Commentary

It feels like every conversation these days is about how the government should wield its ever-growing power—rather than asking the more important question: How do we reduce the power of government in our lives altogether?

As we hurtle toward a world where government intervention touches every area of our lives, millions of voices on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook scream from their party’s perspective about how the government needs to fix everything. But historically, the government doesn’t fix problems—it exploits them to take away our freedoms.

I believe we should be fighting to shrink the government back to the size it was intended to be. Right now, it’s the largest employer in the United States. That was never the plan. It was never meant to be a bloated bureaucracy standing between every interaction between humans.

How did we go from a people who were willing to go to war over a tax on tea, to citizens who allow the government to tell us:

• What we can and cannot eat

• Who we can and cannot buy food from

• Who can and cannot sell food

• That alcohol is safer than raw milk

• That we need their approval for everything from housing to healthcare to how we raise our children

We’ve lost trust in ourselves—and worse, we’ve replaced that trust with blind faith in a government that doesn’t know us, our families, or our communities.

When The Epoch Times did a special on me leaving California, I spoke openly about the unbelievable government interference I experienced. They measured my produce at the farmers market, then came to my land to verify it actually came from my property. Are those the kinds of things our tax dollars should be funding?

Do we really believe that we need the government to protect us from buying eggs from a farmer we know and trust?

So many people are screaming for socialized healthcare and more regulation. But let me ask you: Do you want the same people who run the Department of Motor Vehicles to run your healthcare?

People love to hate capitalism, but true capitalism—not crony capitalism—is the closest economic system to nature. If something comes into your neighborhood and people love it, they support it. It thrives. The neighborhood thrives. That’s capitalism.

But that’s not what we have now. What we have is centralization. Massive corporations that are too big to fail. When you dig down, they’re all owned by the same few entities—and they’re deeply entangled with the government. That’s not the capitalism we want.

We want a system where the consumer has power, where small businesses can thrive, where we vote with our dollars. But to get there, we need to stop depending on supply chains and systems that don’t support us or nourish us.

Look at Amos Miller, the Pennsylvania farmer who’s been repeatedly raided and harassed. Do we think the customers going to him are unaware that his food isn’t processed through USDA facilities? Of course they know. They’re going because it’s not. Yet the government steps in and says it’s unsafe.

But is it really the government’s job to keep us safe? Or was it meant to protect our freedom?

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That’s what this country was founded on. And for me, liberty means being able to eat food from a farmer I trust—even if he chooses not to process through USDA facilities.

As a 46-year-old woman, I should have the right to make that decision for myself and my family.

If we want small farms to thrive, more regulations aren’t the answer. Less are. We’re not asking for new programs or more politicians to save us. We’re asking for the freedom to be left alone—to provide nutrient-dense food to our communities without interference.

What would it take for us to stop begging for permission and just start living the lives we want to live?

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