I’m posting this for our TZP colleague, Ilana. Over at WND.com, she writes about freedom of association in her own unique way:
The individual living in America as it was meant to be is free to run his business as he wishes, associate with those he likes, dissociate from those he dislikes or disapproves; hire, fire, rent to or evict from, invest and disinvest, speak and misspeak at will.
This hypothetical free man is at liberty to bruise as many feelings as he likes, so long as his mitts stop at the next man’s face. So long as he harms nobody’s person or property, our mythic man may live as he wishes to live.
Americans have been propagandized for so long; they no longer grasp the basic building blocks of liberty. A crude reductio ad absurdum should help:
A retail store selling Nazi memorabilia opens its doors in my neighborhood. I enter in search of the yellow Star of David Jews were forced to wear during the Third Reich. The proprietor, decked out in Nazi insignia and regalia, says, “I’m sorry, we don’t serve Jews.” “Don’t be like that,” I say. “Where else can I find a pair of clip-on swastika earrings?” The Nazi sympathizer is polite but persistent: “Ma’am, I mean no disrespect, but back in the Old Country, Jews murdered my great grandfather’s cousin and used his blood in the leavening of the Passover matzah.” “Yeah,” I reply. “I’m familiar with that blood libel. I assure you my own mother’s matzo balls were free of the blood of brats, gentile or Jewish. No matter. I can see where you’re coming from. I’m sorry for your loss. Good luck.”
There! Did that hurt?
Read more here. Something to think about.
Perhaps one of the foundations of government as an institution, rests on cowardice in some people to either take on the responsibility and social pressure that comes with shunning the truly bad among us, on one end of the spectrum, or looking for ways to forgive and live with failures in our fellow man, at the other?
Y.B. ben Avraham, responsibility is certainly one of the central issues, but I think people are afraid or not willing to take responsibility for their own actions and choices first. When people believe that somebody else can be/must be responsible for everything instead of taking on that hard job themselves, they give away their natural authority over their lives. The next step, then, is believing that every thought, choice and action made by others is somehow the business of government or “society,” with nobody truly responsible. The consequences of all that, of course, come home to roost eventually.
When responsibility is shared, then there is no responsibility.
I recall working for some smaller computer companies, and we’d always have various tasks ahead of us, after a meeting for example. The tasks that got done were the ones that had a particular person’s name attached to it. Things that “everybody” or “somebody” had to do were invariably hit-or-miss.