Just How Free a People do we Want to Be?

This is what the lady had to say:

You have obviously never had a loved one become addicted to drugs otherwise you would never want drugs to be legal.

This was my response:

I'm sorry someone you love became addicted to drugs. However, it doesn't give you, or anyone else, the right to deny me the freedom to choose or not to choose to take drugs. Whatever happened to the land of liberty?

I knew fellows who died in Vietnam, yet they never passed legislation prohibiting war. Likewise the thousands of people who lose loved ones to automobile accidents every year never see driving banned. Alcoholism is a brutal disease, yet even after we banned alcohol, we unbanned it!

What freedom do we have if we cannot choose of our own volition to eschew drugs? And by making drugs illegal, we've enhanced their cachet for countless people and declared war on many Americans. You know, "forbidden fruit." If our ancestors defied the good Lord Himself on that, why do you think that anyone should obey a government of men on it?

By all means share your story so others can learn, but don't expect people to behave as you want them to, and don't think you have a right to expect the government to legislate such behavior.

The question is, how far does a free society go in proscribing certain behavior?

When European settlers first arrived in the New World, seeking, we're told, religious tolerance, tolerance was the furthest thing from their minds – they wanted to be free to practice their religion without interference from the state. They were as intolerant of difference as the authorities they fled, and they used the coercive power of government to enforce their morals.

Some time later, after proclaiming that all men are created equal, and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, those settlers' descendents fought a bloody war for the right to govern themselves, rather than bow to a distant King. Yet in forming their government after winning that war, they managed to craft a government that officially recognized the right of some people to own other people. It took another war to end the practice of slavery in the USA.

The issues generating controversy today – drug use, sexual activities, and marriage, to name some of the most visible – don't approach slavery in terms of the extent to which one group of humans abuses the rights of another group. Nevertheless, in our own nation's evolution, the fact that a majority of our citizens (and not the same majority in all cases) is willing to use the power of the government to impose its will on the minority is troubling, especially when one considers that most of those majorities are self-described conservatives – that is, people who believe in a small government that doesn't involve itself in the private affairs of the governed.