Are You Willing to Pay the Price of Freedom

As with most good things, freedom has a price.

Unfortunately, it is a price higher than most anyone is willing to pay. That price is minding your own business.

This seems like a simple thing. Most of us believe in the concept of minding our own business, but putting it into practice is tough. When your neighbor does something you disagree with, you want to tell them what to do. If they still disagree, you want to force them to do things your way.

It could be as simple as not cutting their grass or having an old car in the driveway. When persuasion does not work, most of us then want to resort to the law. We try to use the force of law to get what we cannot obtain voluntarily. We want to force folks to live by our standards and our view of right and wrong. We want to define correct behavior for them.

Just as you cannot get everything done voluntarily, you cannot get everything done through the force of law. Americans use the force of law more than the citizens of any other country do. We have five times as many people in prison as Britain, nine times as many as Germany, and twelve times as many as Japan. One out of thirty two Americans are either in prison or under the supervision of the courts. While some of the offenders might be a danger to society, most have been imprisoned because they made choices that other people disagree with.

Most of us are unhappy with the actions of our Federal Government. We think they squander the money they extort from us. Many others are displeased with their State Governments. However, folks are generally happy with their local governments so long as they do not have to deal with them. They like to march to their City Council meeting after something they disagree with happens in their town. People want to use coercion to obtain what they cannot obtain through persuasion. We need to banish the phrase “there ought to be a law” from our thoughts. We need to realize most bad laws and most bad politicians start at the local level.

We should do what we can do; set a good example. We should do what we can to persuade individuals to do the right thing. We should recognize that not everything is going to come out the way we want it to come out. We should not try to limit our freedom by passing additional laws to force people to do things the way we wan t them done.

Are you willing to pay the price of freedom?