Hearing a person actually promote the idea of freedom can be very threatening. It was threatening to me at first as well as it has been to any crowd listening to a libertarian speak for the first time. If you go back and watch Interviews with the Libertarian economist " Milton Friedman" with Phil Donahue, you will see the blank stares a majority of the audience gives Mr. Friedman whenever he talks of actual freedom.
Why this response? Are we not a free country? Doesn't the majority of us believe in freedom? My answer to that would be a huge NO. Now most people I have asked about freedom answer the same way, " Freedom with laws." OK, I agree with that because I am in no way an anarchist, but we need to really look at what we mean by "Laws"
I am all for laws that protect one citizen from directly hurting another. It's the governments job to protect me from the man next door who has decided to try and chop my head off with an ax. I am fully behind laws that protect my private property (land, money, possessions etc.) from being taken away from me by someone else. Contracts need to be enforced by the courts and i of course should have the right to sue someone that i feel has cheated or hurt me in some fashion.
I'm not going to go into all laws that should be enforced, but i do want to mention "laws" that have no real effect except stripping us of essential freedoms.
The best example of these kind of laws are what I like to call " Protects them from themselves laws"
The seat belt law is something we should all be able to look at and say in unison, " Why?"
Why must there be a law that tells me, a grow man, that I must protect myself when I drive?
I have to wear a bike helmet if i want to cruise via bicycle. I need a doctors approval if i want to try a drug for depression. The government lets us know all the time that our bodies are not 100% ours. They are protecting us from ourselves.
In a truly free society my body is my own. It is not partially owned by a some politicians I have never met, but by supporting drug, helmet, prostitution, and seat belt laws, that is exactly what we are saying. In reality we are telling the person next door that they don't own themselves.
This is why freedom is so scary for the majority. We have been brainwashed to believe that freedom involves slavery. Most people questions how the founders could fight for freedom and at the same time accept slavery, but this isn't really surprising since we believe in slavery today, just in a different form.
Are we not slaves to the government? Will we not be thrown in jail if we refuse to hand our property over to them? Can they not punish us for making a decision that only effects ourselves? Doesn't the draft allow Washington to force a person into the military?
They own us. They cash in our work before we do.
But the majority see's this as necessary and the idea of actual freedom put fear in the hears of the masses.
Fear of the unknown.
So when will the day come that Freedom is known?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment