Ok Skinner, here is my drunken rant about DU I promised ya :)

[The Straight Story]

(I was gonna post this last night, but got busy with the wife. Shit happens)

The previous thread where I said I would post this :)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x2831305

Just because your leg is broke doesn't mean I need a cast
By TSS

For a long time I have equated liberalism with equality and freedom. Until I started reading some of the threads here.

Freedom to me used to mean a line drawn in the sand - you have some laws and regulations to create a framework for a free society and then you stand there and defend that line from people who want to erase it. Often we complain that the people wanting to erase it are religious fundies.

Well, they sure as hell aren't the only ones.

Now everything has become about money. Whether it be your home (and when did a home become an investment and not a place to live and shelter yourself?) or health care - the accountants in society have determined that anything I do could affect you and therefore we need to regulate everyone more and more.

You smoke? Companies can now fire you or refuse to hire you (and test you for smoking) because it might cost someone else more money. Obese? That is in the mix now too. Have a fire in your fireplace? Well, that adds to local pollution so we need to stop it - you can only heat via paying a big company.

Slowly but surely we keep attaching the actions of others to our money.

And the sad thing is, I see that more here on DU than anywhere else (ok, to be fair I spend more time here than anywhere else as this is my internet Home).

Normally cool progressive and liberal folks here on DU turn into quasi-religious zealots telling folks that their way is the only way and we have to punish those we don't agree with.

I am all for simple and sensible regulation starting on the local level to address local issues - but when you start telling me that I can't have a fire in my back yard way out in the country because people in the city can't have one due to too much pollution I get a little pissed off.

You don't need to stretch the band aid you need on your arm all the way to me.

It's called diversity. I don't want to tell the Amish how to live, anymore than I want them telling me how to live.

Once more - I get that we need sensible regulation, rules, laws, etc as a society. But I have seen time and again how it starts with one thing and leads to another (to wit - when they decided that people had to wear seat belts in Ohio it was a secondary offense, about 6 years later it became a primary one. Incrementally we are boxing ourselves in).

WHY do some here on DU support this erosion? Is it because you feel that the rest of us need to follow your lead or be punished for the good of all? do you feel your way is the best and only way to the salvation of humankind?

The line has been erased and moved yet again - and to see it supported here makes what little hope I had for freedom disappear.

Does progress mean we keep eroding the rights of the person for the group?

If so, I want no part of that.

To me the price of freedom is accepting the fact that some folks will do things I don't like. They may own handguns, they may smoke (yes, even in bars!), drive SUV's, etc and so on.

It may even affect me and those I love in negative ways.

The cost of freedom is not measured in wars and blood from such, it is measured in how much I am willing to put up with people doing things I don't like (and they doing the same for me).

A government cannot give freedom, it can only take it away and regulate it. And to a point that is ok (ie, as I said above a framework). But what I have seen time and again here is that people are willing to remove freedoms due to money.

And now I fear we have not simply lost battles, but we have lost the war when folks side with controlling others for the sake of the almighty dollar.

Liberal used to mean freedom and diversity. Sadly, some here want to make it mean control of others for their own ideals.

Rant off :)