Thursday, May 24, 2007

Good Idea vs. Compulsion

There are a lot of things I think are good ideas for liberty-seekers to get involved with. Things like jury duty and gun ownership. There are other things that I think are just a good idea for anyone like wearing a seat belt or a motorcycle helmet. There is a difference between "thinking it is a good idea" and making it mandatory. Only government can destroy a good idea that way.

Although I believe that jury duty is the best weapon we have to peacefully stop the US police state in its tracks, I would never encourage making it compulsory to serve. Who does that benefit? If you have 12 disgruntled jurors sitting there daydreaming about strangling the people responsible for their captivity is justice likely? I think not!

Or how about guns? I think that owning them and knowing how to use them is a very intelligent thing to do. If someone has no interest in having one or learning to safely handle one, then that person would be happier, and so would I, if he just didn't bother with it. I have gone shooting with one person that I refused to shoot with ever again after seeing his disregard for basic safety rules. He then joined the military and left the area.

I am the first person to insist that everyone in my car wear a seat belt. Yet, whenever I see those "Click it or ticket" propaganda ads on TV, I want to never wear one again. It is smart to wear a seat belt, but it is incomprehensibly evil to require it by "law".

Government can take a perfectly good idea, and by passing counterfeit "laws" make it into a reprehensible compulsion.