The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave

It seems to me that it is not possible for one to be free unless one has first been brave. Freedom is not free.
One funny thing about freedom is that freedom is a dangerous thing. It is dangerous because there could be no such thing as having, or giving, or even being given too much freedom. What is too much freedom? Who determines when there is too much of it, and too much in whose eyes or in whose opinion? This is why freedom is so dangerous in the hands of brutish people.
People say they love freedom, and they want it, but they really don't, because if one is free, then one is free to do anything, say anything, anywhere, in whatever manner one feels free to do or say that thing; and already I can sense people getting their lungs ready to bellow "NOOOOOO!!" And, yes, I am free to use two exclamation marks, or even five exclamation marks if I so desire to do, because, although it does not add anything to what I am stating, it does not take anything away from it either ,but it can rub some English punctuation sticklers the wrong way, just as freedom has often done.
 We are not free to get on other people's nerves, but some people's nerves are rather easy to "get on", and so the prevalence of nerves automatically limits liberty, if not, things may become so out of hand that pretty soon we won't be free to leave our houses, for too much freedom would have frayed too many nerves, and frayed nerve has never been a good companion of liberty.
 On St.Kitts there is a lot of freedom, but it is still a country where "boy hush you mouth" is a rather common warning. So that when a young man can write to the daily news paper and outline what a police officer had done to him while he was "on the bench" at the police station, and there is no public outcry because maybe he is known as a bad man, or perhaps just an unemployed thug on the street of the ghetto, some of us may quietly wonder whether or not what the young man complained about was true, and whether anybody in authority has looked into it to see if there is any truth in it at all, and if there is, how much of it is there, and whether or not the officer did the correct or the wrong thing; if he did anything at all. The reason we wonder there things on the quiet, is because we have freedom,  but not freedom to fray the nerves of people who possess power.
The other dangerous thing about freedom is that somebody always takes too much liberty with it when others lull themselves into the delusional belief that just because they remain silent they also remain safe, until one day they wait fruitlessly for someone to speak up on their behalf, only to find that those who had the nerve to fashion their own version of freedom and liberty do not give a bull foot about the frayed nerve of the balance of  us.