If america is free then why would anyone try to control anothers freedoms? drugs, gay marriages, abortions.?

Question

freedom, i think, means to do as i please and suffer my own consequences, I may be smart enough to learn from others mistakes but i may not and need to learn from my own. Why would you not let me make my own mistakes.

Answer 1

Aside from the fact that these things lay outside the Consitutional powers of the government, we want to legislate morality too much. If we think that doing drugs, gay marriage, or abortion are wrong we want to run to Big Brother to try to get laws passed to prohibit those things. In doing this, we add more governmental control into our lives. People who want drugs still get drugs. People are still going to be with who they want to be with. And it is still the mother's decision on whether or not she wants to carry a child to full term in her body and deliver it. Whether we like it or not things such as drugs, gay marriage, and abortion are individual rights and are protected under the Constitution. No amount of laws that are passed are going to prohibit these things. All in all it boils down to something that I read from L. Neil Smith, a Four-time Prometheus Award-winner and author of 27 books, the most widely-published and prolific libertarian novelist in the world: "The word "freedom" is said all the time, thousands of time a year, however most of us have grown so accustomed to the virtual slave collars around our necks -- taxation, various kinds of regulation, conscription -- we have no concept of what it means to be free. Because of that, people sometimes let themselves be stampeded into making laws -- or demanding that they be made -- that give idiots and thugs ... sorry, I meant politicians and bureaucrats -- the power to try and impose limits on the way those certain individuals use their rights. However those certain individuals are often rich and powerful, themselves, and are therefore able to evade those limits. Invariably, the idiots and thugs abuse the power they've unwisely been given, and turn it back on the ordinary people who have foolishly given it to them."

Answer 2

No Freedom is absolute. However, when compared to a lot of other countries our constitutional freedoms are more so than all of theirs, and quite a bit harder to take away. But, we are also a Republic, and if it is the will of the people, some freedoms will be restricted.

Answer 3

America is not free .

It is a group of individuals bound by common language and laws with similar educations and backgrounds who are suppose to want the same things .

A JOB to work at , a wife and home and family to raise in your own image .

Its just that simple and if you want anything else such as freedom you must look someplace else .

An Island possibly or behind a wall or in some secret dungeon were you can manipulate others for your own enjoyment .

Given absolute freedom no one would even spend ten seconds with anyone else . At least if they have a positive self image and are not dependent on others .

Answer 4

America hasn't been "free" in a long time.

"There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences." P.J. O'Rourke

http://www.cato.org/speeches/sp-orourke.html

The Cato Institute has an unusual political cause -- which is no political cause whatsoever. We are here tonight to dedicate ourselves to that cause, to dedicate ourselves, in other words, to . . . nothing.

We have no ideology, no agenda, no catechism, no dialectic, no plan for humanity. We have no "vision thing," as our ex-president would say, or, as our current president would say, we have no Hillary.

All we have is the belief that people should do what people want to do, unless it causes harm to other people. And that had better be clear and provable harm. No nonsense about second-hand smoke or hurtful, insensitive language, please.

I don't know what's good for you. You don't know what's good for me. We don't know what's good for mankind. And it sometimes seems as though we're the only people who don't. It may well be that, gathered right here in this room tonight,are all the people in the world who don't want to tell all the people in the world what to do.

This is because we believe in freedom. Freedom -- what this country was established upon, what the Constitution was written to defend, what the Civil War was fought to perfect.

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to health care, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

So we are here tonight in a kind of anti-matter protest -- an unpolitical undemonstration by deeply uncommitted inactivists. We are part of a huge invisible picket line that circles the White House twenty-four hours a day. We are participants in an enormous non-march on Washington -- millions and millions of Americans not descending upon the nation's capital in order to demand nothing from the United States government. To demand nothing, that is, except the one thing which no government in history has been able to do -- leave us alone.

There are just two rules of governance in a free society:

Mind your own business.
Keep your hands to yourself.
Bill, keep your hands to yourself. Hillary, mind your own business.

We have a group of incredibly silly people in the White House right now, people who think government works. Or that government would work, if you got some real bright young kids from Yale to run it.

We're being governed by dorm room bull session. The Clinton administration is over there right now pulling an all-nighter in the West Wing. They think that, if they can just stay up late enough, they can create a healthy economy and bring peace to former Yugoslavia.

The Clinton administration is going to decrease government spending by increasing the amount of money we give to the government to spend.

Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered corporate lawyer in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money -- hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

The Clinton administration is putting together a program so that college graduates can work to pay off their school tuition. As if this were some genius idea. It's called getting a job. Most folks do that when they get out of college, unless, of course, they happen to become governor of Arkansas.

And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?

You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

Government contains impure ingredients -- as anybody who's looked at Congress can tell you.

On the basis of Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign promises, I think we can say government practices deceptive advertising.

And the merest glance at the federal budget is enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion, and fraud.

There, ladies and gentlemen, you have the Cato Institute's program in a nutshell: government should be against the law.

Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

Answer 5

Someone needs to protect you from yourself...We have freedom, but we still are a nation of laws...in reality, you do have the freedom to do whatever you want...but there are consequences...

Answer 6

Hi
" People create rules for the other guy to follow. "
Robert Heinlein

Answer 7

Because some folks seemed to have misread, or misinterpreted their bibles, and think they are personally, spiritually responsible for the choices of others, even though it was God who gave free will.
Personally, I think it will be when we no longer have the free will that God gave us, and are forced to live morally, that God will consider this a failed experiment and discard it. Who the heck wants someone to be forced to love them?

Answer 8

All of the above are against the law except abortions. These are not freedoms

Answer 9

Because freedom isn't freedom, unless someone tells you how free you can be!

Answer 10

What are you talking about? Abortion is the deprivation of the most essential freedom, the liberty of children to live.