Steve's barkring at freedom in the gilded age

Freedom in the Gilded age, now that's a strange topic.
The reason I'm ranting about so called freedom in the Gilded age is because I've read an article on the Internet how the this country lost it freedom to progressives. Now I believe this article was taken from the capitalist fool tool. Of cause the main part of the article was about taxation, which I'm not going to get into for this particular blog. I'll save that for another time. Now this article wouldn't have bothered me so much if I didn't recall hearing some not to bright people on the boob tube saying the same thing as if the gilded age was the age of freedom.
Now if you were an African American in the South at that period of time and you couldn't smile at a white person I would say that your freedom was limited. If you were Catholic or Jewish you were bard from  certain positions, making your freedom limited. The ghost of the Molly McGuire's might argue how much freedom there was.
I don't think those who were forced out their company owned housing for talking union would agree with that position that we had freedom to speak their minds.
Those out west caught in range wars might argue the point of how much freedom there was if you were on the losing side.
Now I've even heard talk of the lasse faire government and how it brought about the great second industrial revolution in the United States, some how forgetting how the economy almost collapsed during the panic of the 1893s.  They also forgot the panic of 1907.

*Now I never really thought of myself as a progressive, I just thought of myself as a person with half a brain and a little common sense it just that  I believe more then ever we owe our freedom to progressive politics.

*I also believe that a dictatorial and or tribal form of local government takes u the slack, kind of like Somalia and Afghanistan.

* My understanding of the meaning of the Gilded Age was a phrase coined by Mark Twain,  every thing was golden on the outside but rotten on the inside.

* Wasn't free trade hampered in the gilded age, tariffs were the main source of government revenue.