One Small Victory For Personal Responsibility

[Rostov]

The problem is, as I stated earlier, once government starts regulating something, it never, never stops.  If we let the camel get its nose under the tent, it will eventually get all the way in.  One of the U.S founders said, "The price of freedom is constant vigilance."  Ben Franklin once stated, "Those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither."  I'm a big boy, and I don't need the government telling me what to do with myself, let me take responsiblity for my actions and I'll think for myself, rather than abdicate that responsiblity to others.

 

Well, I think we may have reached the point (as I rather suspected we would) where we'll just have to agree to disagree.  I just don't share the view that government regulation is a slippery slope which - once started - is unstoppable.  That's just not my experience, and it's a belief that I don't really understand the origins of or evidence for.  I'd agree to an extent about the importance of constant vigilance in defence of freedom, but I'd add a caveat of a degree of proportionality about what actually represents a threat to freedom and what doesn't.  I'm not going to crudely caricature anyone as thinking that it's limits on soda one day, black helicopters the next, but I think reactions need to be proportionate and sensible.

 

As for liberty and security, well, it's not really security we're talking about - it's public health.  But I think the reality about liberty and security is that there's always and everywhere a trade-off between the two - you can't have a criminal justice system, passports, traffic lights, health and safety laws, or driving licences without constraining liberty.  I know very little about Franklin, but I'd imagine his point was about not sacrificing more liberty for more security from whatever the status quo happened to be at the time.