The true cost of freedom.

I am a strong believer in original American personal freedom. The idea that you can do anything you want in your life as long as you do not directly harm someone else. With this freedom you have the ability to make or brake your life and you and only you are responsible for yourself.

It is never the Governments job to protect us from ourself or be our nannies. This of course allows for the possibility of wrecking our own life. But that is the cost of freedom and one well worth paying.

Under this mind set, the question " should someone do fill in the blank " and " should it be legal to do fill in the blank " become two different questions.

If you are a Christian or one of the many other faiths you are already used to separating those two questions on a few different levels. That is, just because something is legal, does not mean that you get to or want to do it. Right now there is nothing legally stopping you from going into a bar and getting hammered drunk, yet this would go against the biblical world view of remaining sober minded. And so you under stand the idea that just because something is legal does not mean that you will do it. You live a standard that is different or greater than the one set by the Government.

Originally no drugs were allowed to be out lawed in the United States. It was your right as a free person to choose what to put into your own body. After all, if you did not have freedom over your own body, then what did you have freedom over? But drugs were banned the same way all things are banned. One step at a time. Regulations. They started by making it where a doctors prescription was required to use hard drugs. This made doctors over night the local drug dealers. Doctors became quite popular. Shortly after this the Government started having Doctors who prescribed hard drugs arrested for malpractice. And this is how you take away people's freedoms, one step at a time.

Now I MUST point out at this time that I DO NOT promote Christians doing any of the now illegal drugs. What I do promote is personal freedom and the Government staying out of our life's.

Let me ask, has making drugs illegal stopped people from doing them? Maybe a better question would be, did prohibition stop people from making or drinking alcohol? Out lawing both alcohol or drugs does not stop people from making it or drinking it, it only insures that people get them through the most dangerous means possible.

Let me ask you this. If tomorrow all drugs became legal would you then because it became legal start taking meth? If your friends start taking meth because of the law change would you not try to encourage them to stop?

The Government can not and should not try to control people's personal morality. It doesn't work, it cost to much and it allows the government to set our morals for us.

The U.S. federal government spent over $19 billion dollars in 2003 on the War on Drugs, at a rate of about $600 per second. The budget has since been increased by over a billion dollars.
Source: Office of National Drug Control Policy
That is a whole lot of money and it has not and can not stop the creation and the consumption of drugs. It is a huge waste.

So how would a truly free nation handle something like drugs? Someone starts taking hard drugs. Their family and friends tries to talk this person out of doing drugs and gives him any kind of help they can. If the person will not stop then they lose their job ( most likely ) and they steal something to support their habit, this person goes to jail for stealing. He gets out and most likely is homeless. If he had a family then hopefully they are staying with family, friends or maybe a church members house. This person ether, in the end, ends up dead, in prison for repeat theft or he gets his act together and gets off the hard drugs. In the end, he like all people in a truly free country, ether suffers or benefits form his personal choices. Personal responsibility and freedom have to go together. If we give free hand outs to people who can't get their act together, then of course the Government has to try to control every small and major detail in our life.

This may seem like a legalize drugs post. It's not. It's a legalize freedom and responsibility post. Pick any other subject were the government tries to become our nannies. There are thousands on thousands of rules that placed on us that have nothing to do with stopping us from harming other humans, that remove our freedoms. I care about each and everyone of those subject as well. I care about freedom.

And what is the point of all of this? Isn't freedom over rated? (No, it's far to under rated.)
The point is, given the chance all Governments will oppress its own people. We left England for many reasons many of them had to do with not having personal freedoms and Government oppression. We tried to write our constitution in such a way that we would never ever be able to repeat what we went thru back then. It would be a darn shame for future history books to read. "And then there was the USA, who broke apart from a oppressive, no privacy, over taxed, big brother government just to become the very thing it hated in under 250 years."