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To: frgoff

What good is freedom if we don't have the opportunity to make wrong choices? How do humans learn if they're always forced to do the wrong thing?

Where did I say that there is no "standard of conduct"? We as a society have the right to look down on poor choices, we have the right to shun them if we so choose. But we do not have the right to prevent people from making those choices if they so desire. That's what freedom is.

Our Constitution doesn't just protect good choices. On the contrary, it protects the minority from the tyranny of the majority. It protects unpopular opinions. It protects the right to make choices of which others do not approve.

Your attitude is what's wrong. You whinge about "anarchy" but seem to see freedom only as the right to make *your* choices. That's selfish, and it's contrary to both the spirit and letter of the Constitution.

Liberty is more than the enshrinement of your own particular preferences (or mine, for that matter). Freedom means the right to make unpopular, foolish or even outright bad choices, so long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others. Freedom isn't pretty, but it is vital.


252 posted on 08/23/2005 8:17:24 AM PDT by highball ("I find that the harder I work, the more luck I seem to have." -- Thomas Jefferson)
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To: highball
What good is freedom if we don't have the opportunity to make wrong choices?

Are you seriously arguing that there can be a shortage of wrong choices, or that they could ever be eliminated?

256 posted on 08/23/2005 9:10:14 AM PDT by lepton ("It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into"--Jonathan Swift)
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