By Charles H. Sawders
Everybody understands the multitudinous blessings of liberty. We all know that living to one's own lights is the ultimate human condition so cherished and desired by most of the world's population.
However, let's talk about the downsides of liberty. Oh, yes! Liberty has some downsides, especially when we talk about every common ordinary man being armed and walking among other men with weapons of deadly capability.
Should this be allowed? Should we honor the claim to the right to be able to protect one's self and other innocents? Should we countenance a society in which anybody and everybody might be armed with implements of fatal potential?
Those are the questions we need to answer. So here goes.
Liberty's downsides are mainly two. Only two, but they are big ones.
The first is that liberty is by definition risky. That's right, risky. For every freedom of choice, habit, or intention that one has, so have others. Others who may not be as moral or principled have as much liberty to do what they will, as do you. As most people are good and decent, the risk is not great, but it is real.
The second downside to liberty is responsibility. Uh huh! The big R. Scares the Hell out of a lot of people. There are a great many that believe they can have liberty without the responsibility to maintain it. I know that sounds unrealistic, but it is true. There are many people in our nation who would abrogate their responsibility to maintain their liberty and their security to hirelings who may or may not have their employers' best interests at heart. To the extent that they surrender their responsibility to protect themselves and their liberty, they surrender their liberty. This trade of freedom for security is a straight one for one trade until the point of "inability of the society to envision themselves as free and deserving to be so". When that point is reached the hirelings take control and liberty is outlawed. Period.
So, I have a proposal for all that would disarm the people. It is simple. Come to me. I will protect you so long as you do what I tell you to do. I will protect you at least as well as the police do (which they are not obligated to do, by the way)and I will consider it an obligation. I will treat you with more gentleness than you will find among the operatives that want you helpless. This I promise.
Anyone who does not find my proposal acceptable, yet favors citizen helplessness and disarmament, by definition are mentally defective. For what difference who be the master if one is willing to be a slave?
If one see a problem with my proposal, I submit that they should be just as wary of all others who have offered the very same thing.
If you would be free, you must accept the risks and responsibilities of liberty.
Think about it.
Looks to me like the hirelings have just about completed their task. City governments, school boards, and on up the line have taken the taxpayers voice away.
ReplyDeleteThe quote below has been around for some time and covers a little different issue, but the end result is still the same. the veracity of this quote has been questioned, but no matter, the result is still oh so true. Me thinks we are just about done for, what have we got to lose?
This quote is over 200 years old. It was penned by Professor Alexander Tyler, a Scottish historian, who in 1787 wrote about the fall of the Athenian Republican over 2,000 years earlier..... "A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover they can vote themselves money from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. "The average age of the world's great civilizations has been 200 years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to selfishness; from selfishness to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependence and back to bondage." What phase of this cycle do you think we are in?