Does "freedom" mean anything if we carve up areas where we're free or not free?

Question

Who is to draw those distinctions? And how? Based on what? How can we say we should have unlimited freedom in one area but limited freedom in another? Isn't it that we all want to do different things and that these "areas" are just artificial distinctions - sought by people who want "the freedom" to do what THEY want to do but to limit someone else's freedom to do what he wants to do?

How can one support sexual freedom but not commercial freedom? What's the difference? You want to have sex - I want to buy something. Someone else might want to travel somewhere. Yet another might want to read something you or I might find offensive.

Isn't the only acceptable limit the built-in limit - that one cannot be free to limit another's freedom? Otherwise isn't my right to buy or sell something as sacrosanct as your right to have sex with a willing partner?

Answer 1

Looked at the questions you asked over the past couple of hours ( a lot of them). You are really a deep thinker.

Answer 2

I have no issues with the freedom of a sole proprietor of a business buying and selling something. However your freedom to buy and sell something as a collective (ie stockholder) should be limited due to the power mismatch between a collective and an individual.

Answer 3

You raise a valid point.

Does it really count as freedom if it's so limited that we have no real choice when and how to exercise that freedom?

Answer 4

That is precisely why the founding fathers of the US Constitution, didn't intend for our government to be operated by religion.

Answer 5

What???

Don't know why you seem only to be able to use sexual analogies to make your point...but I think what you are looking for is not "freedom", but "anarchy"....there is a difference you know..

Answer 6

I agree...Bush needs to do away with those stupid "free speech zones". How is it free speech if you are telling people where they can and cannot say it?