“We all limit each other’s freedom just by sharing each other’s space.” Quite right, this does not mean that the state should take any part in enforcing those limits. If I were the owner of a business, say a B&B, that did not want to allow homosexual couples to stay in my B&B then that is none of the state’s business. With any luck I would lose custom as a result and not be in business very long. I would have to live with the consequences of that decision, rather than resent the guests that the law says I have to accept.

Whatever happened to self discipline? Are you telling me that I am unable to control my own actions? That I am nothing more than an automaton, reacting in an instinctual animalistic way and require constant supervision to prevent me doing harm to others and myself? If thats the case then you insult me, yourself, and every other human being on the planet. We are all capable of self control, if you think that we’re not then you may as well have everyone sectioned right now. I’m not saying that there is not a need for some kind of policing, what is needed is a redefinition what constitutes a crime. If everything you want to do, say or think is illegal to some degree or another, even when it causes no harm to anyone else then something is drastically wrong; that seems to me to be where we’re heading.

You are a different kind of idealist to me Tom, For me the question is always whether freedom should be limited (N0, not by the state at least). Why should the presence of another human being be a burden? And why should the state have any say in how we shoulder that burden? It belittles human dignity to say that we cannot live with one another without state mandated supervision ready to rap us on the knuckles if we dare to offend our fellow man.

Freedom of communication of thought is a wonderful thing, but to be of any use it relies on the quality of those thoughts being high, rather than Facebook and MySpace pages filled with the trivia which the rest of the media leads us to believe is important. Totalitarianism is not impossible just because we have the internet, it just has to be more subtle and suffuse our our entire culture with its propaganda at a level that we just don’t notice.

The state (any state, the world over) should not have the right to use force to coerce me into living my life by their rules, that is the right of the individual. If someone wants to punch me in the face fro my opinions then they should be perfectly within their rights to do so, but I should also have the right to defend myself with equal force. I’ll not have some bureaucrat in a sinecure job telling me what I can and cannot say, read, watch, listen to, who I can associate with, who I can do business with, or what I can do with my life backed up by threat of violence, imprisonment, or impoverishment.

Our society is degenerating into a vapid mire of do gooders telling us how to live “For our own good,” because “they know best.” Well I’m sorry they can fuck off and mind their own business. I will decide how I live my life, and if that offends someone they can say so themselves and I will give their concerns due consideration. Only a coward does that through a proxy backed up by threats.