Liberty is an attitude. Whatever else you decide to call it, freedom, autonomy or self-reliance, liberty is an approach to life. As such, it is both a viewpoint and a standpoint, a line drawn in your own sand, marking a position you refuse to surrender. It’s the passion you choose to personally cultivate what John Adams called “the bloom of Life.”

Now some people choose to surrender their “bloom” to the Bonsai mindset. They look outside themselves to be “tray planted” according to the Japanese etymology. Forfeiting the trowel, the potting soil and the shears, others prune and artificially trim the tiny mind, prohibiting it from maturing and reaching its natural potential; a mighty tree continually clipped, reduced to a stunted shrub.

The self-imposed nature of this strange botany is as abnormal and unnatural as any other human trait. At the macro level, when a majority of a population adopts the Bonsai mindset, liberty throughout the culture is lost.

Government, contrary to popular belief, doesn’t grant you the privilege of liberty, the Divine bestows it at birth; the very operating system of the Human soul. It is this natural combination of Life and Liberty that fuels the “pursuit of Happiness” immortalized by the U.S. Constitution.

Guarding against the collective Bonsai mindset is the greatest challenge of our time.

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