Do you feel free?

I woke up the other morning and I was free. I didn't say to myself "Hey you are free". I just was, free. You know what I mean. I'm an American and we are free. Two and a half years ago I quit my job so that I could enjoy this freedom of mine, ours. I felt free back then. You know what I mean. Now I ask myself "Are you really free?" Now, I wonder if there is such a thing as freedom for the human species. You know what I mean. Can we ever really be free? I grew up in this country believing I was free. I was a very patriotic young person. I loved this country and still do. But can you be patriotic and be free? Can you love and be free? Can you be a social animal and be free? Can you be human and be free? What do you think?


vince

Vince,


I wish I was more free. Free to smoke a fat joint in my apartment. Free to drink a beer at my local tavern past 2AM. Free to play 500-1000 dollar Hold 'Em right down the street. Free to get quality medical care despite being laid off recently. Free to have a friend move into my rented apartment without permission. Free to flip off a cop who is mistreating someone and not face arrest. Free to drive a motorcyle without a helmet. Free to rally against injustice in the middle of the street without being teargassed. Free from having my personal information recorded and sold to the highest bidder.


All that and I am pretty damn free already. I hope I gain the above and don't lose anymore freedom in the meantime.


KJS

My freedom stops where yours begins. Let's take a look at the freedoms you wish you had:


"Free to smoke a fat joint in my apartment" While technically illegal, millions do it daily without any interference.


"Free to drink a beer at my local tavern past 2AM." As consumption of alcohol leads to diminished mental capacity, laws that restrict the hours of operation of estalishments that purvey alcohol seem reasonable protection of public safety. You are free to drink in your apartment past 2AM, and you don't have to drive home from there.


"Free to play 500-1000 dollar Hold 'Em right down the street."

Is there some racial, age, gender, dress code or other restriction on getting into the game? How is my freedom restricted if I don't have enough money to play in this game?


"Free to get quality medical care despite being laid off recently." I agree with this, provided you don't smoke fat joints too much so as to make others have to pay for your respiratory diseases.


"Free to have a friend move into my rented apartment without permission." The owner decides who he rents to, provided he does not break any laws (for example, by refusing to rent to someone of a particular race). Why should he not have the freedom to do this with his own property?


"Free to flip off a cop who is mistreating someone and not face arrest." I'm not sure if it's illegal or not to flip off a cop (I know it ain't smart), but wouldn't it make more sense to try to do something about it that will do some good? Get the cop's name and badge number and report it to your local newspaper or his superior. Video tape it and send it to your local TV station.


"Free to drive a motorcyle without a helmet." Fine, but again, why should I have to pay for your "quality medical care" if you have an accident?


"Free to rally against injustice in the middle of the street without being teargassed." If you rally in the middle of the street, you'll probably get hit by a car. I saw plenty of people protesting in front of the Federal Building where I live (L.A.) this weekend without being teargassed.


"Free from having my personal information recorded and sold to the highest bidder." Don't understand this one, please explain.


By the way, I'm not a right-winger and I'm sorry you were laid off recently.


Good luck.

Andy,


Thanks for the response.


It seems that idea that I cannot be so free as cost you is understood to have its limits--ie, I doubt you would limit people's diets or make cigarette smoking illegal to keep medical costs down but somehow its OK to tell me not to smoke too much pot or drive without a motorcycle helmet? You have determined that its OK to take away one freedom but not the other, haven't you? What determinants were used in that decision? Social acceptance? Class? Race? Outlawing behavior or otherwise restricting personal freedoms is very touchy, as both our posts point out. I tend to err on the side of more freedom though.


The comment you made about bar time is very interesting to me. It leads me to ask:


If others cannot hold their alcohol, thus making drinking a safety issue should I be lumped in with that group just because I also drink sometimes? Why or why not? This is a theme that runs through much thought about freedom and security--I must give up liberty because others abuse that same liberty. What other "reasonable protections" should I be asked to endure because others abuse their freedoms? This is an especially pertinent question in the present climate.


KJS

Excellent post. The issue is indeed very thorny and requires a lot of thought. I too worry that, in today's climate, our freddoms are at peril. What I may consider reasonable, you may not, and vice versa.


"If others cannot hold their alcohol, thus making drinking a safety issue should I be lumped in with that group just because I also drink sometimes?" I think yes. At a certain blood alcohol level, I may be a perfect driver, yet other may be wasted. But we need a reasonable standard.


I am an excellent driver. My father, age 82, does not have the reaction time he once did. Why should I not be free to drive faster or closer to the car in front of me than he? Again, a reasonable law is needed that generalizes about what is safest for all.


If the law applies to all, it is certainly less objectionable than if it does not. A law that uses race, for example, (to use one of the determinants you brought up) as a criterion of its enforcement is wrong. One of the most infamous is the decision taken after Pearl Harbor to incarcerate Americans of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast. California's governor, who later became our most liberal Supreme Court Chief Justice, signed the order.


Anyway, I am hardly a political philosopher, so I hope other will join in the discussion that your thoughtful post has begun.

Here is a quote related to freedom that I recently came across. See if you can name who said it. It goes a long way to addressing Vince's questions.


"Freedom is about authority. Freedom is about the willingness of every single human being to cede to lawful authority a great deal of discretion about what you do and how you do it."


KJS

Andy,


I too hope others chime in.


Your connection between drinking and drunk driving is getting at the meat of the issue, for me. I drink sometimes but NEVER drink and drive. Still, I could if I wanted to. Should I denied a drink at a bar after a certain time of day (determined by the government) nonetheless? I say no, the government should not restrict my freedom in this area because others abuse the privelege. Yet they do, in this case and many others. Drinking and driving is a crime and should be enforced very strictly. But part of this enforcement does not have to be seeing all drinkers as potential drunk drivers and restricting their activities. I'm sure you see where I am going.


KJS


PS. Personally, I think kicking everyone out of bars at the same time citywide is worse than keeping them open much later and waiting people to leave on their own.

No idea. My guess would be some Supreme Court Justice. So I'll guess William O Douglas.

Ideas about freedom get confusing because few people on the right or left have consistent political philosophies. I won't try to tackle the whole issue because it is too hard to do in this context. But I have a few thoughts on what KJS started talking about. I think he is right that drunk driving is different from drinking. And I also think that most states have ridiculous liquor laws. My home state of Idaho has stupid laws when it comes to issuing liquor licenses and selling liquor (the State is the only legal seller of liquor by the bottle so they have a nice profit incentive - liquor licensees selling by the drink buy all their booze at full retail price from the State Dispensary). Yet Idaho allows you to ride your motorcycle without a helmet and pack a full auto weapon while doing so. Until pretty recently there were some loopholes that allowed you to drink a beer while driving, but you couldn't be drunk. (No more, don't drink while driving or riding in a car here.) Why is it so? Well, few people have a consistent idea about what freedom means or should be.


And I must disagree with KJS on one important thing. Sorry KJS, you do not have the "freedom" to get medical care while you are (unfortunately) laid off. Well, yes you do, you just have no right to make others pay for it. This idea that we are entitled to medical care paid for by others is one of the ideas that is taking away some of the freedoms KJS advocates. For instance, the whole tobacco lawsuit debacle was started because government gratuitously paid for medical care for sick people. Allowing the governments that did so to sue the tobacco companies on that basis was a horrible precedent. There is no clear line where regulation of our private lives will stop if we use governmental payment for services as a "toe in the door" to regulation. Various activities are risky. Rock climbing, drinking, pot smoking, diving, playing football, eating too much, whatever. Andy Fox was correct to point out that he didn't want to pay for health problems caused by somebody's pot smoking. I agree. But I don't want to pay for medical care for someone hurt rock climbing or base jumping either.


So any of us who want various freedoms have to be consistent. I agree with the general concept that one's freedom ends where another's begins. In other words, if you are doing something that doesn't hurt me, I don't care. But observe many people of all political stripes are hypocrites on this issue. The average right-winger wants freedom of religion and no gun control, but would deny others their free-speech rights in various ways. Many left-wingers want the freedom to protest or smoke pot, but would deny me the right to keep my money by forcing me to pay for things to which others are not entitled. I am not saying that the libertarians are the answer either, because their political philosophy is flawed in many respects. Some would label me a libertarian, but I don't think this is accurate, at least in terms of exactly what the philosophy of the Libertarian Party is.


I was crazy enough to volunteer to be on our local Planning and Zoning commission. If you want to see where the rubber meets the road in local politics, get a taste of planning and zoning. You see it all the time, whether its the commissioners or citizens, that people have no overall philosophy of how things ought to work. It is amusing to see when it isn't driving you nuts. And you should see the eye rolling and disbelief when some obnoxious commissioner questions the basis for something the government has been doing because of the lack of a coherent philosophy. People often don't want to think about it or really talk about the philosophical implications of a particular course of conduct. (The people who post here are a nice exception.)

Don't know who said it. I am also curious about the overall context of the quote. I think it is true in one way, in that people would not be as free in an anarchy situation as they are in a society with a reasonable and rational government. I don't know if that's what the guy means though. We also must ask "freedom to do what?" I didn't discuss this in my post above as it would take quite a bit to discuss. My shorthand answer would be we desire the freedom to live as humans should. This is a loaded statement, as people can obviously disagree about what this means. But a simple example that most can agree on is the idea of laws against, and punishments for murder. A society where murder was legal would provide significantly less freedom than one where it is illegal and punished significantly, even though you are not free to do something you might want to do. (Not saying it has to be the death penalty) This is an easy example, and of course other details in a society are more delicate and philosophically tricky.

Vince


The answer to all your questions is clearly NO. No with a clarifier. You can never be completely 100% free.


Now here, in America, we can have a high degree, a high percentage of freedom. If you think about all the possible things you could go do right this very minute, what % of them would you be free to do? Well I am thinking about it, and I COULD go do countless possible activities right at this second. I could just up and go to the library, a coffee shop, or an amusement park. I could go play cards. I could go drive a flaming bus off a 3,000 foot cliff in south America. Well, maybe not that last one.


You see, while I could do ALMOST anything I wanted to do right this very instant, there are some things which I am not free to do.


These restrictions on my freedom come in three forms.


The first type of restriction on freedom is simply the feasibility of doing something. Some things I might wish to do are simply not physically possible. There may not be a path to a 3,000 foot cliff in South America sufficient to drive a bus on. And where would I get the bus? And how would I get down there and get a bus so quickly? And how would I light it on fire?


The second type of restriction concerns society's restrictions on our activities imposed by laws.. I might be PHYSICALLY free to go do certain things, such as commit armed robbery, but society is going to be very upset with me if I do this, and will likely restrict my future freedoms by putting me in jail if I get caught. Most of your specific questions fall under subsets of this type of restriction on freedoms. Patriotic people may have to go to war. They may be drafted, or they may feel morally or ethically obligated to fight for their country. Citizens might have to deal with restrictions inherent to wartime conditions. Social animals are forced to restrict their activities to conforms with the laws of society. People in love have to conform somewhat to the wishes of their mates.


The third type of restrictions on freedom are imposed on us by the mere nature of being human. Just being human, and having a large brain and higher cognitive functions places some restrictions on freedoms. An animal, a predator, kills its prey and eats it. They never concern themselves with whether it is right or wrong, or whether they are free to do it or not. Us humans have to consider whether or not it is morally or ethically right to kill something and eat it. Carnivorous humans may not consciously consider this, but the fact that vegetarian humans exist shows that one must consider their actions before they can go through with them. This in itself imposes a restriction on absolute, complete freedom. A fish in the ocean is completely free. They have no obligations to think about anything, and they can do whatever they want. Their actions may have possible consequences, but they are not obligated in any way to consider them. Humans are not this free, they are forced by the very nature of their brain to consider things, and this does place a certain degree of restriction on their freedom.


The good thing is that here, in America, we are MOSTLY free. The restrictions on our activities imposed by society are really not very extensive. While extensive laws on countless topics do exist, they really don't affect the activities we do on a daily basis as much as you might think. There are undoubtedly thousands of documents which govern the ways large corporations must conduct their business. These laws do not affect my daily life very much. I am not even aware of the vast majority of them, so I am not cognitively obligated to consider them when deciding what to do today. Laws that govern the production and sale of flowers also do not affect my daily life very much. The fact of the matter is that most restrictions on freedom imposed by our society do not cause the average American to become very upset about the restrictions on his freedom. So in this sense, we are BASICALLY free.


You have to mince words a little, and clarify things, but I like to think that OVERALL, I am a free man. I know it's not COMPLETELY true, but I am happy enough with it that I can say "I am free", and I am not worried about someone who proves that I am "technically" wrong. I already knew that.


Dave in Cali

Rudy Guiliani. NY Times, 3/3/1994


The way I read it, he is saying Freedom is giving up your freedom to somebody else. Hmmmmm. Sounds more like fascism.


KJS

You're certainly right about the inconsistencies at all points along the political spectrum. I had a hard time answering KJ's latest post because every time I came up with an example, I came up with a counter-example that would have exposed my own inconsistencies.


For example, I was going to say that the law should treat all equally. (Maybe I did indeed say it.) But I am in favor of affirmative action. In my younger days, I was in favor of legalization of pot; now I'm against it, because I fear the same problems, mostly with stoned drivers, that we now have with alcohol. I took KJS to task for wanting to have someone else move into his apartment without his landlord's permmission, yet I am in favor of rent control. I guess a foolish consistency is indeed the hobgoblin of little minds (with apologies to Emerson).


By the way the only thing I would like to one day force you to pay for which I am not entitled to is a call on the river when I've got the nuts.


:-)

I'm a calling station so you don't have to force me. Besides sometimes you don't have the freedom to fold because:


A) You have to call the pot


B) You have to keep'em honest


C) Two Pair is too good to throw away


D) All of the above.


:-)

Hi All,

I just want to throw a couple of points into the fray and get peoples responses to them.


What about the freedom for two people who have a disagreement to have a duel to the death, each knowing that they could die going into it?


My second point is, what about censorship? Not just freedom of speach. Shouldn't people have the right to watch, read or hear what they want no matter the content?

I've never really thought about dueling. I suppose I wouldn't care if it was absolutely clear going in that each party consented to die in the duel. But I'm not particularly interested in dueling and I don't think there would be much of a revival in the upper classes where all that dueling B.S. went on anyway, if dueling were legal. I don't think it will become legal anytime soon.


As far as censorship, what do you mean exactly. You say "not just freedom of speech", but the freedom of speech in America encompasses the right to watch, read, or hear most things regardless of content. However, there is some content that does not enjoy 1st Amendment protection. Obscenity is not protected. Pornography is protected speech. The difference? Well that is too long a discussion and may in fact be a distinction without a difference. But would you say people have a right to watch child pornography that was made with real live unconsenting child victims? I doubt it. I certainly don't. I don't think free speech extends that far. What about snuff movies?


Also, defamation is not protected speech. If you deliberately spread lies that hurt somebody, you can be legally responsible. Would you allow any kind of defamation to go on?


There is an old saying that the pen is mightier than the sword. This is true, but people forget that speech has physical life and death consequences sometimes. For that reason, the right to free speech is not unlimited because speech can hurt other people improperly. I'm not just talking about the feelings of a politician; the consequences of speech are sometimes devastating. Sometimes the speech giving rise to the consequence is protected, sometimes it isn't.


So you have to say exactly what you want to see or hear that is being censored before the discussion can get going. And things are loosening up all the time. So I suspect what you might want to see on prime time T.V. will soon be on there. :-)

You raise good points HDPM,

While I am or very free speech and all it's facets I agree that there are exceptions. Child pornography is the main one. I am all for life sentences for those that make it and distribute it. Snuff movies similar (if they are real). I would say total free speech but then I would be a hypocrite if a said outlaw the above examples.


However, doesn't America have a history of banning books (not just child porn content)in schools and other ares, restricting and banning movies, computer games, music etc. from the public. I am led to believe Tipper Gore and her Christian Coalition (or whatever it is called) has a lot to do with this.

Maybe my perceptions in this regard are skewed or just flat out wrong, maybe what I'm am referring to is long in the past. I do not live in American nor have I ever been there but we do get a hell of a lot of American media and culture blasted into our lives.


Australia does have a history of censorship, but quite often when something causes a big stir in America it hardly rates a mention here and quite often when it does our politicians are merely jumping on the American bandwagon because they believe it is what the average Australian wants and they are hardly ever right. Many of our politicians decisions are coloured by what America does much to the disgust of all Australians (our politicians would drop their pants and bend over if your leaders asked them too).I believe our censorship laws are a lot looser in the literature area as well as other media.(the one exception is X rated porn which can not be rented from a video store or publicly broadcast, only purchased by mail order or from a sex shop).

However, in a lot of other ares we have a lot less freedoms than Americans.


I think a lost the plot on several occasions in that post.

A funny experience I had with different cultures and censorship was when I was in England for a friend's wedding. I was in a convenience store in London (much different from the basic American 24-hour stop&rob) when I saw a Playboy magazine with a big sticker on it that said 'Pages 188-190 (or whatever the numbers were)Censored.' Well that of course prompted me to buy the magazine, because I could not imagine anything so hard-core in Playboy that it would be censored in a Western European country. What was censored was part of an article on the O.J. Simpson murder case, not any kind of sexual content. I was completely stunned by this, because in America there are various groups who protest against Playboy and try to stop it from being sold. (The kind of groups you refer to in your post.) But in America we would never EVER allow government-mandated censorship of an article about a public figure, even if it turned out to be defamatory. If my memory is correct the article was by Vincent Bugliosi, who has spoken and written extensively on how guilty O.J. is. I have seen him speak and he talked about how bad O.J. is at length in polite company. Such speech is never censored in America. We are uptight about the pictures but not the articles in other words.


Also bear in mind that censorship is really only censorship when the government does it. In America we have a lot of media outlets that can be influenced by economic pressures. They will "censor" their own content to be palatable to to advertisers or shareholders. In this regard the pressure groups you speak of can have some influence. It is also why there are alternative media outlets that spring up and will continue to spring up with the growth of the internet and computer technology.


In my home state of Idaho we had a big spat about the content of public television. The problem here is that state funds go to public television and some members of the legislature didn't like a show talking about homosexuality. It turned into a nasty dispute, but even though Idaho is conservative, most conservatives in the legislature didn't want the fight to go on, so it has seemed to die of its own accord. But the issue may come up again and highlights the problem of government-funded media. The funds may end up getting cut someday because between censorship-conservatives and cut-the-budget-conservatives, public television could lose out. But I'm not sure - I think there is a good chance things will just go on as before.


The area in which religious groups have probably had the most success along the lines you speak of is in terms of schoolbooks. Despite what you may believe based on what George Bush and Al Gore said in the campaign, American schools are mostly funded and managed at the state and local level. School boards are composed of elected volunteers and can set the curriculum in many cases. Pressure groups on the right and left have battled over school textbooks to indoctrinate the youth to believe certain stuff. Education has suffered accordingly.


I've never been to Australia, so I have no experience with how you do things there. I know you guys got screwed out of your freedom to own guns recently though, so we do have a few more freedoms here. :-)

Goo post HDPM,

Thanks for clearing up a few points.

I think the major difference in our cultures is that conserative christians probably have more influence in america than they do here. We have only one notable annoying character when it comes to that and he has caused enough trouble as it is. Thankfully he is not as powerful anymore.


I just want to touch briefly on the gun debate.

I have never owned a gun nor wanted too. ( I tell a lie, someone gaves us an old air rifle once but all it was good for was killing clothes pegs at close range.)

The only people I know who own guns have a farm in the country somewhere (or relative or close friends who do) and they are usually hunting rifles (not automatic or semi-automatic).

Hand guns have been illegal in Australia for quite some time, even before the latest series of harsh laws.


My views on the issue are split, while the old story that people need handguns and assault rifles to go hunting is the biggest load of crap I have ever heard( that was the pro guns lobbysts stance). Some rifles are still legal. I didn't think the government had a right to take away our ability to defend ourselves from the government.


On a side note, it would be more likely that the house owner or occupyer would be charged with a crime if they shot someone entering your house, even if it could be shown that the robber was armed and intended to cause harm. You would be much better off beating them to death with a baseball bat (I am pretty sure you would still be charged with a crime, just a lesser one). That is very much a sad state of affairs.

Unforunately, the right to bear arms is not in our constitution.


I don't know if it is the same over there but that have been cases where a robber has sued a householder for cutting themselves on the window they broke to get into the house or some nonsense similar to that, AND BEEN SUCCESSFULL.

That really leaves us with the option of inviting the robber in, giving them a warm drink of coffee (not hot, we wouldn't want them to burn their mouth), packing up all our possessions (we wouldn't want them to strain their backs or pull a muscle) and carrying the stuff out to their trucks.

First as to firearms, I still don't get the banning of all semi-autos. Even though I don't think the right to keep and bear arms has anything to do with hunting a lot of hunting guns are semi-autos. (I know in Australia you don't have a constitutional right.) The Remington 740/7400 is a semi-auto game rifle and many people use semi-auto shotguns to hunt birds. I think its just a way to ban guns when you demonize a particular mechanism.


Anyway, as to lawsuits, in America all the lawsuits you talk about would be filed in state courts under state laws. These vary widely. So do juries. Where I live, a burglar would be laughed out of court for suing a homeowner. Other places are different, however. Some states have decent laws, but there are jurisdictions within the state that have extremely liberal and anti-gun juries. If the case can survive motions to dismiss, a liberal jury might pound a gun owner for shooting a criminal. So there are horror stories here about homeowners getting sued. It's a patchwork of 50 different jurisdictions with juries picked from smaller areas within those 50 jurisdictions. So there's no easy way to generalize.

It is all pointless anyway as you don't stop the people who want to use these guns anyway ie. criminals.

This is the absolute truth.


I just returned from a trip to a local hardware store called, "Lowe's". It's part of a national chain and isn't remarkable in any way. In a ten minute walk through Lowe's, I wrote down a list of material available from their regular stock with which I could fabricate everything from a single shot matchlock to a full-automatic submachinegun. If someone had access to a lathe or an end-mill, the limit on firearms technology that can be constructed from a local hardware store essentially disappears.


When you look at the technology of firearms, their design and manufacture; there are really only two innovations since the year 1900. Those are modern polymer materials which allow multiaxial components to be cast or molded rather than being machined; and the advent of some modern metallurgical techniques which allow for minimizing component size or manufacturing time.


I can purchase a CNC lathe and mill for less than $3000.00(US) right here in Tacoma, WA (western Washington State, Western US for you "damned furriners;-}" ). This means that for $3k spent at the ShopTask company and $50 spent at Lowe's, K-Mart, Home Depot, any Ace Hardware of choice, I can begin turning out Kalashnikov design assault rifles right in my basement. I suspect that any sort of legislative action taken against commercially manufactured firearms will have exactly 0.00% effect on the availability of firearms to those willing to break the law.


Gun bans are silly laws. They don't work, can't possibly keep guns away from criminals and do little more than add unnecessary weight to an already overloaded book of State and Federal Laws.


Jeff

I've never seen that aisle at our Home Depot, I have to go to the gun store. :-)


Of course I agree w/ you, I just don't have good do-it-yourself skills.

Actually, the only part that took any sort of creative thinking was a recoil spring. For the kinds of range needed by your typical strongarm robber, a rifled barrel is a convenience, not a necessity so the barrel can be made out of a piece of steel drilled out to the bullet's external diameter... I found the recoil spring in the starter cord takeup assembly in a lawn mower. Pretty much any spring mechanism that is used to generate a lateral force can be turned into a working recoil spring... especially if you're willing to limit yourself to a minimalist caliber like .32ACP.


If you've got access to a boating or aircraft repair parts source, there are a number of places where heavy walled, .25" ID stainless tubing is used. Sounds like an unrifled barrel for a pocket machine-pistol in .25ACP.


Jeff