The Freedom to Be an Adult
There’s a lot of freedom that comes with being a child. Food, shelter — all the important day-to-day stuff — is handled for you. You are left to do as you please throughout most of the day, and while there are a few things you are forced to do, such as go to school and eat your vegetables, these are inarguably for your betterment. There are few real worries when the necessities of survival are guaranteed by your parents, who allow you to be content and carefree. In a way, that’s true freedom.
Being an adult is quite different. Food and shelter are your own responsibilities, and bills need to be paid or you end up starving and on the street. Though left to make your own choices, you can easily make foolish ones, and no one is there to stop you from making them. Your whole life is now in your own hands, and if you tried living as carefree as a child, your house and your job and everything you own would soon be gone. In a way, it’s an oppressive existence.
Of course, seen from another angle, childhood is a rather frightening existence. People get to order you around, and who really knows how qualified they are to make decisions for you? And if they do make poor decisions or fail you, you have no recourse, since you’re just a child. You are stuck in whatever horrible situation others decide for you. It can be the worst kind of tyranny. As an adult, you always have other options. You can make your own decisions, and if something doesn’t work out, you can try something else. Your options are unlimited, and no other person can hold you down and tell you what to do. That would seem to be real freedom.
I think it’s safe to say that in America, everyone loves freedom. Liberals, conservatives — we all love freedom. We just often have different ideas about what that is. Liberals, for the most part, favor the child concept of freedom, and conservatives lean more towards the adult concept of freedom — and each looks on the other’s ideas as scary and oppressive.
The liberals wonder, if you don’t have health care or food or a place to live — and if some privately held company can fire you at any moment and remove your livelihood — how can you be free? And they wonder why we would let ourselves be oppressed by such worries when we have the means and the government to take care of them. Conservatives, on the other hand, look at liberal ideas with great fear, knowing such guarantees by the government will come with restrictions, and if the government fails to deliver what it promises or does it poorly, there’s nothing to be done about it, because there are no other options. How can you be free if the government controls so much of your life and limits the choices available to you?
Liberal freedom is freedom from responsibility. Conservative freedom is guaranteed by responsibility.
Liberals may love their freedom – but they’re not so crazy about yours.
Liberalism: like being parented by Michael Jackson, and The Great Santini. No matter what it looks like on the outside, it is strange and abusive behind the closed doors of the committee rooms.
I couldn’t agree more, Frank. For far too many people on the Left, freedom is becoming a bad word. Put in a slogan, I think the formulation would be “Freedom = Selfishness.” Free people drive SUV’s. Free people watch Fox. Free people eat meat. Free people hoard their money, and then leave it for their kids. Free people don’t think enough about Gaia. Free people are clannish, racist, and hide in suburbia. (I could go on and on, but you get the idea.)
The totalitarian impulse is strong in the Left, and man it scares me.
You hit one out of the park, Frank J.! Awesome.
History provides an interesting insight on this question. The welfare state was created by Bismarck – not on anyone’s long list of outstanding liberals. The purpose was to keep German citizens dependent on their government, and thus prevent political change.
It worked. Whatever the actual hopes and motivations of those who promote the welfare state, the reality tends to be Bismarckian and reactionary.
See “Bismarck in California”:
http://vulgarmorality.wordpress.com/2010/02/27/bismarck-in-california/
Spot on, senior! Extraordinarily well put.
Profoundly true, and not only in the relationship between the citizen and the state.
This insight, applied to the task of educating children, has produced remarkable results at The Sudbury Valley School in Framingham, Ma.
First, lets not confuse conservatives with libertarians. Currently conservatives are not about small government. They just want government to control different aspects of your life than liberals. In the name of defending the country they start illegally wire taping everything that moves. Liberals say cars have to include seat belts and conservatives tell you it is illegal to buy a dildo. I guess both want to force their morality upon the general population. Only libertarians truly want people to be free from government. In Vermont you do not have to register a weapon and you can marry someone from the same sex. I also think that it is a misconception that liberals are trying to protect you from yourself. I think the better analogy is that they are trying to protect you from corporations that care about nothing more than the bottom line. I assume you people are for the legalization of all drugs. Because you might be a liberal otherwise.
People don’t pass laws against trans fats because they’re afraid they themselves will eat unhealthily otherwise
Your observation rings true. I have often thought that many on the political left — those who feel very strongly that way — probably had insecure and otherwise defective childhoods. Basic personality theory notes that if the child’s developing personality does not get what it “needs” when it is young, then when the child grows up it will be “stuck” in that stage which did not go well, unable and unwilling to want and be happy with what mature individuals want and are made happy by. Hence a prediction: strongly liberal media pundits are more likely to have had unhappy and otherwise defective childhoods than strongly conservative pundits. It would be ironic if it turns out that liberal pundits, who like to accuse political conservatives of being psychologically defective, are indulging in projection (a typical defense mechanism to preserve self regard) when they make that claim and are themselves, in fact, the group more likely to be in need of therapy.
Of all tyrannies a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated, but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.
C.S. Lewis
Nicely and simply put. “For thee but not for me” is the worst aspect of socialism.
Which is entirely consistent with their preferred habitats: conservatives in business, commerce, and the military, where your mistakes can bankrupt you or get you killed; liberals in education, entertainment, and the bureaucracies, where they suffer no costs for being wrong…no matter how grievously their errors might damage others!
Remember “Pony Tail Guy”?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lzuIOzXv624#t=1m19s
Liberals’ use of children to get what they want is the key. They use children to raise taxes, ban bad things, etc. They even use children to give important policy speeches. It is because they do in fact think like children. The answer to everything is really quite simple to a liberal. They like to answer all problems in true/false, or multiple choice (guess) formats. To actually think using analysis and synthesis must be too much work, like the Middle East problem “it’s hard” to copy the President.
Contrary to conventional wisdom, liberals are mean to children, an adult conservative can fight back, a child is intimidated by adults. That is the real reason liberals like to use kids as fronts. To get their own childish way.
PARAPHRASE: Liberalism is best when practiced upon your neighbor.
perfect, Frank.
I’m reminded of two things: a congressman who once said that democrats are the mommy party and republicans are the daddy party. The other is that mothers teach fathers how to attach to infants and fathers teach mothers how to detach from adults.
In both cases, I see too many absentee fathers and too many suffocating mothers of 30-year-olds.
Then again, society reacts very strongly to parents that kill their children for misbehaving…
True freedom includes the freedom to fail. While many liberals in a true empathic concern wish to eliminate the freedom to fail, they dismiss or do not consider the restrictions that such a protective cocoon imposes.
What a moronic article. Must be a slow news day
I agree, but I would take it one step further. What “liberals” want is to have adult privileges with childlike security. In other words they want to be teenagers. They want to drive the car when they want, eat when they want, “pair up” with whom they wish and they want their parents to pay for it and bail them out of jail when the time comes. That is what they really want. Fortunately most teenagers grow up and support themselves and live with the consequences of their actions. They learn to save for a rainy day and if something sounds too good to be true it probably isn’t. “Liberals” obviously never do.
O beautiful for pilgrim feet
Whose stern impassioned stress
A thoroughfare of freedom beat
Across the wilderness!
America! America!
God mend thine every flaw,
Confirm thy soul in self-control,
Thy liberty in law!
— America The Beautiful, 2nd verse
American liberty is based on Christian self-control…doing right even if no one is watching. It’s why we sit at a red light at 2:30 AM with no cross traffic.
God unleashed the most powerful agent in history when He created the self-controlled Christian. It negated the need for massive external control.
Man will be always be controlled: either externally by a tyrant (the parent) or internally (what used to be called being an adult).
Unfortunately, gov’t is our parent. People are unruly and mean so we need a parent to keep us from being mean to each other.
Which type of parent is the question though.
Lefties want it to be our mother, watching us all the time to make sure we don’t get hurt and then kissing our boo-boos and making it better.
Conservatives want it to be our father. Not really paying attention unless we hurt our sister (she started it!) and then spanking us for it.
When we fall down and skin our knee, Dad tells us to rub some dirt on it and get back in there while Mom is all over us with the Bactine and Band-aids.
When it’s a parent, it’s okay. Those are their jobs.
When it’s the gov’t, you’re paying for the Bactine and the Band-aids and if you’re not one of Mom’s favorites (like, oh, say unions), you’re getting the short end of the boo-boo kissing.
Victor Frankal writes in his book “The Meaning of Life” that Freedom and Responsibility are SYNONOMOUS. One cannot exist without the other. If a person has the freedom to do “A” and is not responsible but abusive with “A” the State steps in and becomes responsible. When the State does this, we call it Prison.
Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of happiness are unalienable rights. Given by God not government…
Lefty libs believe in a concept called “Fair” which is in its practice a lie! Fair does not exist for anybody, which not understood by the left. As soon as one applies fair to any process, one must have an arbiter or referee to insure that practice. For instance; the insane comment fair housing for all. Who in the hell can say what is fair for me, if it is fair for me, you may find it very unfair and small. In all things these lefties want to make that decision for me and you.
With extremely dysfunctional people, there is a term, Co-Dependent. This means the dysfunctional person is, in practice, trying to run everyone else’s life because they want their “I know best” outcome. Our society is awash with diseased Dysfunctional Co-Dependent People.
It sickens me to think these people want programs for others and themselves using money of those that produce. The real insult is that these lefty parasites perpetuate the lie and call it fair.
If any entitlement program is so great, why don’t they pony up and invest? Freedom means having a choice, obviously these lefty parasites hate my freedom and choice due to their obsessive compulsive need to control in a Dysfunctional Co-Dependent way, everyone and everything…
I agree and will go further to say that liberals believe fair to mean equal. I constantly have to remind my children (one 4 years older than the other) that being treated fairly, does not mean being treted equally.
Everyone of every persuasion attempts to “force morality” on others. I steal from someone because I feel like it. That’s my morality. You think it’s wrong and send the police after me. You have rightfully “forced” your morality on me. What if a factory owner wants to dump his toxic wastes in your water supply? Are you going to “force your morality” on him by taking him to court?
What we’re talking about regarding the “forcing” issue are individual actions that don’t have obvious direct consequences to others. But let’s have a bit of clarity in the language. Just this morning I was reading about a woman calling for abortion coverage for local government employees. She couldn’t bring herself to say “that” word. Instead, it was “comprehensive reproductive coverage.”
Another excellent analysis Frank. Sounds a lot like Dr Harris and “Transactional Analysis” from back in 1970 (I had to look it up). I remembered the “Parent-Adult-Child” mental states. His best-seller pop-psych book was “I’m OK, You’re OK”, and the idea was that when two individuals conversed, party one could act as P, A or C, and party two could also act as P, A or C. The only really healthy and productive conversations were when both individuals were acting as adults.
And if you don’t believe that, I’ll hold my breath until I turn purple!
Foot soldiers, aka “useful idiots”, in today’s current crop of Progressives are far more focused on bringing about what Winston Churchill called “the equal sharing of misery” than on any notion of “betterment”.
Their leaders are interested in absolute power.
Any collective that could look to government for personal “betterment” is, ipso facto, insane.
Any government with the power to mother its citizens also has the power to dominate them and steal from them: to overtax them, confiscate their property and override their binding agreements. For this reason, the legally enforceable institutions of society must be very limited, lest the government charged with protecting the people against tyranny and theft becomes itself the most dangerous tyrant and thief…Under the creed of modern liberalism, the individual citizen is not called to maturity but is instead invited to begin a second childhood. The liberal agenda requires him to remain in an artificial environment–the daycare program of the grandiose state–where he need not become an adult, take responsibility for his own welfare, nor cooperate with others to achieve what the state will give him for nothing.
(The Liberal Mind: The Psychological Causes of Political Madness)
The difference in the 2 “philosophies” is way deeper than simply a difference of opinion.
Archbishop Sheen had a good take on this. He noted that freedom is not the power to do whatever we want, but instead,”freedom is the right to do whatever we ought,”
Pretty insightful guy.
Why do liberals insist that the freedom enjoyed by a child is superior to that treasured by adults?
Yet I’ve seen reports that (presumably liberal) “educators” had the police escort (male, iirc) children out of elementary school for minor transgressions.
That scenario captures much of the leftist agenda. (The theocratic right is not necessarily better.)
tanstaafl: Excellent observation and analysis. Enjoyed reading. Yes, Frank’s article is on target.
#9 Brian N: “I also think …liberals are trying to protect you …. from corporations that care about nothing more than the bottom line.”
But they want to force a government on you that cares about nothing but their own control, power and growth. The government will take what they want, what they think other people want from me and if I refuse they will put me in jail. I far more trust the corporation because I can just walk away from whatever they are selling. And to keep them honest there are anti-trust laws, anti-pollution laws, anti everything laws that they must comply with. The entrenched government just changes the laws when they don’t suit their own purposes.
BTW, this corporate profit bashing thing is so tiresome and sophomoric. Why would anyone put up their capital to form a business if they are not allowed to make a decent profit? You might as well take the bus right to a fully state controlled economy – and how did that work out for the USSR and Cuba? And before you cry about profits being excessive, look at the actual numbers. For example, the top eight health care companies combined make less in annual profit than government administered Medicare loses to fraud in each year.
It would be wise to revisit the words of Edmund Burke (1729-1797):
“Men are qualified for civil liberty in exact proportion to their disposition to put moral chains upon their own appetites–in proportion as their love to justice is above their rapacity–in proportion as their soundness and sobriety of understanding is above their vanity and presumption–in proportion as they are more disposed to listen to the counsels of the wise and good, in preference to the flattery of knaves. Society cannot exist unless a controlling power upon will and appetite be placed somewhere; and the less of it there is within, the more there must be without. It is ordained in the eternal constitution of things that men of intemperate minds cannot be free. Their passions forge their fetters.”
Just as children cannot be left to make crucial decisions for themselves because of their lack of maturity, so too people who fail to make the transition into full adulthood, with the responsibility that that entails, must have someone else pulling their strings. This is what the liberals want: a society of people who, although they are chronologically and physically adults, still act on childish and adolescent impulses. This allows them to step in as the “parent.”
To minnesotaman, #20: This is not a moronic article or a moronic topic. It is deeply important for our society, since our young people are now being held in adolescence well into their 20s and even 30s. They are a segment of our society that screams, as every child does, “me, me, me,” and all they want is the next thing that feels good. And the liberals will be right there, willing to dole out the entitlement programs, as they believe any good parent would do. This failure to grow up also extends to the lack of real-world knowledge or experience of our youth, something that I, as a teacher, blame squarely on our schools. As Victor Davis Hanson wrote in an article on this site on February 23, 2009: “A half-educated, or indeed illiterate, electorate at the polls, voting for instantaneous entitlement, is, as thinkers as diverse as Aristophanes and Alexis de Tocqueville warn us, a rather dangerous thing indeed.” And, I might add, that this also applies to adults trapped in childhood and adolescense. They are simply incapable of making an informed, adult decision.
EnemyoftheState, Thank you for reminding me of Harris and “I’m OK….” I held it as absolute truth up to the time when he committed suicide. My conclusion: I’m OK–he was just so-so.
Cec Moon wrote:
“Thank you for reminding me of Harris and “I’m OK…” I held it as absolute truth up to the time when he committed suicide. My conclusion: I’m OK — he was just so-so.”
Actually, this is substantively untrue. Thomas A. Harris died at age 85 of a heart attack:
http://www.highbeam.com/doc/1P2-830366.html
So, if you don’t like Transactional Analysis, you might want to just say “I don’t like that ‘I’m OK, you’re OK’ stuff”, which would at least be honest, rather than invent a nasty lie about one of its early proponents.
hmmm… half baked idea here, but maybe it can be developed…
If they use “global warmist denier” as a derogatory, and we all use “holocost denier” as a negative…
What could we do with “slavery denial”…?
31. Mike G: no one here is bashing corporate profits. I just said that is their sole purpose. As in they don’t care about anything else. I am not saying profits are bad, just that they will not look out for the health and well being of anyone. As you said there are laws to keep them honest. My point is that these laws were created by liberals. It is make believe to think the “free” market without any government intervention will work best. We are need and benefit from these liberal laws that protect us. For instance the laws that took lead out of gasoline. Without using vague terms like liberal, what are specific laws people here have problems with. Lets face it terms like liberal and conservative are bull*&^%, and don’t reflect the complicated dynamics of the real world. Those words are thrown around whenever someone wants to trash the “other”.
You conflate a freedom from responsibility with freedom, when, in fact, these are two very different things.
If we define freedom as ‘the ability to determine action without restraint’, then children are not particularly free at all when it comes to either food or shelter. I would argue that, in the case, of shelter, they have precisely no meaningful choices other than to reside at home, and, therefore, have no freedom in this regard. This is substantially true with regard to food as well – the power to persuade should not be confused with freedom, as the choices, ultimately, are made by the adult, rather than the child. This is then why we often describe the state, where it constrains unduly the choices of its constituents, in terms of overbearing parents.
To suggest then, that children are free, because some children live an ideal of childhood, is ridiculous. There is no material difference between the array of choices faced by a child with an abusive/aloof/impoverished parentage, and a child with the best parents in the world. The only factor that will determine outcomes in these regards for the child is the quality of the parents themselves, not the quality of the child.
Thank God it is just as simple as that; just two sides, one right one wrong. All this time I thought I had to think these things through, now I realize all I have to do is agree. :: ))
The problem here is the corruption of words. The words in contention are Liberty and License. Both words start out the same way: the power and scope to act as one pleases (freedom).
License adds the following phrase: unrestrained by custom and tradition, but is restrained by authority.
Liberty adds the following phrase: unrestrained by authority, but is restrained by custom, tradition, reputation and social training.
License allows one to act selfishly and abusively except where an authority restrains you.
Liberty allows one to act without prior restraint within a frame work of morality, ethics and laws.
License consigns a person to the position of a, hopefully pampered, slave.
Liberty consigns a person to that of an independent agent who must take responsibility for their acts.
A Child is the ward of an adult. A ward is someone presumed incapable of self ownership and self control, so they must be controlled by others.
The Left do not believe that anyone is an adult, so no one is allowed self ownership and self control. In short, the Left are attempting to evade responsibility for their actions and to attain power to do what is dishonest, injurious, impractical, unreasonable and impossible.
What is paradoxical is that the Left make the government into an Uber-parent, but governments often show less self control than do individuals. That is why Leftist governments are so murderous, they allow no restraint on their ability to do dishonest, impractical, injurious, unreasonable and impossible acts. Results do not matter to a Leftist, only their good intentions.
35. Brian, sorry for misunderstanding that point but I don’t know what to make of your statement that it is “make believe to think the free market can’t work without government intervention”. This seems a standard “progressive” statement for justifying all sorts of over-reaching and standard-of-living killing interventions.
Even staunch libertarians believe that some government intervention is necessary – usually where ownership of a critical infrastructure can give a single corporation a monopoly and the ability to set prices autonomously or where a corporation creates costs that are pushed onto society (i.e. polluting a nearby stream). But you have to admit we have gone way beyond those things. If you are a politician or an activist group, you can always justify that society will benefit when a corporation is forced to do this or that and to pay higher taxes. However, it is one of the great myths foisted on the American public – either by intention or ignorance – that corporations end up paying for anything. Under new regulatory burdens and taxes one of two things happens – both bad for the average citizen: either the costs are passed on in the form of higher prices or the corporation is forced to lay off people as they lose business to out-of-state or foreign corporations who don’t have such costs.
For more on all of this I can recommend http://www.mises.org , a libertarian organization following the Austrian School of Economics and the excellent book, The Undercover Economist .
Well written, Frank.
The article points out two poles of American thought since the founding. We go back and forth between the two in rhythms dictated by what we have just had too much of, economic circumstances, and sometimes, the accident of our birth and genes. If either system were to prevail completely, we would not have lasted for 230 plus years. Apparently we also need for most people to “believe” that their way is the right way, which is not to say that they cannot change their minds…and presto!; a new right way.
Whitehead thought that education should present the rhythms of romance and precision. Politics should do the same with liberalism and conservatism.
Children get stuck with the bills generated by our incompetent politicians to appease the greedy geezers, lazy slackers and feel-good-about-themselves progressive/liberal do-gooders.
Good luck in paying off the bill junior!
40. And furthermore, those interventions are only made necessary by the fact that the corporate leadership is refusing to restrain its own greed and make sure that it does not harm bystanders with its products. Again, the one who fails to restrain himself must be restrained by society.
Ultimately, Republicans (conservatives) use logic and reason to arrive at conclusions.
Demon-rats (lie-berals) use “feelings” to arrive at conclusions.
Consequently, conservatives arrive at conclusions that are logical and reasonable.
Lie-berals arrive at conclusions that about as stupid as they are going to have to be when based on really illogical and unreasonable ”feelings”.
This isn’t anything new or shocking (sadly)…
vulgar moralist (6):
History provides an interesting insight on this question. The welfare state was created by Bismarck
Oh, I’d say it dates back to the Roman Empire.
“Beginning with Augustus Caesar, the city of Rome provided bread, oil and wine to its urban population. What this meant, is that almost 250,000 inhabitants of Rome consumed about 6 million sacks of grain per year, free. Rome provided citizens with food — it also provided them with entertainment. Of the poor, the poet Juvenal could write:
“with no vote to sell, their motto is “couldn’t care less,” Time was when their plebiscite elected generals, heads of state, commanders of legions: but now they’ve pulled in their horns, there’s only two things than concern them: BREAD and CIRCUSES.”
This, of course, ended up bankrupting the empire and leading to its downfall.
Also note the bit just above the previous quote:
“During the Pax Romana, there was a decline in the number of children, especially among the upper classes of Roman society. The situation got so bad that there were imperial laws requiring parents to raise more children, but still the birthrate dropped.”
Brian N (9):
First, lets not confuse conservatives with libertarians. Currently conservatives are not about small government. They just want government to control different aspects of your life than liberals. In the name of defending the country they start illegally wire taping everything that moves. Liberals say cars have to include seat belts and conservatives tell you it is illegal to buy a dildo. I guess both want to force their morality upon the general population.
Not correct. No conservative that I know of cares about what kind of sex toy you want to purchase, or what you do in your bedroom. We just ask three things:
1) You pay for the consequences of your own actions,
2) You don’t interfere with the transmission of my values to my children (the shop at which you purchase your toy shouldn’t be readily accessible to my underage children), and
3) You don’t try to mess with values that have been proven through experience over time to promote a healthy society.
One of government’s primary functions is to promote morality. After all, murder, rape, incest, feuds, drug abuse, slavery, and pedophilia have all been legal (and socially acceptable) at one time or another. Some still are, in some societies.
Conservatism is about balance (Anarchy is truly the far right, with libertarianism very close to it (see the Pournelle Political Axes and remember that he’s got the directions reversed from the conventional). Conservatives want a government that is large enough to perform its job of keeping order and providing security in the way that only a state can, and small enough that it doesn’t become more of a threat than the outsiders. Conservatives value traditional ways because, above all, they have been shown to work.
gs (29):
…
That scenario captures much of the leftist agenda. (The theocratic right is not necessarily better.)
Spoken like a true leftist, who doesn’t even know what “the right” or Conservatives espouse.
I would ask you, gs (and the others who post in a similar vein): what limits would you accept on your behavior? What definition would you accept for morality? Do you really think that all restrictions are arbitrary, or do you accept that there are some places that we really should not go, for the safety of the society?
Although you weren’t funny in this post – a not insignificant disappointment – your observations are spot on.
In the future I recommend funny; it helps to blunt the terror I feel for my family and my country that radiates from DC.
I live in Europe. Adult responsibility left here long ago.
Paul of Alexandria
The limits under discussion are limits of state power, not individual behavior. To this end, I hold to Jefferson’s rule, i.e. behavior is unacceptable if it “picks my pocket or breaks my leg”.
If I choose to live my life according to a more controlled standard, which I do, then, that’s my business and not the government’s.
Government’s role in morality stops with protecting the public peace.
Jefferson wrote to a Frenchman collegue after the Revolution:
“we both consider the people as our children, and love them with paternal affection. But you love them as infants whom you are afraid to trust without nurses, and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government….. there exists a right independent of force; that a right to property is founded in our natural wants,in the means with which we are endowed to satisfy these wants,and the right to acquire by those means without violating the rights of other sensible beings; that no one has the right to obstruct another, exercising his facilities innocently for the relief of sensibilities made part of his nature; that justice is the fundamental law of society ; that the majority, oppressing an individual, is guilty of a crime, abuses its strength, and by acting on the law of the strongest breaks up the foundations of a society; that action by the citizens in person, in affairs within their reach and competence, and in others by representatives , constitutes the essence of a republic”
- Thomas Jefferson, Letter to P.S. Dupont de Nemours, Poplar Forest, April 24th ,1816
Wonderful post, Mr. Fleming. I’ve linked this to my Facebook page. This should be required reading for every high school student in America. But, they’re probably too busy watching “An Inconvenient Truth” (again) to read anything so blasphemous as this.
Generally a great post but I think it needs to face the fact that, in current American politics there are esentially no conservatives and true conservative ideas are never even mentioned as an alternative. There is a phony attempt to portray the democrats as the liberals and the republicans as the conservatives but they are really merely two wings of a single ruling party. That party agrees on one thing: more government control. In the health care debate, is anyone proposing more adult freedom…like allowing people to make their own decisions by removing prescription requirements (just a “letter from Mommy” allowing a supposedly free citizen to buy a chemical) or by picking their own health care supplier (without government approval through licensing…now that would lower health care costs in reality)?
I’m not sure where you got your idea of what an “Adult” is – it seems you just assume one definition and believe that is universal.
It is not, however.
The interdependence of society is universal, and – in, arguable, most times and places – becoming an adult means that you finally recognize your duty to contribute to, even sacrifice for, the village / tribe / family. Any anthropologist can tell you that.
Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country – after all. Oh wait, that was a liberal who said that.
It seems that even most conservatives share this belief, though in different areas. If America were ground attacked by an invading country with even the possibility of keeping a square inch of our soil: Would you not support a compulsory military draft? When a hurricane struck NOLA, was it not right to send in the government to keep the peace and bring in food, water, and medical supplies?
If you disagree, please – loudly proclaim to the public the purity of your ideals!
51. Wrong. “Our Constitution was written only for a moral and religious people; it is wholly inadequate for the government of any other.” People who refuse to govern themselves must be governed by tyrants, for only tyrants can keep these immoral people from harming others weaker than them.
How in the hell does “X” go from “you finally recognize your duty” to “support a compulsory military draft” in so few sentences? How does growth into adult responsibility turn into forcing others to fight for you?
X, your ideals are pure all right. Pure crap.
In addition to the progressive state acting as parent to all its benighted children (actually more like a god to the unwashed), progressives seek to bestow full adult responsibilities on children (Hillary Clinton has built a political career around it). They do this for a variety of reasons…
1) Children more easily accept propaganda.
2) Children with rights have no need of parents, and the state may directly intervene.
3) Sex with children becomes legally possible, since the argument can then be reduced to one of whether the experience is or is not psychologically deleterious. (Note that this is the same progression of argument currently being used to advance homosexuality).
If for no other reason than these, progressivism is revealed as evil, and proves that progressivism must be rooted out completely from this society and never again allowed to see the light of day.
mmmm… should have said “adult rights”, NOT “adult responsibilities” in my previous post. As we all know, progressives have no conception of personal responsiblity, but only endless rights.
Sounds like pritty serious stuff. You have to be carefull on facebook.
Every one has a right to freedom of choice just like people aged 18 and over have a right to buy sex toys, obtain a credit card, go to the pub etc.
It’s funny to call out liberals for preferring the rights of children over adults’, because don’t republicans have this slight inclination to prefer “pre-children’s” rights over their mothers’ adult rights, aka anti-abortion movement?
Thanks for another fantastic post Frank.
I agree that childhood is a rather frightening existence, decisions are made for you no matter how qualified a person is. I believe that freedom doesn’t truly begin until adulthood when a we have options and can make our own decisions. As an adult your options are unlimited, and no other person can hold you down and tell you what to do. That would seem to be true freedom?