No Idea What Freedom Means

Swaddled in Kindness That Kills

People have a right to go to the grave in their own way.  It's called freedom.  Necessarily contingent to the ethic of freedom is that we have a human right to damage to ourselves, undermine our own health, shorten our lives by stupid habits, and otherwise act to our own destruction. Not before God, mind--but before civic authorities.

The most oft-heart objection to freedom arises out of social welfare: since the cost of paying for damage is collectivised in our kookie world, those who damage themselves--by what they eat, or drink, or ingest, for example--end up costing the collective.  So, they must be made to stop it.

Rubbish.
  Economic models have demonstrated repeatedly that people who live short, relatively diseased lives cost the Exchequer far less than those who live long lives of physical probity.  The people with stupid self-harming behaviours actually do the Exchequer (that is, all of the rest of us) a great good.  They are saving us all money.

In the United States, Michelle Obama has accepted the duty to be the nation's Mother--lecturing all and sundry about the duty of healthy eating.  Mayor Bloomberg, wowser-in-chief, has banned just about everything ingestible to improve public health and to fight obesity in New York.  Both--along with all their confabulating confederates--are enemies of human freedom.

Far, far more salutary would be a very simple message: take responsibility for yourself and face the consequences of your actions.  That's what a freedom is after all.   Therefore, you have a right to be stupid, to do damage to yourself, to shorten your own life, to impoverish yourself, and to engage in your own destruction. And the rest of us will defend your right to do it, even while choosing other courses.

Ironically, US citizens sing about living "in the land of the free and the home of the brave".  Nah.  In Bloomberg City and Obamaland US citizens live in the land of the wowser and the home of the cocooned.  "We know what's best for you, so do what we say."

Yes, we shall.  Mayor Bloomberg is our Father and Michelle is our Mother.  Will you sing nursery rhymes to us as you swaddle us in our beds?