Freedom and Responsibility

For some reason, I've had this essay simmering in my mind for quite a while now.

I'm not sure why but more and more frequently, it seems that people are overly concerned with what they can get from the next guy. Money, power, etc. Mostly money, however. The lottery makes tons of money, people will file lawsuits at the drop of a hat knowing it's very likely that the defendant will simply pay up rather than spend tons of money to defend himself and his property. Lawsuits of that nature don't get defended on principle nearly often enough. Judges don't throw frivolous suits out of court when they should because people have a god-given right to sue, dammit.

It's nauseating. It's sad to see a perfectly good human being waste his precious life and his time trying to get a big windfall in court. Even more sad is the human devastation which comes in the wake of such a suit. Don't get me wrong, if a person has been legitimately damaged by the action of another, the courts are well-suited to keeping us from duelling over the issue the next morning with guns or swords and lots of bloody mess to clean up afterward. There's a thought, though. Maybe if we did so, people would think a lot more seriously about whether or not their issue was all that serious! Something to consider, eh?!

What it all boils down to is this: With great freedom comes great responsibility. Such a very simplistic phrase, fraught with depth and great meaning and well worth any honest treatise.

With that, you see the purpose of this essay. Would that my words could more easily convey my thoughts. Starting with the idea that great freedom brings great responsibility, let's start with my experiences as a MOrmon, growing up in an environment wherein we were told what to think and when. Our responsibility for our thoughts was supplanted quite effectively. The result, of course, was that we could do only whatever we were told to do or not do it. That was the extent of our responsibility. Either do it or don't and if you don't, you're punished for it. Rewards were to come in a future existence.

Of course, we didn't have any real freedom as a result. We only had the choice of A or B. A was to be "good." B was to be "bad." End of story. My father used to tell me, "Yes, you have a choice. You can choose to go to church or you can choose to stay home and clean the house, the yard, the cars, the dogs and then if the rest of the family isn't home yet, you can start all over again." Some choice, eh? Of course, responsibility was limited to getting a whupping if you chose to stay home and sit around reading a favorite stack of comic books instead. Once we learned to fake sick from time to time, we could avoid both at will.

Needless to say, this particular lazy bastard went to church and suffered, probably more, actually.

Look at people who do not attemp to provide for their own retirement. What do you do with such a person? Do you judge them as having been one who "should have known" and should have started working on their retirement at age 21 so they would be financially ready when age 67 1/2 rolled around? I don't know the answer to that question. What I DO know is that if they don't take responsibility for themselves, government steps in with social security to pay the bills. So why should we care? The government will take care of everything! Or so it is said.

In short, the guy doesn't have to be responsible for himself. And guess what? He loses a small amount of freedom. Could he have done better than the government in providing for his retirement? Without a doubt. His level of freedom is reduced by the amount of financial freedom he loses by relying solely on the government to provide. In other words, by giving his responsibility over to the government social security program.

Remember, if you give up responsibility, you give up freedom. Every time you allow the government, religion, your spouse, your parents or teachers to take over responsibility for your existence, you give up some degree of your personal freedom. Ever hear of the guy who's 45 years old and lives at home? Do you think he has freedom for any of the time during which his parents are paying his bills for him? Freedom is lost as responsibility is abdicated and shrivels from disuse. Those who do not willingly take responsibility for their actions amd themselves are a curse to society.

I think this may be one of the reasons gun owners are upset about gun control laws. It's a clear-cut case of the government telling people, "You're not competent enough to take care of the responsibilities of this device so we're going to disallow you this freedom and this responsibility."

Same thing with drug usage. Alcohol consumption. Property rights. Etc. etc. Any time the government tells you you can or cannot do something innocuous, it's a denail of freedom, pure and simple. It's as if government would prefer to take away your freedoms than hold you appropriately responsible for your actions. I wonder why that is.

Always remember, it is not possible to give up responsibility for yourself and retain your freedom. Likewise, if you wish to have great freedom, you must accept great responsibility. Remember that concept when you go to the polls and elect officials who wish to limit your freedoms and your responsibilities. Can you handle the responsibility of putting a roof over your head without the government stepping in with a minimum wage requirement? Or do you believe it's more important to have a job guarantee based on your high-school diploma because you were too lackadaisical about your education and decided to party instead?

Every time you allow someone to make a decision for you, you give up your freedom and responsibility for the action. Those who take your freedom in such a fashion are the most likely to claim that you have the most freedom. Beware this delusion. If you abdicate your responsibility and hand it to another, you run the risk of finding yourself incabable of exercising any particular freedom in your future if for no other reason than simply because you're completely incompetent. Those who allow such things to occur do not understand the connection between freedom and responsibility. Those who would perpetuate the loss of freedoms or responsibilities also may not understand the connection. Think carefully any time you say, "I'll take care of that for you," to another person. You may do them more harm than good.

A valuable note: If you use your freedom irresponsibly, you will lose it. Think about it. If you commit a crime and end up in jail, your freedom is gone. If you fail to go to school, you may find yourself stuck in a desk job and wondering, at age 40, what the hell happened? Wondering why you have no financial freedom and are living from paycheck to paycheck. How depressing. Once lost, your freedoms become difficult to regain. Look forward with clear eyes and protect your future freedoms with your present responsibility.

If you give up your responsibility and freedom willingly, it is a slap in the face to those who gave you your freedom. Think of the veterans who fought for your freedoms. Think of the immigrants who battled their way through obstacles and hardships to get their butts to this country, because it was free, to give their children, your ancestors, the freedom to build a life better than that which was left behind in the old countries.

Those who take responsibility for their actions are the purveyors of freedom for all. Those who seek to blame others for their ills are, in some fashion or another, slaves in their own minds, having given up their freedoms and responsibilities.

Often people seek to get monetary compensation for natural calamities. These people are not free either, though they seem to believe they are. They are slaves to their own "handout" mentality. Such illicitly-gotten money will soon be gone simply because the value of a handout cannot be perceived because of it's ill-gotten nature. People laud the paychecks of sports figures. Baseball, Basketball, Football, etc. etc. Jo DiMaggio once said, "There are no rich men's sons in baseball." Now why do you think that is? Simple: They have no stomach for the effort required to be in baseball. I suspect that also answers the question of why so many of the best baseballers are immigrants from third-world countries.

"Life responds to deserve, not to need." --Jim Rohn. Those who receive without deserving to will soon lose that which they received. The freedom to deserve things carries with it the responsibility to act with care for that which was received. Fortunately, such deserving also carries with it an equivalent sense of responsibility for that which was received. The guy who makes his own chit will take good care of it. Ever give your kid a toy for Christmas and find out it's destroyed an hour or two later and forgotten in a pile of wreckage? How dispappointing is that? Do you have any doubt that if continued, that kind of behavior will continue throughout the child's life? Is there some damage that will occur to the child if they pay for their own car as opposed to you buying it for him?

All too often, people in a free society are deluded into believing that freedom and entitlement are the same thing. This mindset causes a fast erosion of freedoms. There is nothing in the law of nature or of this country which says that healthcare should be given to every person. Every person should be able to work for it, sure. There is no law that says that every person in this country should have a higher education. Only that they should be able to work for it. Does that sound harsh? Again, what's to stop a person from getting an education necessary to command the kind of job which comes with a health benefit? Only his lack of a sense of responsibility.

The American populace in their own free society, has a delusion that Freedom and Entitlement both mean the same thing. They do not. In order for freedom to work, entitlement has to be eliminated. Once again, life responds to deserve, not need. And certainly not to a vaporous concept such as entitlement.

I suppose it could be said, the more responsibility which is accepted by a person, the more free that person will be.

--Wag--