FREE SPEECH ....GONE WITH THE WIND

I remember reading something in junior high school about this thing called "free speech" and the first time we really talked about it in class.  Now regardless of what my teacher probably said about this freedom,  I think most of us kids left the class with the mistaken notion that this "free speech" stuff give us the right to say anything we wanted to.  I can remember many of my classmates chiding each other with the phrase, "you can't make me shut up, I have freedom of speech!   Every once in while one of us would try that line at home and boy or boy did we learn the limits of free speech....the hard way.  As years went by the reality of what free speech really meant set in and  the later years of high school taught us that free speech was not totally unlimited.  You couldn't just say anything you want to anybody you want at any place you want.  However, through much of my life I never felt that in the right situation and in the proper way, I couldn't say something or express myself openly.
Unfortunately, in the last 15 years, with the spread of the disease of "political correctness," that belief, in this "freedom of speech thing," has rapidly disappeared.
I have come to realize that it is becoming more and more difficult to freely express oneself and it has in fact, become dangerous to do so.  This wonderful right I enjoyed in years past has become a concept in a book, merely words on a page, which can be pointed to and talked about like one might speak of a Greek or Roman artifact, at the museum.  When viewing real events in 2010 America I have come to the recognition that we are just kidding ourselves into believing that any of the statements in the Bill of Rights truly exist.  All one has to do is read example after example of how our recent government has destroyed any and all meaning of those words.
The spirit of the nation is being destroyed.  Elections are being bought, politicians hold offices for decades, scandal and corruption are rampant at all levels of government, mere accusation now means guilt, the truly independent media no longer exists, and states rights are either being usurped or willing given to the federal government.  Diversity if being forced down our throats and is used a tool by those seeking to destroy us.  Ah, how I long for the days when I believed in freedom of speech!
We are truly in the midst of a national catastrophe which will destroy this country.