Freedom. It's one of those words that gets thrown around more than is necessary.
People talk about it all the time. All the pundits, the talking heads, seem to worship the concept, regardless of what side they are on. And the conservatives reading this will say that the liberals hate freedom, and vice versa.
Because you see, when they talk about freedom, they do not mean freedom for everyone. They simply mean freedom for those who agree with their views. Take into account the southern Fundamentalist, patriotic as they come, who, along with God and the military, worships the Founding Fathers as his idols. The man will stand and preach about freedom, say over and over again that he believes in a free America, but if you are gay, or athiest, or agnostic, or Catholic, or Muslim, or anything that disagrees with him, he believes that you should be locked up. That views opposing his should be made illegal.
And what about the flip side of that record? What of the tolerant new-ager, who believes that the whole world should coexist, believes that war is unnecessary, believes that prejudice is the worst evil our country faces? Well, nine times out of ten, that person will want the Fundamentalist silenced. There are so many times that I have heard peace loving tree hugger types say that the people from Westboro Baptist Church should be put to death. Hardly the tolerant people you would expect them to be eh? I mean, I of course agree, but I also think that everyone is entitled to their own opinion.
You see, freedom is the natural state of man, yes, just as the pundits like to claim. You know, the whole unalienable rights thing and all that. And yes it is the way things were originally. But so is sitting in a tree, naked, eating your meat raw, and raping whatever you wanted.
We changed that. Humans decided it was better to have less freedom in order to have more protection. Very few true anarchists exist. Oh, a lot of people my age claim to be anarchists, but are completely unable to use a weapon, fix a car, grow their own food, hunt, kill, skin, cook, handle indoor plumbing. They're a bit useless really. What they really want, is for people older and richer than them to stop making rules they have to follow. The world system they want is not truly anarchy. They do not want to live in some sort of Mad Max-esque world, where they have to fight for every scrap they get. They want true socialism, where the people have no real leader and everyone works together for the common good. They equate this with anarchy, because they know that this form of socialism has never taken place. Whatever or whoever created humans left in one major flaw: the tendency to bend at the knees.
See, they don't want true anarchy. Because true anarchy would cause their deaths. They have too high an opinion of humanity. I love humanity, as anyone who reads this can attest. However, I am aware of our shortcomings. If it comes to me going without food so that you do not starve, then forget it. As a matter of fact, if we lived in a lawless society, and you had food and I did not, I would most certainly be willing to end your life to get it. Maybe that makes me a sociopath. I believe it makes me human. I believe that deep down, every human has that animal inside, just waiting to claw its out when necessity calls.
People do not realize this. This is why we created government. This is what the social contact is. To protect ourselves, from ourselves. Without laws, and more importantly, consequences, what little freedom we retain would be taken from us by those stronger than us. And well it should! If one is talking about the natural order of things, then one should realize that in nature, the strongest survives. There is no room for sharing or charity among animals that are similar to humans. The most that we, or any other mammalian animal are willing to share is with our families. Think about it. If something were to happen to you, to your job, or your house, if tomorrow you had to move onto the street with no food, no car, no job, no house, you would do anything to ensure that you had food and shelter. Maybe not at first, but the longer you live in a truly natural state, the more animal you become.
This is why true freedom does not exist. Most of us would not survive true freedom.
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