I got to thinking about that tonight because we are in that time of the year when inevitably my daughter will come running into our room at night a few hours after we put her to bed. Why? Because some fool is out in the street shooting off fireworks, and it's all about FREEDOM (I can hear Mel Gibson screaming out as his nuts are chopped off as I write that). We celebrate our freedom from the tea-tax bullies from Britain by blowing stuff up, sometimes our own hands.
I used to be one of those people who had the 'Merica, F___ Yeah!' attitude about life. We're free, we're Americans, and nobody is gonna tell us what we can and can't do, whether within our own borders or outside as well. I used to be all about freedom: free markets, freedom for guns, freedom to live however we want to.
But as I've gotten a bit older, and hopefully more mature, I've realized that in a country of 300 million people that my freedom has limitations. I don't have the right to always do what I want to do. The 299,999,999 other people who call this place home have an interest in my life, and I have an interest in theirs. Thus maybe it's not such a great idea that we blow up fireworks outside of houses when people in those houses have to get up at 4:15am to go to work. Sure, YOU may get your jollies by doing that, but it's not so pleasant being woken up by either the fireworks or by an already sleep-deprived daughter.
So we recognize this. The fireworks only last for a week. We limit smoking inside buildings. We stop selling high-capacity gun clips to people who are likely to go onto murderous rampages. We don't allow people to scream 'FIRE!' in a crowded theater. Somewhere along the way, we have a bit of common sense, limiting some of our freedom for the common good.
Freedom ain't free, but it ain't unlimited, either.
