Saying you Love Pot and Homosexuality Isn't the Same As Endorsing Freedom

Taki had an interesting article today, as he is wont to do. Jame Miller, writing for the magazine correctly noted that just because you are for stuff for yourself and your entertainment does not mean you correctly understand the notion of freedom and liberty.

What Barney Frank calls libertarianism is just normal self-interest shaking off the bounds of tradition. There is no righteous defense of liberty behind the movement to legalize weed. State and local governments just find it too costly to enforce. When it comes to gay marriage, sexual liberation is the driving force of acceptance. Government approval of same-sex ceremonies isn’t a new freedom. It further enshrines the state as a social molder, while making us slaves to the pleasure of our body parts.

One of the prevalent psychosis that seems to permeate the populace is the idea of the status quo needs to be increased or lessened. We never even consider the idea of complete and total change.

For instance, if you ask people about retirement and what should be done about Social security, few if any will entertain the notion of simply doing away with it. It's not possible, people will die or go poor or have to eat cat food or some such nonsense. Of course doing away with something doesn't mean it has to go in 10 minutes. Grandpa can continue the way he is while new people entering the workforce can get out. Hell, I'd even accept keeping it if it were an optional thing.

Same with education, health care, and a myriad of other "services" the government does that it does not only badly but shouldn't be doing in the first place. But these things are so a part of our lives now, with the press constantly presenting these programs as de facto standard. They just are, like the planet, no need to explain the why's.

When you tell most people about getting rid of these programs, they act like you are asking them to cut off their arm, so entrenched are they in the belief of the necessity of these things. Education is run by government, so no surprise that critical thinking isn't exactly the norm.

So bad has it become that we define freedom as what we successfully get the government to condone. Gays can only live together and get married when we get the government to pass some sort of law. Freedom should be defined by the lack of laws the government can pass to dictate your life but now it's by how many it passes that you agree with.

This is backwards and yet try to get your average liberal to understand this. Or your average republican even. Does the GOP run on any sort of abolition of dumb laws and spending?

We need a completely different perception of freedom. Freedom from government, freedom from laws and regulations and departments of fucking with your life because some special interest douchebag wants to be able to smoke pot after smoking his buddy's pole. Truth is, he should be able to do these things without special dispensation from the government, not in spite of it.

When we limit our pursuit of freedoms to that of self-gratification, we will have neither freedom or self-gratification. Freedom is being able to start a business without 8 million forms. Freedom is being able to build a porch on your own home without a permit. Freedom is not defined by what the government LETS you do, it's by what it cannot do.

We don't even come close to thinking like that anymore.