The Declaration of Independence boldly states: “When a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.”

Thomas Jefferson, writing on behalf of the independent-minded colonists in 1776, backed up the Declaration’s conclusion with numerous examples of British tyranny, stating: “To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.”

Compare them to the United States and global system we live under today. Are we now free? Examine the balance of power between individuals, endowed with natural rights by God, and government, Constitutionally bound to only limited powers, as well as the leading corporations of the private sector.

A 1946 national archive film released by Encyclopedia Britannica titled “Despotism” outlines several yardsticks for measuring the balance of power of a free society and that of an outright a despotism, according to scales of respect, power, economic distribution and information. Concentrated power and wealth, centralized information and monopolistic or oligopolistic control in any one of these areas tends to negatively affect the others, and renders freedom a mere illusion.

“Look beyond fine words and noble phrases,” the analyst in the archive film warns. The rhetoric of freedom in America or anywhere else on planet Earth is irrelevant if the power, wealth and opportunity resides in the hands of just a few, or worse a single entity. By any yardstick, society today is very far gone; the once free United States of America is far down the path of dictatorship, though it keeps wrapped in the stars and stripes of the flag and the lofty words of its founding ideals.

Now what? It is the duty of free people to seek and demand a better society once again.