Well said, John. I can't complain about your reasoning on this one. I was keenly aware of the many restrictions on my own freedom from the time I was a Grade 1 student. School really brought the hammer down on what had been a fairly idyllic existence up till then. I found myself being forced to do all kinds of things I instinctively did not want to do by all kinds of people, from teachers to fellow students. What I learned in school was...to be afraid...very afraid...and to feel utterly powerless.

It particulary rankled in my case, because I was a very harmless well-intentioned kid, and frankly did not need to be restricted. I was also quite well inclined toward educating myself, and would probably have been way better off doing home education...or in a Waldorf school or some other alternative, but my parents just went the conventional route. Public school, for me, was a hellish experience, and it made me very skeptical of the value of society's power structures.

I think that the more mature a person is, the more freedom they can be entrusted with. I'm talking about emotional maturity, not the tally of years of age.

There are some people to whom you can give complete freedom, and not have to worry that they will abuse it.

It's important what values people are brought up with, in a moral sense, and in a sense of feeling their own self-worth. Education is also important, provided it's good education. I don't think the present educational system is very good, because its main focus is to teach FACTS to people, rather than imparting the MEANING which lies behind those facts.

People need a sense of meaning. People who have a very strong sense of meaning, and a strong sense of self-esteem, and a strong sense of the value of others...can function well in an environment of absolute freedom, but how many people are strong in all those areas?

So, I essentially agree with your points raised above...we do have to strike a compromise between freedom and social constraints...while striving to raise the general levels of social awareness in people.

I just think that "Live Free Or Die" is a bit extreme sounding...the "or die" part seems to be so strongly suggested. It reminds me of the old conservative catch phrase "better dead than red". Such thinking is just plain silly. After all, the entire Soviet population managed to go on living, functioning, loving their children, cooking supper, and so on...despite being "red", didn't they? Such slogans program people toward a pretty aggressive and paranoid attitude toward life, I think...and they help program people toward violence in defence of something they may not really understand very well in the first place. Such slogans have launched wars.

I once heard a joke based on the "better dead than red" saying...can't remember the whole joke, but the punch line was: Conservatives, of course, would rather be "dead" than almost anything! It's so patriotic to die, after all...

It's an attitude, and it's a worrisome one. It was that kind of attitude that gave German and Japanese soldiers such absolute zeal in World War II...and that made them highly efficient and very dangerous. Fortunately, their gross national products (respectively) were not large enough to sustain the effort.

Small nations fear this kind of patriotic fervor in large nations...with good reason.

- LH