If you listen to the current rhetoric of advocacy that thunders about from the halls of the Capitol to interviews from even the most remote corridors of the nation, you would think it has become an American value of far more consequence than the mere idea of individual freedom.

It's a particularly disturbing trend since many of the most vocal advocates of this or that brand of correctness present themselves as unimpeachably American.

Of course, there are rascals on the other side, too, whose extreme behavior provokes, and provides a specious credence to, the advocates of constraint.

So we come full circle to the idea of responsible freedom, which is no more than freedom with consideration for others.

It is a value that makes the advocacy of its abridgment seem as un-American as the license that invites it.

The only correctness that is equal to the principals this nation was founded on is freedom, exercised with responsibility.

Question is, will we ever merit the distinction of being, in widespread numbers, equal to that inspiriting ideal?