How many of you like being controlled?
Many of you are in a stage where you're straining against your parents' boundaries, and what they want you to do, who they want you to be, conflicts with your own personal will. You are feeling that lure of freedom, the idea that you can do whatever you want without consequences.
How much do you love freedom?
If you come from a lenient family, do not take your freedom for granted. In my household I was not allowed to be alone in a room with a boy. I was not allowed to raise my voice or speak in any manner other than utter respect to my parents. I once was grounded for three days for failing to say, "Yes, Dad," when my father spoke to me.
I was so controlled that I told my parents the truth in nearly everything, even if it would get me in extreme trouble, out of terror of what would happen if they caught me lying.
It gets worse. In some countries, if you play or create music that sounds too "Western", if you don't seem devoted to the Dear Leader by not having enough pictures of him in your house, if you try to escape, if you show even the slightest hint of discontentment despite enduring famine and poverty and no medical services, you are in danger of getting hauled away to concentration camps or outright executed.
People all across the globe live in fear, be it in their own families or their nations. They do not have freedom. Do you know what that frustration is, to be bound, every day, with no escape in sight?
When is it ever justified to control another human being? When is it ever morally right to make someone else do what they don't want to do? Save, of course, parents protecting their children from hurting themselves, or stopping someone from harming or violating another's rights. It is okay to stop someone from stealing your things or shooting you - I'm not talking about that, I'm talking about legal adults doing things that don't hurt anybody.
My point is there is no situation - outside of harm or if the person agreed to it - where one can control another against his will without it being wrong. People are adults, they are responsible, they should be allowed to do whatever they want, and attempting to control them or limit them means that they're being treated as children who can't be trusted to fend for themselves.
Do you agree?
Do you agree that not even governments should be allowed to violate personal freedom?
So why is it illegal to put certain substances in your own body, if you are a consenting, legal adult who knows full well what you're doing? Why should anyone else have the right to stop you?
Why does the government take money from your paycheck without your consent to spend on things that you have no say in? Isn't that stealing?
Why is marrying who you want wrong? Isn't that controlling your personal love life? Why should anyone else think that they even come close to having a say in that?
Why should other people have the power to dictate what you can and cannot own? Why should they decide that you aren't responsible enough to own guns or fireworks or intense caffeinated drinks? What gives them the right to infringe on your freedom like that?
Why should governments have the ability to tell you where you can and cannot live? Why do you have to obtain their permission before building a house the way you want to? If you want to build a house of soda cans cemented together in a huge dome, guess what - you can't. You don't have that freedom.
Why should you be required to hire people you don't want to hire, if it's your business that you created and run?
And, on the flip side - why expect other people to provide for you? Isn't that infringing on their freedom? While help in hard times would be nice, maybe even save you from depression or homelessness - it is not a right. Help is never a right, because the moment help is a right it ceases being help and starts being servitude.
We are being controlled. Our freedom is a myth. We are in servitude to the government. We pay them without choice, we obey them in things that cause no harm out of fear of imprisonment or fines.
They treat us like children, so we are beginning to act like children.
We do not love freedom enough.
Off to shine her shotgun,
-Antier
