99% of the "Law" Ain't Anybody's Business
# Fred on Everything - Buckshot And Designer Water - Fred analyzes the election results. [smith2004]
I have received thousands of letters (all right, three letters, but I'm rounding up) asking me to explain the election. Bending to the public will, I'll try.
The way it looks to me is coastal snots against the heartland. The wine-and-cheese folk against pickups with gun racks. Texas against Massachusetts. Maybe that's too simple, but I'm not going to admit it. I don't have to. I'm writing the column.
Put it this way: If Kerry had worn a cowboy hat, he'd be president. Yep, he was a hat away from the brass ring. About size three, I'd guess.
It was the cultural divide. The coastal snots have enormous contempt for Texas, Oklahoma, the South, and any other place where people can change a flat tire. Along the Northeast Corridor the snots talk of rednecks, express wonderment that some of them can read, and regard them as barbarians inhabiting blank spaces on the map with dragons drawn in them. For snots in Massachusetts, most of the country is just an inconvenience in getting to the other coast. Flyover Land. They think that people in Alabama live naked in the forest and eat grubs they dig out of stumps.
The pickup people are tired of it. And the cheese people just found out.
# R. Lee Wrights at Liberty for All - It just ain't none of my business - Just because you think something is none of the government's business doesn't mean you think it's a good idea. Take drugs for instance. I have learned well, from personal experience, to avoid the currently illegal drugs, but I think it's a heinous crime to imprison someone for smoking marijuana or crack, or for injecting heroin, or for selling them. But all you have to do is follow the money, says Mr. Wrights, and you'll quickly discover why gummint likes to "regulate" what should be our private business. This would be a good time to read or re-read Peter McWilliams' classic Ain't Nobody's Business If You Do, The Absurdity of Consensual Crimes in a Free Country, which was my introduction to libertarian thought. [smith2004]
Being a Libertarian, I know all too well what it is like to be "mislabeled" by the other parties. We Libertarians are constantly judged falsely for the stances we take against government intrusions into individuals' lives. If you believe the political rhetoric of the Democrats and Republicans, mixed with all the media hype, you will think that Libertarians are "for" all kinds of reprehensible behaviors instead of seeing the truth of the philosophy which is, in fact, "against" government making decisions for people that should be left to the individuals themselves. You see, Libertarians believe that most places where government has its collective nose today are just none of its business.
Libertarians know that most things government bureaucrats do these days just ain't none of their business. I mean, there are laws regulating everything from what color you can and cannot paint your house to what kind of sex in which two consenting adults are allowed to engage. What business is it of government who you have sex with or what your home looks like? What business do politicians have telling us what we can and cannot do with our own bodies and our own property? What makes them think they know better than you how to run your life? Why is the nature of modern-day politics like this?
Crime is big business, that's why. In fact, crime is government's biggest industry.
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We all will be much better off when everyone, especially elected politicians, start saying more and more, "It just ain't none of my business."
