Those Americans who love being sheeplings must be ecstatic over President Obama’s rumored plans to ease travel restrictions to Cuba by permitting more students, educators, and researchers to visit Cuba, but only with an official government-issued license, of course.

Let’s get straight some principles about rights and freedom.

Like all other human begins, Americans have been endowed by nature and God with certain fundamental and inherent rights. These fundamental rights pre-exist government. That truth is expressed in the Declaration of Independence, which Americans celebrate every Fourth of July.

Two of these fundamental rights are: the right to travel and the right to spend one’s money the way he wants. These are not privileges bestowed by government. No one has to be grateful to public officials for being free to travel or free to spend his own money in the way he chooses. These are fundamental God-given rights that adhere in all human beings.

Of course, American sheeplings take a different position. In their minds, they exist for one purpose only — to serve and obey President Obama and his army of federal officials. In there minds, there is no such thing as fundamental, God-given rights. Every action they take in life is considered a privilege that Obama and his federal minions bestow on the American people. That’s what makes them sheeplings.

In the mind of a sheepling, nobody has a fundamental right to do anything, including travelling or spending his own money. Instead, the sheepling thinks that people should be “free” only to do those things that his owner or controller gives him permission to do.

If the owner or shepherd says, “You can go there but not there, and you can you spend your money there but not there,” the sheepling doesn’t give the matter a second thought. Such decisions are not for the sheepling to question. Where he goes and doesn’t go and what he spends and doesn’t spend his money on are not his call to make. That’s President Obama’s decision. He’s the master. He’s the shepherd.

By the way, the sheepling also looks to President Obama to take care of him when he gets old or sick. The master or shepherd is also expected to protect his herd from wolves, terrorists, drug dealers, illegal aliens, and other dangerous creatures in the world.

To be fair, the sheepling doesn’t just think this way with President Obama. Whoever is president is considered the sheepling’s owner and caretaker. When President Bush was in charge of the herd, the sheeplings deferred to him as well.

Let’s get something else straight: Notwithstanding the mutual relationship of master and servant that exists between President Obama and his American sheeplings, the fact is that federal control over the exercise of such fundamental, God-given rights as freedom of travel and freedom to spend one’s own money is as illegitimate as federal control over the exercise of such fundamental, God-given rights as freedom of speech and freedom of religion.

In other words, even if American sheeplings acquiesced to federal control over what books they read or what churches they attended, such control would nonetheless be illegitimate. What a person reads and how (or whether) he worships are fundamental, God-given rights that pre-exist government. That’s not to say that governments don’t control such activities. It’s to say that when they do, such control is illegitimate.

Where I travel is none of President Obama’s business. The same holds true for how I spend my own money. He no more has the legitimate authority to control where I go and how I spend my money than he does controlling what I read and where and whether I go to church.

We should bear in mind that the exercise of these two fundamental rights is not considered by U.S. officials as bad per se, as are such crimes as murder, theft, and rape. Where a person travels and how he spends his money are considered bad only when they’re done without the permission of Obama’s subordinates in the Treasury Department, which is the agency responsible for issuing licenses to people that permit them to exercise fundamental, God-given rights.

The idea is this: “We might let you engage in these activities. You’ll first have to ask our permission. After reviewing your application we might say yes and we might say no. If we say no, then you just can’t do it.”

Just like little sheeplings. Baa! Baa!

Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation.