The United States of America is the freest nation on earth and I am very proud to be an American. However, we still have plenty of room for improvement. One area in which we can use quite a bit of improvement is our lack of libertarianism. Sadly, we are just not libertarian enough as a society. I believe there are four major reasons for this condition. Hopefully, we will eventually be able to overcome all of them.
First, too many U.S. citizens allow their emotions to override their common sense. As a nation, we are very intelligent, but we often allow that intelligence to be overcome by fear, anger, outrage, and other such feelings. We allow nuts on both sides of the political spectrum to influence us into taking partisan positions on seeming all matters, even when it makes no sense to do so. At times, the U.S. seems to be bastion of irrational thought. We dream up imaginary enemies, both foreign and domestic. We are far too superstitious and often believe silly conspiracy theories. We overreact to minor problems. We often punish people harshly for trivial or inconsequential infractions, just because we are so put off by what they may have done. We are too quick to fight wars because of our fear of mushroom clouds that don’t exist. We worry about when the President’s “red” phone is going to ring. We are conned into giving up our freedom in return for added security that we don’t really need. We concern ourselves over hobgoblins and bogymen of our own creation. We must learn to instead allow reason and logic to be our guide.
Second, many of us seem to think it’s the government’s duty to legislate morality. This would be true only in a theocracy. We have a republican (with a little ‘r’) form of government, not a theocracy. In a republic, the government should encourage morality and discourage immorality, but should not attempt to legislate either. Attempts to legislate morality, i.e., outlawing victimless “crimes” and behavior that does not directly hurt anyone, do not make us any more moral and only put us on a slippery slope toward the further erosion of our freedom. We need to tell the government to quit intruding in our private lives.
Third, too many Americans are perfectly comfortable with a government nanny state that treats adults like children. We seem to have no problem at all with the government telling us we must wear seatbelts and motorcycle helmets and that private restaurant and bar owners must prohibit smoking. What we don’t realize is that we are giving up our precious freedoms by allowing such government regulations. When we allow the government to impose these things on us, it’ll soon be imposing other restrictions on our lives. When I entered college, I remember being pleasantly surprised at the difference between high school and college. There were no hall monitors at my college and no one to tell me when I had to attend class. We were treated like adults, so we acted like adults. In high school, on the other hand, we were treated like children, so we acted like children. We Americans should tell the government that we want to be treated like adults and don’t need it to play the role of our parents.
Fourth, we seem to be all too willing to take away the freedom and rights of adults to protect children from even the remotest and most unlikely kind of harm. Our government, with assistance from the endless number of so-called child advocacy groups, then takes advantage of this sentiment by imposing all kinds of restrictions on what adults can and cannot do. We’ve all heard people say they are doing this “for the children.” Baloney! In most cases, it’s just an excuse to allow a vocal minority to impose its will on the majority. What we need to realize is that it is impossible to protect children from all possible injury. While we need to do our best to protect them from all direct and imminent threats, we must understand that the risk of some harm to them will always be present, no matter what we do. If allowing adults to have more freedom creates some negligible increase in indirect harm to children, then so be it.
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