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03-19-04, 01:19 PM
| #1 (permalink) |
| Ain't your momma's meat  Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,364
 | The price of Freedom
So I'm at work and one of the guys up here has one of those screen savers that has words that roll across the screen (standard out-of-the-box Windows-like). Anyways, the point is that it reads: 'Thanks to our men and women in the armed services who pay the price for freedom.' Sorry, but what a croc of shit. Freedom has *no* price; freedom either is or it isn't. Politics, on the other hand, does certainly have a price, just exchanging the words politics (democracy) and freedom is a marketing ploy. I've heard the argument about politics 'protecting' our freedom, but I do not believe that this government has given me an adequate manefestation of the freedoms it purports to perpetuate. Regardless of this, I believe freedom is more of a personal choice than a political one. |
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03-19-04, 01:55 PM
| #3 (permalink) | |
| SelfRighteous Foreign Pig  Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Internats
Posts: 14,605
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Or the Holocaust survivors...
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03-19-04, 01:58 PM
| #4 (permalink) | |
| SelfRighteous Foreign Pig Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Internats
Posts: 14,605
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Sometimes it costs too much and in the end you get nothing... Tiananmen-1989 One of my good friends and his family were in a hotel overlooking Tiananmen square (they were on vacation... talk about the wrong place at the wrong time)... He was telling his dad what he saw out the window, while his dad was on the phone to a CNN-Correspondant... He said the most memberable sight he saw was this mother holding her crying baby on the street and a soldier came up to her... grabbed the baby, cut the head off of it, then shot her in the head... Yea... for some people, the price of pursuing freedom is too great to afford...
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03-19-04, 03:21 PM
| #5 (permalink) |
| Ain't your momma's meat Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,364
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Somehow I knew the extremist arguments would come back on this one. There are ways to live free in this world, without having to 'pay a price', per se (meaning conflict). Maybe I'm just too optimistic and believe myself to be more free than others, because I don't subscribe my life to living under political reign. Non-consumerism / anti-capitalism breeds happiness (at least for me  ).
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03-19-04, 05:58 PM
| #8 (permalink) | ||
| SelfRighteous Foreign Pig Join Date: Jul 2002 Location: Internats
Posts: 14,605
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Just say it dude... You are living in America... one of the free countries on the planet... You have the luxory to assume that you are just too optimistic and believe yourself to be more free than others, because you, yourself, are free... Personally, I think you are taking it for granted.... Fighting Iraq doesn't necessarily protect our freedom, but the fact we are already free cloud's us of how life is like under a oppressive regime.. How does the blind see the problems another people face? He has to hear the descriptions those people give about it, or he has to listen to the other blind people debate about it and take a position...
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03-19-04, 06:55 PM
| #9 (permalink) | |
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read an article discussing what became of that generation in China. It was a group of well educated "yuppy" Chinese - so to speak. Essentially the event has been stricken from the record and memories fade. Wade memory is left they apparently shun. The basic tone was that these people felt the crack down was necesssary to retain order - but alos necessary to improve peolpe's lot....which was only possible by maintain order. His comment was essentially that those who died did so, so that China could experience the relative economic vigor it has of late - trade freedom for a bit higher standard of living. (fair trade? your buddy run over by a tank so you get a better vacation 15 years later?) | |
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03-19-04, 06:56 PM
| #10 (permalink) | |
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03-19-04, 08:21 PM
| #11 (permalink) | |
| Ain't your momma's meat Join Date: Feb 2004
Posts: 1,364
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And 420Tosser, you can plug your PLUR, even though you erased the comment .
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03-19-04, 10:33 PM
| #12 (permalink) | |||
| Feline Leukemia Survivor  Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Law School
Posts: 7,767
| Re: The price of Freedom Quote:
I don't think that our soldiers are "paying" the price of freedom. They are paying the cost of all of us allowing a president to engage in an illegal war. Quote:
I understand what you're saying here, about freedom being an inherent right that we are born with. Alright, I can accept that. But I would disagree that the exercise of that right does indeed come with a price. Perhaps that is what you mean by politics/democracy, but that isn't really clear. In the US, we don't pay a price for the exercise of our freedom, rather, we are very passive towards it and passive towards the ever existing encroachment by those who seek power, be it political or economic power. That's a very unique situation in the world. Most countries, even other industrialized nations, have populations that overwhelmingly stand up for their rights. I could talk about why I think that is, but that's a rather lengthy discussion. In many countries, people lack the ability to exercise their freedom, and they often pay a price to fight for it. Quote:
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03-20-04, 01:51 AM
| #13 (permalink) |
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We have no draft. Those in our armed forces were well informed of the purpose of the military they signed up to be a part of; that purpose includes the possibility of fighting a war and putting their lives in danger. I'm not saying I am ungrateful for the things our armed forces do -- quite the contrary. But they do not pay the price for freedom. It takes more than our armed forces alone to make this country work; yes, we do need them, but we also need our teachers, police, food workers, everyone. I don't think anyone in the United States this day in age really pays a price for freedom (except maybe taxes); people in the U.S.A. have it pretty damn easy compared to most of the world. |
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03-20-04, 03:51 AM
| #14 (permalink) |
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Everything has its cost, even an allegedly "God-given right". So maybe in the abstract it has no cost, but the reality is that to have a safe, permitted venue(with $1 water!) where people can be free requires security. Iraq may not be a threat to us but other nations can and have been in the past. Freedom may be a right, but the greed of a small powerful few will often take precedence over the rights of the masses to exercise it. Best believe that if we did not have that bloated, corrupt 400 billion dollar a year phalanx guarding our borders, plenty of nations would consider your right to be free secondary to their own desire to own a chuck o' the good ole US of A.
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03-21-04, 11:49 PM
| #15 (permalink) | |
| Feline Leukemia Survivor Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: Law School
Posts: 7,767
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