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To: Hemingway's Ghost

Is the individual sovereign over himself?
***

That, I think, is the true question. At first blush I might say yes, an individual is sovereign over himself. But is that really true? What does it mean to be sovereign over oneself? I can’t simply decide, for example, to start walking everywhere on my hands. I can develop the skill, perhaps, but I can’t simply “decree” it to be so. There are many examples like this.

Modern society makes it difficult to be sovereign over oneself. Few of us raise our own food, build our own shelter, make our own clothes. We rely on others to do that. We learn other skills, and sell those skills to those whose skills or products we desire. Is that sovereignty? Maybe.

If I am sovereign over my body, can I not cause it to harm your body? Why not? If not, is that a restriction over my sovereignty? Who decides when I am overstepping my sovereignty? Where can I go? What can I do when I get there? Is persuasion, or fraud in convincing others to assert their sovereignty in a way I feel is best ok? Who decides if it is not? How can others decide this for anyone but themselves?

I think none, or very few, of us are sovereign anymore, in any true sense. We rely upon others for many things. Others rely upon us. Do we really even want to be sovereign in the truest sense? I suggest that we neither are, nor really desire to be, sovereign, unless we can also assert that sovereignty over others, or to protect property we now decide belongs to us, however acquired.


98 posted on 08/01/2007 1:13:30 PM PDT by NCLaw441
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To: NCLaw441

You are thinking too hard. ;-)


101 posted on 08/01/2007 1:37:04 PM PDT by Valpal1 ("I know the fittest have not survived when I watch Congress on CSPAN.")
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