essential freedoms

Freedom is the absolutely most important thing that any of us can experience in our lifetime.

It is more important than love, security, equality, or health. It also is a prerequisite for all of those things. Until taste absolute freedom you cannot truly feel love in an objective fashion. The blissful experiences some feel out in nature, unattached from everything else, is as close as we can get. Without freedom, security and health are meaningless. A caged bird does not live for itself, but for its owner. Its security is incomprehensible to it, or to us who sacrifice our freedom for security. As for equality, the only way any of us will be equal to another is for us both to have absolute freedom to determine our future. The outcome may not be the same, but our opportunities will be equal.

It is alternatively sad and infuriating to see freedom given and taken away so hastily. From former small-government conservatives brainwashed into accepting the sacrifice of others freedom for their own security, to bleeding-heart Robin Hoods “stealing from the rich to give to the poor,” stealing from others for what they perceive to be a good cause.

No cause, no matter how noble it may seem, is worth sacrificing freedom for it. Someone who respects freedom would never steal from one man to feed another. He would never force one man into military service to protect the state, regardless of the cause. If the cause for war cannot sustain itself by the choice of those who are able to enroll in service, the war should not be fought. If military victory requires forced enlistment in order to prevail, the battle is already lost.

If a charity cannot survive on a free and open market of ideas, it should not continue to exist — it should not, then, exist solely because of government-sponsored Robin Hoodery™. Relief of suffering is an easy sell — there is no reason why a charity cannot market itself to consumers-turned-contributors just as a set of encyclopedias was years ago. In this great information age — when dark horse candidates can raise multi-millions in a single day — a well run charitable organization can survive, even thrive, without taking freedom-stained blood money. Propping up inefficient organizations with involuntarily acquired funds (read: taxes) is reprehensible and provides no incentive for positive change within the organization.

Each organization — along with each person within it and, sadly, a majority of Americans — will do the bare minimum in order to maintain the status quo. This is unhealthy, as maintaining the status quo leads to stagnation of thoughts and ideas — of innovation. Each person and each organization must feel the sting of imminent defeat/failure so that it can recognize what it must work to avoid. If a child never experiences pain or loss, how can it have any perspective of success or failure? You must let it touch the hot stove once so that it can learn from its mistake and become a more informed and prepared individual. The same principle applies to all people and all organizations. Corporate bail-outs do nothing to teach other than the lesson that no matter how badly you fuck up the government will help you out — as long as you continue to contribute to a few dozen politicians’ campaigns. These safety nets become hammocks, and once they are reclining in one, it is difficult to dump someone out.