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http://www.cnn.com/2007/POLITICS/11/13/hidden.war.costs/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

I want a healthy dialogue to this question. So any rude or inane comments/answers will be deleted. I want intelligent thinking, if that is possible on YA anymore.

If you were told that you and/or your family had to come up with $10,000 every year and that would guarantee that our country would stay free from any other country's grasp or control, WOULD YOU PAY FOR IT?
This is a non-partisan question. Any leader could ask you this question. Not specifically Gore or Clinton, Bush or Guiliani, or Perot or Donald Trump even. So do not answer this question based on who would ask it. Base your answer on the situation in hand instead.
What are you willing to sacrifice for freedom? We all spend money on material items that we MUST have that other countries' people may not even have access to , let alone be able to purchase.
The downside to not paying anything is that you will have no freedom.

2007-11-14 00:47:55 · 12 answers · asked by Anonymous in Politics & Government Government

You would lose all rights to do anything even be on the internet or have your own opinion about anyone or anything. You will be told where to work and your money will automatically be sent to the goverment so it can be officially re-distributed to everyone and the government.
If you do not wish to comply, you will either be expelled from the country or be jailed and/or executed.
What would you pay then so that this scenario could never happen?
We as a country pay so much for everything else that we want, so how bad do you want it?

2007-11-14 00:50:34 · update #1

Freedom First, this is not a threat, it is reality of what could happen.
How bad do you want it?
Americans want everything else but think freedom is a given right...

2007-11-14 00:54:03 · update #2

No Algiza, I am not asking how much you would pay for health care for everyone... and that is a socialist thought where then everyone would be told what doctor they could use or go to...

2007-11-14 00:56:56 · update #3

Gengi M, I just used the article as an example.
Are you one of those people who could just sit back and wait for whoever, not "just" Iraq, to attack us? Then you would point fingers at yourselves without focusing on the problem at hand...

2007-11-14 00:58:52 · update #4

John C, you bring up a good point. I would never be one to advocate "paying" for freedom because it is not a given right.
But I believe so many Americans believe that it is and that every other country should just be expected to leave us alone.

2007-11-14 01:00:38 · update #5

How many lives did America lose during the Civil War? We did not need to fight each other; each "country" should have been allowed to go their seperate ways... we wasted money and lives on that... there was no imminent threat there...
I am not talking about a particular party here... I am talking about our country as a whole...

2007-11-14 01:04:10 · update #6

hmmm... gengi... if we had just stood still during WWII, Germany was planning to attack us from the east after Japan attacked us from the west... would you have just stood still and waited for Germany to attack us while stating there is no threat?
We would attack China if there was a viable threat... after all, why do you think they have a army of over 100 million men at this time?? For the fun of it? And our country doesn't want to build up the military....

2007-11-14 01:07:33 · update #7

Well everyone thinks everything else can be bought, so why not freedom?

I am not FOR buying rights for our freedom... I am just asking people's thoughts on it...

2007-11-14 01:09:25 · update #8

My original details were based on the fact of what would happen if this country had NO freedom...

2007-11-14 01:12:44 · update #9

I like to see how people think on here... please don't judge me based on the question I have...

2007-11-14 01:13:51 · update #10

Raoullef, money is the only terms in how people can view things sometimes... so you can have your views... it doesn't mean that it is my long-held belief...

2007-11-14 02:01:50 · update #11

12 answers

being forced to pay for freedom by paying "protection" money is not freedom.

Freedom can only be bought with one thing the blood of Tyrants and Patriots.

Freedom is not a given right freedom is the only right. anything else is slavery.

I see what you are seeing and fun fact that was one of the arguments against the bill of rights by the anti-federalist is that it would be abused by possible leaders as a list of the only rights we had as opposed to us possessing all rights that we did not give to the current government that should serve the people as opposed to the people serving the government.

I think if those people who think rights are given need to change their view point and really think about what they are implying in saying that each person has to be given their rights. To me saying you have to be given your rights is to say some other group of people have some claim over your life which is to me slavery be it to a master, king, or collective mass.

I will agree with you on the civil war. I think the major issues was states rights to leave the union and a major reason for the north to invade the south was economical reasons because if the south had been allowed to stay separate it would have hurt the northern economy a lot just simply due to the fact that there was a massive demand at the time in the world for textiles which where primarily in the south.

Freedom is not a tangible good. If you have to buy it then it implies that it can be sold and that somehow someone owns your freedom and thus you have no claim on your life. It goes against the very principles of liberty that J. S. Mill listed so well on his essay On Liberty.

Now I suppose if one would disagree with the whole philosophy of liberty you could buy and sell freedoms but then again from my perspective you really wouldn't be selling freedom but just buying your way out of slavery that someone just had some claim on your life since birth.

2007-11-14 00:55:53 · answer #1 · answered by John C 6 · 3 0

Yes, though Mammon only knows how I'd come up with it, since that's a rather large portion of my yearly pay. Frankly, I find your use of money as the 'price' of freedom to be both revealing and rather distasteful.

A better model of this sort of thing is, to me, found in R.A. Heinlein's Starship Troopers (Not the wretched film, the book).

Heinlein and I disagree on many things, but on this one we are pretty well aligned, and I would certainly do this if it were offered/required for the same reason I vote in every election. Participation, awareness, and sacrifice have been, are, and will always be the price of freedom, not (to paraphrase Bono) cash, Mister. The only people who will actually sacrifice in your little plan are the poor. But 'ain't that America' these days...

2007-11-14 09:33:09 · answer #2 · answered by raoullefere 2 · 0 0

What you're missing here in my opinion is that freedom cannot be acquired with money, only with blood. Even after a while of "paying with money" someone would find it in their head to profit even more from the situation and it would start conflict. We've seen it many, many times in the past (and present for that matter) from every corner of the globe.

Furthermore, Freedom is an utopic idea of the perfect world that is hard to achieve because, let's face it, freedom is very variable. In countries that "have" freedom, you are free to do whaterver you want - as long as you don't impied on somebody else's freedom (i.e. play music as loud as you can, disturb the neighbors and you have destroyed their freedom of peace and quiet, generally resulting in the police coming over to tell you you actually can't play music that loud). So is that really freedom at all?

2007-11-14 09:04:14 · answer #3 · answered by chibi_sylphe 2 · 1 0

This scenario sounds vaguely like a big commune, but 'freedorfirst' is correct; forcible compliance isn't freedom. To inject a little reality, assuming it is the US you are referring to and nothing has changed before this new 'law' came into effect: The population of the US would be severely reduced due to one main factor immediately...namely that our poorer families living on one full-time minimum wage job per year would be paying more than half their income for the privelege of staying. Put that way, it begins to sound like a 'protection' racket.

2007-11-14 09:05:22 · answer #4 · answered by iamsuranovi 6 · 1 0

you are implying that the war is keeping America free. Iraq could have done nothing to America so attacking it was just a waist of money.

a better question is what freedoms would you give up to be alive, at what point is the loss of freedoms worse then the loss of a few lives? would you support a KGB style secrete police to prevent a few deaths each year?

edit: could you plz name one country that has posed a serious threat to America and its people. maybe china but the US hasent invaded them have they.

2007-11-14 08:54:56 · answer #5 · answered by Gengi 5 · 2 0

i wouldn't be able to pay for my freedom,,, and I'm not so much worried about other countries control over me as i am about all the drug dealers and pedophiles and our corrupt goverment,,,, our country has ,,and can't seem to keep us safe from. but if they could guarantee me that my son could walk to school without worrying that some guy hyped up on drugs would grabb him and do things to him,,,, then i would beg, borrow or steal the money for that ,,, paying to stay free from other countries grasp or control,, we depend on other countries for alot of things,, most all our products are made in other countries,,many foods are shipped from other countries,,, is anything made in the u.s. anymore,,,mabe if we quit closing our factories and sending other countries our jobs ,,we would have a better chance at protecting our own country better ,,,

2007-11-14 09:09:36 · answer #6 · answered by mytic0420 3 · 1 0

Freedom to comply at the threat of a prison cell isn't freedom.

Maybe you should look up the concepts of unalienable rights and natural rights that founded this country. Our view of freedom as a function of government law has become so watered down as to become meaningless.

2007-11-14 08:52:06 · answer #7 · answered by freedom first 5 · 4 0

Pay for freedom rather than languishing under an oppressive ruler.
Thus, finance a coherent group to main tan freedom.

2007-11-14 09:08:03 · answer #8 · answered by FRAGINAL, JTM 7 · 1 0

There is a book called the "The Cost of Rights: Why Liberty Depends on Taxes" You should read it. We do pay for freedom and we pay heavily. Though not as much as countries with socialized medicine. I would pay more for that...because I want all people in the USA to have health care.

2007-11-14 08:54:21 · answer #9 · answered by CresentMoon 4 · 0 4

Look at history !!!!!
Freedom is beyond price.
If it takes $100,000,000,000,000 to keep freedom alive then it is a cheap bargain.
Too many people paid for our present freedoms with the highest price of all - their lives.

2007-11-14 08:55:45 · answer #10 · answered by Anonymous · 2 1

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