheived had they not first been compelled to be the mental slaves of the state.
When the pioneers moved west and settled on uninhabited land and built their homes, it was progress, real progress. The same can be said for the pilgrims arriving 200 years before them. If tomorrow, we were to return to an uninhabited wilderness, living in a small cabin on the plains, unencoumbered by volumes of regulations and constant survailance, would we welcome it as progress ? I know of one person that would.