Skip to main content

Freedom of Choice is a wonderful thing....

....and it gives us the ability to do or say pretty much what we want. For example, if I want to dress in drag and go out in the morning I can. Now that does not mean I will ever get elected to public office, but it does mean, I have a right to do it. There is a difference between having the freedom to do something and bearing the consequences of actually doing it. Responsible citizenship, basically limits what I can or cannot do.

For example, I will not do certain things like say smoke a cigarette, talk on my mobile phone and try to eat a sandwich I picked up at a wawa while driving on the freeway at somewhere around 70 miles per hour. You use freedom too creatively and you just may win a Darwin award where people actually thank you for removing yourself from the gene pool. My favorite line : "Alcohol and snowmobiles are a dangerous mix. Then came the rabbit....." Check it out for yourself here....http://www.darwinawards.com/

In Turkey however, it could happen that if I am a woman who does wear a headscarf there can be a problem,"For many Turks, the headscarf matter has come to represent a critical struggle over the future direction of the country. "With sensitive handling, this headscarf issue might just have faded away," says sociologist Ayse Oncu. "Now solving it looks almost impossible."

As the Constitutional Court considers the case, the country’s top administrative court, known as the Danistay, has erected a significant legal hurdle to the move, ruling March 11 that the Higher Education Authority did not have the power to order the acceptance of headscarves on university campuses."

http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav031208.shtml

Wouldn't be a much nicer world if people got to dress however they want without judgement? Our ability to tolerate non-violent behavior we may not approve of or understand should be limited only by our ability to do our work well, practice our art, or help one another.

Toleration is a good goal, but freedom of speech and individual rights are a blessing. I will never tell you you cannot wear a headscarf if you want to do so, and conversely if you do not want to, that is just fine with me. As long as we practice toleration for one another, there will never be a conflict.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

A Libertarian Martin Luther King Jr. Day post

In which we travel into interesting waters . . . (for a fairly long trip, so be prepared) Dr. King's 1968 book, Where do we go from here:  chaos or community? , is profound in that it criticizes anti-poverty programs for their piecemeal approach, as John Schlosberg of the Center for a Stateless Society  [C4SS] observes: King noted that the antipoverty programs of the time “proceeded from a premise that poverty is a consequence of multiple evils,” with separate programs each dedicated to individual issues such as education and housing. Though in his view “none of these remedies in itself is unsound,” they “all have a fatal disadvantage” of being “piecemeal,” with their implementation having “fluctuated at the whims of legislative bodies” or been “entangled in bureaucratic stalling.”   The result is that “fragmentary and spasmodic reforms have failed to reach down to the profoundest needs of the poor.” Such single-issue approaches also have “another common failing — ...

More of This, Please

Or perhaps I should say, "Less of this one, please." Or how about just, "None of them. Ever again. Please....For the Love of God." Sunshine State Poll: Grayson In Trouble The latest Sunshine State/VSS poll shows controversial Democratic incumbent Alan Grayson trailing former state Senator Dan Webster by seven points, 43 percent to 36 percent. A majority of respondents -- 51 percent -- disapprove of the job that Grayson is doing. Independents have an unfavorable view of him as well, by a 36/47 margin. Grayson has ignored the conventional wisdom that a freshman should be a quiet member who carefully tends to the home fires. The latest controversy involves his " Taliban Dan " advertisement, where he explicitly compares his opponent to the Taliban, and shows a clip of Webster paraphrasing Ephesians 5:22 -- "wives, submit to your husbands." An unedited version of the clip shows that Webster was actually suggesting that husba...

A reply to Salon's R. J. Eskrow, and his 11 stupid questions about Libertarians

Posts here have been in short supply as I have been living life and trying to get a campaign off the ground. But "11 questions to see if Libertarians are hypocrites" by R. J. Eskrow, picked up at Salon , was just so freaking lame that I spent half an hour answering them. In the end (but I'll leave it to your judgment), it is not that Libertarians or Libertarian theory looks hypocritical, but that the best that can be said for Mr. Eskrow is that he doesn't have the faintest clue what he's talking about. That's ok, because even ill-informed attacks by people like this make an important point:  Libertarian ideas (as opposed to Conservative ideas, which are completely different) are making a comeback as the dynamic counterpoint to "politics as usual," and so every hack you can imagine must be dragged out to refute them. Ergo:  Mr. Eskrow's 11 questions, with answers: 1.       Are unions, political parties, elections, and ...