One Doesn’t Need a Law to Act Intelligently

Many people think that unless an action is expressly permitted, it is expressly forbidden -- rather than the default value for a society dedicated to freedom and liberty, is the right to do what is intelligent and good to do.

There seems to be a lot of confusion on that point -- as people think that unless they’ve asked for and received permission to, they are not permitted to do what they would like -- including running for public office. Pretty much, anybody can run for public office -- even without the permission of any political parties. Also, people can have opinions other than what self-designated control-freaks would like everybody to know displeases them.

The most common listing of these “grievances” are the letters to the editors of the newspapers, which are selected for those causes the letters editors champion -- which is usually for those they agree with and against those they disagree with -- as their personal vendetta against everybody else in the community. And so, those they favor are anointed and those they blame for not already winning multiple Pulitzer and Nobel prizes by now, are allowed to be abused and distorted as much as their editorial talents will allow -- since nobody pays any attention to them, or they would have received their multiple prizes by now instead of being stuck editing everybody else’s bilge and tripe.

Such editors like to give the impression that they are “the law,” and their opinions carry that weight above all others. That creates the cultural context and permission that anybody else in charge and can get away with such abuses, are allowed to do so -- confident that any other views will be suppressed, oppressed and denied. We see that “authoritarianism” in every other bureaucratic interaction, and think that is what government must be -- this abuse of authority and power, if one can get away with it and nobody says anything -- because “that’s what everybody else does.”

For many, that is the only behaviors they’ve ever seen, and not that there needs to be new laws allowing something different. People should feel that it is quite all right to manifest better behaviors -- even if that’s never been done before, particularly by themselves.

Many are convinced by their teachers and advisors that they cannot change -- without great difficulty and the need to secure countless permissions and certificates that allow them to. That of course, is the hallmark of a bureaucratic, authoritarian society -- rather one of freedom and liberty, which might even be disdained and ridiculed as something one shouldn’t even dare to imagine.

Instead, one will be convinced and coerced into thinking that the only way one can get a piece of the action and a fair shake, is to join one of the powerful well organized groups that can dominate and terrorize all the others -- because there is no higher law than that of brute force and numbers. That is not the intelligence or wisdom of democracy -- which is the right not to have to conform blindly to such predetermined group pressures as though that were the only rights of their freedom.

The greatest freedom and the highest intelligence, is the right to think for oneself -- and be allowed to by others.