What does it mean to be free? I believe that freedom is the ability to do certain things. To speak as I wish. To think as I wish. To do business as I wish. To medicate myself as I wish. To go where I wish. To spend time with whomever I wish. You get the point.

Somewhere along the way, and many people trace it to FDR but it goes back further that that, the definition of freedom was bastardized and became for many not freedom to do things but freedom from certain things.

Though the effort to twist the meaning of “freedom” goes back before Roosevelt, it is he who popularized the idea that “freedom from want” was equal and perhaps even superseded the rights in our Bill of Rights which places fundamental limits on the power of the government.