Re: How Would You Define Freedom?
- From: "The Trucker" <mikcob@xxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 20 Dec 2006 13:07:33 -0800
"Steve Campbell" <SteveCampbell@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:1166637518.092638.266090@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
In the years following the American Revolution, the United States
federal government served only as a body that organized national
defense and debated interstate commerce. The individual states held the
true legislative power and each state minted its own currency. Over
time, one national currency emerged and the power of the federal
government strengthened until the American Civil War determined once
and for all that the federal government would be the dominant
legislative body in the United States.
Today, nation-states are consolidating currencies and forming economic
blocks. The United Nations has formed a military branch that is
intended to provide for global defense against tyranny. Commerce
between nations is homogenizing under administrative bodies of the WTO
and GATT.
What is the future? Will global governance evolve in the same pattern
as the United States?
The founding fathers of the U.S. defined freedom as "personal
liberty." Today, Americans still think of the word freedom in that
sense. But many people in the world define freedom in terms of
"freedom from sin" or "freedom from chaos."
Every society must decide on a point in the spectrum between perfect
individual liberty and freedom from bad behavior. Some laws in the
United States prevent total personal liberty in favor of what is viewed
as a decent society. An example: laws against public indecency.
Other societies around the globe lean toward greater control but still
allow some degree of personal liberty.
Even as personal liberties are stripped away in the United States to
allay fears of terrorism, do you think the world standard for freedom
will ultimately evolve more toward personal liberty or toward the
absence of fear, sin, and chaos?
Which would you prefer?
I define freedom as freedom and as Ben Franklin did when he said
that "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither".
But for me that does not extend itself to sensible societal insurance
systems and systems of laws that protect individual liberty. Laws
that claim to protect the individual from fear and sin are merely
excuses to establish an authoritarianism that crushes freedom.
And thanx for a thoughtful post.
--
"I know no safe depository of the ultimate powers
of society but the people themselves; and
if we think them not enlightened enough to
exercise their control with a wholesome
discretion, the remedy is not to take it from
them, but to inform their discretion by
education." - Thomas Jefferson
http://GreaterVoice.org
.
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