Freedom

Freedom is a topic near and dear to my heart.

It is the core of my religious belief, "Do as you will, harm none."

There is a down side to being free. You are free to fail. I will say it again, you are free to fail.

And if you are the failure, freedom sucks. The good side of this is that I am free to help you if I want. You are also free to refuse. It is your right to starve if you want.

Freedom can be offensive. If we were really free, I could tell a dirty joke in front of the secretary. Freedom means having a thick skin. You have a right to be offended, but not to force me to shut up.

Freedom carries responsibilities. The cliche is, "You cannot yell 'FIRE' in a crowded theatre when there is no fire." Yes I can, I shouldn't. It is at the very least, stealing a portion of the program from my fellow patrons.

This idea of freedom is the core of libertarianism.

Welfare is not freedom. It steals your right to fail. It robs me of the option of helping you. Welfare forces me to aid you whether you deserve the help or not.

Politically correct speech is not freedom. It robs me of the ability to say what I wish to say. By deliberately changing the meaning of words and phrases, you rob my words of the meaning I intend. And if I cannot say what I mean, I cannot mean what I say. And make no mistake, I will find a way to say what I mean. If you leave me no other method, I will use the forbidden words, like "CENSORED and cunt".

Forcing me to be a father is not freedom. Insisting that the woman has 100% of the decision about carrying a child to term contradicts the man's responsibilities. No rights, no responsibilities girls. Now, you have 100% of the rights, guess what percentage of the responsibility comes with that.

Forcing me to pay child support is not freedom. The man is not 100% responsible for the making of the child. He is 50%. If that confuses you, you need to buy a grade-school level biology text. Mommy, you were there too and willing, because rapists go to jail, not child support hearings.

Environmentalism is not freedom. What if I like manatee burgers? Your right to have a sea cow in your canal trumps my right to a tasty snack? Ever watch the ducks and geese flying over in the spring and fall? Don't thank the environmentalists or government for that, thank hunters. They did it on their own, because they want to kill ducks, and keep killing ducks forever in "unlimited" quantities.

There are more examples. The main point is most rights are negative, meaning that you cannot get between me and that right and are under no obligation whatsoever to aid me. This is completely different from a positive right, where you are compelled to give me what I am entitled to. Notice the difference between you cannot stop me and you must aid me. At the root of it, there are very few positive rights. An example of a positive right is when you have agreed to pay me for a service I render to you. Once I have completed this service, you are obligated to pay the agreed amount. The agreement creates a positive right for you to receive a service and a positive right for me to recieve money.

Freedom can lead to ugly things. You have the right to hate. You have the right to refuse service to people you deem undesirable. You have the right to force these people to sit in a particular place in your restaurant if they wish to be served. Freedom lets the market decide if your business thrives. If the undesirables decide to not bother with your rules and shop somewhere else and that means you lose too much business to stay open, so be it. Laws forcing business to allow the undesirables in or to forbid them from shopping there are not freedom. And in forbidding, they are eliminating the gem of free enterprise, the niche market.

I'll bet you are thinking I am talking about racism, don't you?

Nope, smoking. But now that I mention it, smokers are being treated like blacks in the south.

That's enough to think about for now.