As my boyfriend sits just north of me, in another room creating a 4th of July FB post to share with his friends, I'm wondering what it's all about anyway.  You know life, or better yet life as an American.  What does that mean?  I know what it used to mean, at least to me as a kid and then as a young Republican in college.  Yep.  I did that a few times, but totally jumped ship when I lived in the Bay area.  Was it my choice or just a liberal osmosis of collective cultural Haight Asbury thought coming through the water pipes in San Francisco?  To this day I still am not sure.

Anyway, back to the question.  What does it mean to be an American?  It doesn't seem as valid a claim to pride, strength or even patriotism as it used to be--at least for me.  I was reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday.  It was scary.  I thought, "Am I the only one who reads between the lines?  And is that a good thing or a curse?"  The article that struck me as the scariest was entitled, "Tech Giants Battle Spread of Spurious Cancer Treatments."  Within it I read FB, Pinterest and YouTube, having been overrun with "scientifically dubious and potentially harmful information about alternative cancer treatments," are now tweaking their algorithms to reduce the "number of times these dubious videos are presented to users."  Here come the mind police was my first thought...

You see to me freedom has always meant to not be impeded, among many things that mean what it is to be free.  So it follows freedom of the press/speech ought not be impeded, but should flow forth to the American people.  As I see it sometimes, all people in this country at least, if we are truly free ought to be allowed any information available in order to make our choices based on our FREEDOM of choice.  I get that some of the articles or videos posted on these tech platforms are bogus.  However, some are not.  It seems to me that FB, Pinterest and YouTube are kowtowing to the powers that be.  After all, cancer is BIG business, not sometimes either--all the time.  If a person can remedy their cancer through traditional natural resources then they no longer pay into cancer treatments and the healthcare system loses business. Also, if we let government, the AMA or any other agency regulate what type of information we are privy to then we are not free--even in this country.

This is what I know from my perspective having been raised by a mother who grew up in a country where slowly but surely freedom of speech was taken away.  Those who fought to keep freedom of information flowing freely were taken to a stadium and shot dead--by the thousands.  Information is a type of wealth we enjoy freely in this country.  To take it away--even on FB, Pinterest and YouTube--seems very un-American.  How I see it, at least today after having read this article, it's as if our government through its unrelenting need to over-regulate everything wants also to regulate what we can or cannot do with our OWN bodies.  Will it come to this?  Probably.  As for me, what it means to be an American is to live in a country that honors my freedoms and doesn't take them away little by little.  At least that's how I see it today.