Stress has been high these last few days \u2013 I\u2019m preparing a PR event for work, and I was stupid enough to give out my own cell number as the RSVP line. Which means I\u2019ve been inundated with phone calls, and I haven\u2019t been able to breathe. The event is on Friday, which means the calls end on Friday, too, hopefully.<\/p>\n
I anxiously await the arrival of freedom.<\/p>\n
Which leads me to our topic today, boys and girls, which is the aforementioned freedom thingie. Whereas tolerance is overrated, freedom is vastly underrated. And a large chunk of the electorate neither knows nor cares what it is. <\/p>\n
Let\u2019s begin with the basic assumption at the root of our nation\u2019s founding. Freedom is an inherent right, one granted by God, not government. When government gets in the way, it\u2019s time to get a new government. I\u2019m not as poetic as Thomas Jefferson, but I think the paraphrase is accurate.<\/p>\n
Every minute of every day, you have the freedom to make choices. For instance, right now I\u2019m choosing to write a blog entry instead of ANSWERING THAT DAMN PHONE\u2026 which is, of course, ringing even as we speak. However, by choosing to do this, I have also chosen the consequences \u2013 I\u2019m going to have to clear out my voicemail again \u2013 I only have eighteen messages before it fills up \u2013 and this will likely add to the stress of my day. Of course, I could blow off the phone calls entirely, which would likely mean I lose my job. But I chose those consequences when I took the job. I also like the consequence of getting paid, and this seemed to be the best course of action I was free to take to get the big bucks.<\/p>\n
So as much as I moan and whine about how much things suck at the moment \u2013 STOP RINGING, PHONE! \u2013 I chose this. I was free to do so, and I did it. I would like to be starring on American Idol instead, or playing James Bond in the next 007 movie, or collecting endorsement deals for my eight Olympic gold medals, but those choices aren\u2019t available to me. I\u2019m too old and too lousy to be on American Idol; too ugly and unknown to be James Bond; too flabby and bong free to be Michael Phelps. Freedom and opportunity are not necessarily the same thing.<\/p>\n
Or, to put it another way, freedom doesn\u2019t make life fair.<\/p>\n
As a nation, we keep thinking fairness and freedom are the same thing. They\u2019re not. They\u2019re antithetical. In order to make your life just as nifty as someone else\u2019s, government yanks away some of their freedom to provide you with fairness. So Obama\u2019s stimulus plan gives \u201ctax rebates\u201d to people who don\u2019t pay taxes. He\u2019s putting us a trillion more dollars in debt to \u201cstimulate the economy\u201d at the expense of your freedom. Every resource the government confiscates to fuel its activity is a resource you\u2019re no longer free to manage.<\/p>\n
Nobody seems to think of it in these terms anymore.<\/p>\n
Instead, they point out all the great things the government is doing with your money. And how unfair it is that rich people make so much and poor people get so little, and what are you, heartless? Many even invoke religious principles to justify the encroachment of government on your liberty. After all, Christ gave to the poor, didn\u2019t he? Aren\u2019t we supposed to do what Christ does?<\/p>\n
I read a letter to the editor to this effect in the Deseret News yesterday. \u201cAs an LDS member who often votes Democratic,\u201d the guy says, \u201cI do so because I believe those with much have a mandate to help those with little.\u201d As a guy who never votes Democratic, I can\u2019t agree with this more. Yet the Democrats – and way too many Republicans – refuse to allow me the freedom to help others. They take my resources and distribute them as they see fit, and they do so at the point of a gun. I am not free to resist, unless I want to go to jail for tax evasion. I don\u2019t get to choose how the money is spent, and I have less money of my own to direct to the people and programs I believe in. How is that fulfilling Christ\u2019s mission? When did Christ confiscate someone else\u2019s property against their will?<\/p>\n
People prefer fairness because fairness is tidy and neat. Freedom is messy. Freedom means people can be jerks and spend their money on season tickets to minor league hockey games instead of giving it to the food bank. Freedom means people who look like Brad Pitt will get Oscar nominations and people who look like Stallion Cornell can only write catty, jealous blog comments about it. Freedom means disappointment and frustration when things don\u2019t go as you planned, which is more often than not. It\u2019s no wonder, then, that people want to trade in freedom for fairness.<\/p>\n
Folks, I\u2019m telling you, it\u2019s not a good deal.<\/p>\n
All over the world, people have made the exchange, and the standard of living for everyone has gone down as a result. I\u2019d rather make fifty grand a year and have my neighbor make a hundred than have both of us make twenty-five. I don\u2019t think someone else\u2019s success limits my freedom. I do think that a government that piles on the debt is putting me in bondage with the best of intentions. That\u2019s something it has no right to do.<\/p>\n
In the course of writing this, I\u2019ve gotten twelve new voicemail messages. Shoot me now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stresshas been high these last few days \u2013 I\u2019m preparing a PR event for work, and I was stupid enough to give out my own cell number as the RSVP line. Which means I\u2019ve been inundated with phone calls, and I haven\u2019t been able to breathe. The event is on Friday, which means the calls ... Read more<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-80","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stallioncornell.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}