“How could you say such a thing? Pot/porn/cigarettes/sugar/corn syrup (etc.) is terrible for this whole society! I don’t understand how you could say ‘Let him do as he wants, so long as he doesn’t bother me,’ when such a thing is such a detriment to our society and culture? What he does to himself affects the rest of us!”
You could say the above quote and be right on a number of different points. We should work together, live in harmony, avoid things that harm us and be otherwise perfect beings.
But we’re not, and we won’t, and you can’t.
For those who might say the above while supporting the government’s ability to suppress these activities, I send you fair warning: You put your own freedom at risk.
Liberty is an inherently offensive lifestyle. Living in a free society guarantees that each one of us will see our most cherished principles and beliefs questioned and in some cases mocked. That psychic discomfort is the price we pay for basic civic peace. It’s worth it. It’s a pragmatic principle. Defend everyone else’s rights, because if you don’t there is no one to defend yours. - MaxedOutMama
Suppressing someone else’s freedom to misbehave, also suppresses your own right to BEHAVE, because someone else’s idea of misbehavior might be something you feel free and perfectly moral to do. Therefore, you have to ask yourself: By what right do you have to impose your moral framework on anyone else beyond the absolute minimum required for a civilized society, and banning corn syrup is not among such minimal requirements.
Well, who does have a minimum framework for us to operate upon?
Have you ever read a little document we, around here, like to call “The U.S. Constitution?” It was designed specifically with the idea that the power of the monarch or fellow citizen alike must be curbed so that the individual remain as free as civilly possible so as to cut his own course through life.
Did you see that? “… fellow citizen alike …”
Our Founders saw even then that governments who espoused the divine right of a king, a parliament or even the people to infringe on the right of the individual were as sure to secure their own downfall as any other.
The Smallest Minority on earth is the individual. Those who deny individual rights cannot claim to be defenders of minorities. – Ayn Rand
They saw, even then, that there were movements which desired that the needs of the many outweighed that of the few, and for those of you who worship democracy, be aware that our country is not a democracy — it is a democratic republic for the very specific reason that pure democracies inevitably destroy themselves through greed — greed of money, power over fellow nations and even power over each other.
Other characteristics to pop up were self-worship (the idea that humans are perfectly capable of ruling themselves without a morality based in something more than their own whims was not only possible, but divine in its own power), self-deprecation (humans are incapable of helping themselves as individuals and therefore require a quorum of decision of other, “wiser” humans to decide how they should live their lives), a return to monarchy (where citizens had little say and those smart enough could work their way to a state of absolute power) and anarchy (no minimum of common law to enforce the most basic of needs for a society to remain civil).
America is a country of laws, not of kings. All kings can do is take and destroy. We are not out to rule each other’s lives so we might be free from the impositions of conflicting cultures, styles and methodologies of our own, but that while we might find opposition, disdain and public discourse to the potential negative of our own beliefs, that we might yet remain free to exercise it!
Please, don’t deceive yourself into thinking you can empower a government of any kind to remove the defects of your neighbor’s character without choosing to remove everything else in your own!
And to imagine that you even have a right, under any auspice, to force your own culture onto another is beyond arrogant or selfish. It’s slavery.
So Americans are fat, lazy, addicted and lethargic. We have made ourselves that way. But to correct the issue, we cannot simply create more laws. Laws are as valuable as the morality beneath them, and as our morality divides and subdivides under the diminution of faith in today’s society, so our people have forgotten the value of self discipline and control.
You want to change people? Inspire them to adopt a faith, a religion, a culture through your own example of how great your culture is. Don’t impose upon them more laws so you feel better about forcibly spreading your own.
BE the difference. INSPIRE change. Hold sacred the freedom that allows you to do both.
