America is about freedom, but it really seems like people look at it two different ways. There is the freedom of children, which is freedom from responsibility. Then there is the freedom of adults, which is free from the control of others. Liberals seem to focus mainly on the child’s freedom. All their arguments usually amount to “Give us control of more things, and you no longer have to worry about the important stuff.” But conservatives like that scarier adult freedom where you still have the responsibility to provide for yourself and your family but you don’t have the government pushing you around like a child.
America was founded on the ideals of adult freedom, but children get scared, and now we have the muddled mess we have. Maybe we have to realize how scary freedom can be sometimes and better accommodate those frightened by it. Like mailing them to Canada in a large box with air holes.
Something to think about.
Do we have to put holes in the box?
That’s a keen insight, Basil. Not particularly funny, but keen. You should tweet this so Frank sees it. I understand that he spends all his time doing some “job” he found doing “work”, and ignores the postings here.
Freedom from responsibility (and consequences) vs free to be responsible.
Liberals quake at the thought of self responsability. They need a father figure to house, feed, clothe, and doctor them. Like caged animals in a zoo. All they do is eat, make noise, and poop. And stink. (Smelly hippies.) The zoo keeper provides for the caged animals. Like us taxpayers.
So where are the cages…..
Libertarian vs, libertine.
For some reason this reminded me of stories from the cold war about defectors who went back to the USSR because the responsibilities of freedom in the US were too scary. They had too many choices to make on a daily basis than they were prepared to handle and too much rode on making those choices. They were overwhelmed. They had never “grown up” in the sense you describe.
Hillary Clinton is watching and waiting and when she finally takes over we shall all live in a Village free of freedom!
This is true for liberals, but we cannot rationalize with them.
The issue is the education system. Modern Americans are designed to be ignorant of the fact that the seeds sewn by the founders require watering.
It’s “mother figure” you typical sexist racist homophobic climate change denier.
/sarcasm
Canada accepts perforated US junk mail? I did not know that!
If we shrink ’em, would could get 120 to a box – complete with inspection holes.
Freedom and responsibility don’t just go together like peanut butter and jelly. They are two sides of the same thing. You aren’t free if you aren’t responsible for yourself.
I believe it was Whittle who said it was the Visa card and the payment. Kids just think of freedom as charging things on the card, but adults realize that the fun of having the card is made possible by the responsibility of making the payments.
Amazing! I was just trying to explain the concept of freedom to my daughter this morning and how liberal and conservative view it differently. This is perfect!!
It’s funny, but if you look back to the era of slavery, one of the arguments the democrats…., er, sorry, I mean slave owners, made in favor of slavery is that it protected the blacks from having to deal with all the complexities and decisions that came with freedom. By staying slaves, they would be well taken care of, and be happier for it.
I guess the dems haven’t really changed all that much, have they. That’s probably why they hate us so much. 145 years ago, we took their slaves away from them, and they’re still pissed at us for it.
I think we should send all the liberals to China as a form of payment to settle our countries duebt with them. Lets face it it’s a win/win for everyone.
I wasn’t even two sentences into this when I knew it was going in my quotefile. Superb observation.
lheal: Why do you say Basil? Frank J is listed as the poster. It’s equally smart whoever said it, though.
To answer your question, Zeke, it’s because “Basil” is, according to rumor, one of Frank’s multiple personalities. Or perhaps vice versa.
from http://punditkitchen.com/2009/12/09/political-pictures-zimbabwe-child-hyper-inflation/
VictoryNotVengeance says:
December 9, 2009 at 5:23 am
Good Point! Mr President, feel free to pass whatever legislation needed to get our money back from those movie stars, athletes, and mega corporations, and then spend it to give people healthcare, education, transportation, food, clothing, and shelter! And use those democrat achievers in Congress to make it happen!
Sadly, if you read some of this idiots other 5647 posts on that site, you’d see he’s actually serious. Doesn’t spending their life waiting for someone to give them something get boring?
Air holes? There you go, giving them more children freedoms, like the freedom of having your air supplied by someone else. They should make their own air holes.
Also, the box should be made of really tough wood, and we should mail them to the really far north part of Canada, near the polar bears, lest they find their way back.
Maybe it’s time we formalized this two-america business. If someone really wants to live with child freedoms, we can allow the adult freedom lovers to buy and sell them on the slave market. Of course, the adults would be required to give them adequate food, water, shelter, jobs, and health care, but all proceeds from their labor would be owned by the owner.
If we’re going to pay for the upkeep of these people, we might as well own them altogether outright.
All the “civil rights” activists who are advocating government-run programs can simply rename themselves as “slave-rights” activists and keep doing the same thing.
License v. liberty: doing whatever you want to do v. being free to do what is right.
I note that I’ve lost my Greek philosophical idol to tweeting. Jeesh. And, um, yeah, you know who you are!
(This comment is actually on topic because it’s about freedom.)
I’m feeling extraordinarily extrovertive tonight. So… Should I TWEET? You wanna TWEET with me? Go public with photo’s and private details? Put myself / yourself out there?’
Maybe we should all do that – just like celebrities and public officials and talk show hosts. Post our real names with family pictures, have our mailing address and phone numbers in the phone book, wave at people in public who notice that our Twitter address is on our T-shirt, etc.
See if we did that, then when our government comes to take us away to re-education camps for whatever reason (“jail”), everyone can say, “Hey! You can’t do that!! He’s a public figure!! I know him! Back-off jack.”
You know, lately, I’ve been wondering what anonymity on the Internet is good for. For example, for those that read AoSHQ, you’re aware of Ace’s recent “Banhammer Lectures.” So very strange, all that serious lecturing with all that anonymous snarking (over 3000 comments, a record).
But, I was thinking about bettering the Tweeters with a live Tweeting wifi web cam. You could follow me all day and watch what I see and do and send me comments, like, “No, Jim. That line of code has a typo in it!” or “Buddy, you need to do your dishes!” or “Why are you getting up at 04:00 every day? Are you nuts?” or “WTF is IMAO?”
People are Tweeting more and more. And certain blogs are declining. Fewer postings, fewer and fewer commenters. Except AoSHQ which is thriving in snarky anonymity.
No, I don’t wanna “blog.” It and “e-mail” are so 90’s. I think Tweeting too, shall pass, in favor of “Living.” That’s pronounced “Ly-Ving.”
So, holler if you want to Tweet with me. All for now, I’ve gotta do dishes and stoke the fire. Thanks for the chance to comment on your blog, Frank.
/extrovertiveness
The difference between socialism and slavery is that socialism sounds nicer.
We have places for adults who want child-like freedom without responsibility or acountablility.
They’re called prisons, asylums, mortuaries, Hollywood or Congress.
Excellent post. There is a third kind of freedom, though, that’s really pretty much total slavery, and I found an image of it at the Astronomy Picture of the Day site: http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap090927.html
It’s beautiful; it’s something we all want to do; but it’s really total dependency. The Group (or “hive”) controls everything you need, and you really, really can’t move or think apart from them. Of course you don’t want to…now.
But someday, if you did? You couldn’t.
See? Hive mentality can be a good thing…to a point. We get to go to the moon, and build stuff so we can nuke it and all that. But it’s not really freedom; hive freedom involves even more dependency than the child type of freedom. (Granted, most of us Hivers do have the really mundane sort of umbilical cords: power and phone lines, sewer and water lines, that sort of stuff.)
Hive freedom is the problem. Child-type freedom isn’t a big threat, though it’s more fun than it probably should be to mock no-brain bottom-feeding bums; if it really mattered, though, Obama would have won by a landslide. Not many child-minds came out for him. Child-minds want everything done for them, including voting. They can’t be depended on, though they can be intimidated, tricked, and/or herded and led around once you’ve achieved “alpha” status; millions and millions of people have died because of this, just in the last several decades. But you can’t ride them into power because they won’t expend energy for you.
It’s the hive-type freedom thinkers that are the real pain in the butt, because they’ll pretty much believe and do anything that either the ‘hive’ (or ‘consensus’ or ‘peers’ or ‘party’ or ‘smart people’ or ‘in crowd’ or ‘poll’ or ‘tribe’ or whatever the name du jour may be) wants or that you can trick them into thinking the hive wants. And people can and do trick them into accepting someone’s “alpha” status.
Slavery in the guise of total freedom. And it’s so pretty, too, and so prevalent in this “systems” era we’ve been getting deeper and deeper into since the end of World War II.
There’s an awful lot of people in this world who’ll follow you into slavery for the sake of something shiny, and they’ll stay there, too, as long as you’re smart and don’t tighten their chains or rattle them more than is necessary to keep them scared into not thinking for themselves.
Real freedom…adult freedom: it’s hard to come by. Which is why it is precious.
What are the air holes for?
I vote mailing them to Madagascar, no air holes, and Penguins driving the freighter ship. Hey, it worked out well for Alex, Marty, Gloria, and Melman.
Screw the air holes. And screw boxes. How about packed 90-yard containers.
For a long time I’ve been describing it like Mark does (license vs. liberty), but it takes a lot of explaining to anyone who has any need of hearing it in the first place. The adult/child thing might get through the armored skulls a bit easier.