- Me: Am I free to assemble a protest of peaceful peers?
- Government: Only with a permit.
- Me: Am I free to travel?
- Government: Only with a passport (or other I.D. only I can legally provide).
- Me: Am I free to pursue my own ideas of happiness?
- Government: Only within these constraints.
- Me: Am I free to start a business?
- Government: Only with a license.
- Me: Am I free to marry who I wish?
- Government: Only with my consent.
- Me: Am I free?
- Government: I'm legally obligated to say that you are.
- Government: Stop asking so many questions.
- carlbgood:
- me: am I free to buy an island, move there, build a swiss-family robinson style tree-house where I and all my buddies can live where we grow our own food, raise our own livestock, and live off-grid like lord of the flies style, where we make our own rules and no grown-ups come and tell us what to do, and live completely free and independently of anybody else on the planet?
- government: sure. good luck.
- iow: you don't live on a fucking island. you live in communities in a state within a unified country. what happened after the first day in lord of the flies, the CHILDREN formed a fucking government. if you have more than one person living in a given area, you will have government--either tyrannical (one to rule them all), or democratic, but there's no such thing as "everyone just does as they please." cause it's impossible to avoid one person stepping on the toes of another. impossible. so what do you do about it? you establish boundaries, rules, and punishments. simple as that. we are all very sorry for you that you weren't born 10,000 years ago so that you could travel as you please without a passport--mostly sorry, cause we have to listen to you whine like children all the fucking time.
- child: I want a puppy (freedom).
- adult: no problem, but WHEN it shits and pisses everywhere you have to clean it up.
- child: no, I just want a puppy, not shit and piss.
- adult: sorry, puppies carry a little baggage. and you'll have to feed it and water it and care for it every day or it will die.
- child: no, I don't want to tend to it, and I don't want a dead puppy, I just want a puppy. can I have a puppy ?
- adult: NO.
- I keep hearing about this great "freedom" that everyone is currently denied. "if only we were free." I have asked repeatedly, cause I feel I must have missed something, for someone to explain to me how this freedom works, what this free land actually looks like in reality. what does this libertarian xanadu actually look like, and not one person can paint me a picture of this idyllic land that's just a few repealed laws beyond our grasp.
- that's because not one person screaming about freedom has ever stopped for a single second to consider the fact that this is planet fucking earth--not planet todd, or johnny, or jill. not everyone is going to get along and agree to not impose on others cause the planet earth is not composed of just jills. just jills would respect the sanctity of private property and life, and would not think of coveting her neighbor jill's new prada handbag--at least not to the degree that she would actually plot to illegally take it. jill you are a very special human and all the good people on earth applaud your consideration and your maturity of character, however, jill you are a fucking moron if you really believe you don't need a lock on your door (and by 'lock' I mean laws protecting you from others meaning you harm, such as business licenses that suggest you didn't wake up this morning and decide you wanted to be a structural engineer, or id cards that ensure you are who you say you are and are accountable to others as yourself--cause they know who the fuck you are-- or marriage licenses so that you prove you are married so that you can enjoy tax breaks and make end-of-life decisions for your formal partner, in addition to meaning just a 'lock').
- cause guess what? on planet earth, your neighbor is not jill, it is ted. and unfortunately ted doesn't abide by your principles, he has his own, and ted will rape and kill you in the middle of the night and take your prada handbag cause ted really likes prada handbags too, but he can't afford one on his salary they pay him down at the rape and kill expo where he works (fortunately one of the benefits of his job is he's allowed to plunder any home where he's raped and killed the occupants--huge plus). the benefits aren't bad at all, but the job can be tough sometimes, particularly all the traveling that's involved. once you've got your hands on that handbag then it's time to skip town and keep on keeping on. but since ted has no license no one's really sure who he is, he just keeps traveling state to state raping and killing and collecting his prada purses and no one is any wiser. sometimes he runs into problems when he's traveling, cause though there are no formal speed limits, as that would be an impediment on ted's freedom, he does occasionally break the informal limits placed at the entrance of small communities while fleeing. and since the roads are difficult to traverse since there are no signs, no guarantees of paving and no guarantees the road won't actually just stop in the middle of fucking nowhere, cause it has run into old man howard's property and he's an ornery old bastard who won't allow the road to continue through his property as he's free to choose to do. therefore ted is occasionally caught and stopped by local residents for his excess speed and beaten within an inch of his life for endangering their lives. sorry ted, that's the price you pay for your freedom, you are free to endure a bunch of other people with their own notions of freedom. good for freedom, not good for ted in this case. if they had any inkling that ted was a mass murderer they probably would have just lynched him right then and there, as they are free to do, but since ted said his name was sven, sven the traveling prada bag salesman they had no way of knowing so they just let him go with a stern warning not to "drive too fest thru dis neighberhud" and to probably stay off old man howard's property cause that old codger will shoot you dead rather than beat you as a warning...
- and I could go on all day, actually it's kind of fun, and ted is such a free spirit what a great character. could write a book, call it 'liberty, and the adventures of mr. t.f. dumb (mr. theodore free dumb).'
- child: can I have a puppy?
- adults: NO.
