Life Essay Research Paper Desire for Freedom

Life Essay, Research Paper

Desire for Freedom and Desire for Limitations on Freedom

People can have the desire for freedom as well as the desire for limitations on freedom. This is because freedom and limitations on freedom are both needed to live peacefully. Absolute freedom cannot be achieved because when you take away limitations you take away freedoms. With out rules governing our society, people would be able to do what they want to each other with out a certain punishment. When you examine the advantages and disadvantages of both arguments it becomes clearer.

I believe that one of the major reasons freedom is so desirable is because many the limitations on freedom are disallowing us the right to have control over our own bodies. Controlling our bodies is the only thing that we actually have power over. A large number of the prohibited freedoms are crimes were you make your self the victim. Such as using drugs, prostitution, suicide, vagrancy, minor in possession, dodging the draft, entering the country illegally, and age limits on the purchase of pornographic materials. All of these crimes are punishable under the law. What puts these apart from most crimes is that you choose to victimize yourself (except sometimes in the case of prostitution if they are being forced to prostitute against there own will). What people choose to do to them selves, in my opinion, is the least of our worries as a country. The last thing the government should have control over is what you choose to do to yourself. As long as you are not directly harming anyone else in the process, the government should not waste their time and money on something that is so trivial in comparison to crimes involving a victim. In general, people do not agree with the government controlling what they can and cannot do to themselves. It should be no one’s decision but your own if you want to be homeless, drug addicted, prostitute. As long as the only damage you inflict is on yourself.

I believe that these laws only exist in response to popular demand. An immense amount of money, time and labor goes to waste dealing with these types of crimes. It would be a lot more productive and profitable to let us have rule over what we do to our bodies. I do not see any reason why we need to put this much energy into people who will rid of themselves for us. It would save us money on law enforcement and greatly reduce our crime rate if we would just let them do what they want to themselves.

Not only are we told what we may and may not do to our bodies, we are not even allowed to have all of the information about the products we consume. Many of the foods we purchase are the products of biogenetics and the FDA does not require these companies to put that information on the label. Another example of restricted information involves animal testing. All we know is what these companies release to the press. Since our tax dollars are funding the projects we should be informed if they are making any progress, or just mutilating animals. It seems to be a characteristic among these companies to keep as much information confidential as they can. This makes me wonder what they are doing that they do not want the public to know about. A new trend among prescription companies is television commercials now that it is legal. Several of these drugs have not been around long enough to know what the long-term effects are, and they do not feel the need to tell the public about this. Furthermore, even the Christian Children’s Fund, a charitable organization, omits important details from their commercials. They do not tell you that the money you send is only available to people who convert to Christianity. Many of these people are very religious and would rather starve than alter their traditions. It is disheartening to know how much of our money goes to these misrepresenting companies. Similarly are children are being cheated out of a full education because schools boards have decided to exclude certain parts of our history from required texts. If we are to expect are children to be able to discriminate truths from falsehoods they need to know the whole story. Complete and correct information is a freedom and a right. We should not have to rely on misrepresentations.

A limitation on our freedom, which technically should not be, is the lack of freedom of speech and the right to assemble. People protest all kinds of injustices and instead of making a change in the world, the police mace them, shoot them with rubber bullets, beat them and take them to jail. Most of the charges that protesters are arrested for have nothing to do with politics. Police arrest protesters for minor violations t up are often dropped when they go to court, just to get them off the streets. When they try to use their freedom of speech to inform the public of the violation of their rights, the FCC enforce censorship and the public never sees the tape.

It seems to me that the issues that are most important for the public to be apart of are the issues that we are not allowed to express our opinions on. We vote on measures and pass them and as soon as someone tries to put it in to effect, someone vetoes it. A prime example is doctor-assisted suicide, we voted it in and they threw it out. We do not even have any say when the president decides to bomb other countries. I think that we should have say on it since we, the citizens,