Free Freedom?

Just the other day I work I noticed a saying surrounding an American flag posted on someone's cubicle wall, facing the ever-common "Freedom Isn't Free" decal on my manager's office window...

"If it isn't free, It isn't freedom."

But what does it mean? No, seriously. It doesn't make sense. A Google search of the above statement returns only two insufficient
results for this exact phrase, so finding the meaning there was
pointless. Logically, this is the best I can do to understand it...

If this sign/phrase is supposed to be a response to the statement that freedom often requires the selfless sacrifice of human life to maintain it (as history has shown us over and over again), then what does this say? If you can't get/keep your freedom without struggle, then it's not really freedom? Are we supposed to expect from this that others will just give us freedom, and that fighting for it defeats the effect? Sometimes I have to wonder if Liberals either don't understand English, or just don't understand History. In either case, it has got to be due to a great public school miseducation.

All throughout history, the enslaved and oppressed had to fight for their freedom, and lives were always lost. Bending over and taking it in the rear is not freedom. There's always some miscreant ready and willing to step right up with their pants down when you do. To be honest, these sound like the words of an either an idealistic brat or vagrant who cries that they deserve food or pay without work. There's always a price.

Freedom is never free. It never was.