G. K. Chesterton’s assessment of fundamental liberty:“The free man owns himself. He can damage himself with either eating or drinking; he can ruin himself with gambling. If he does he is certainly a damn fool, and he might possibly be a damned soul; but if he may not, he is not a free man any more than a dog.” – Broadcast talk 6-11-35Nanny Bloomberg is now going after popcorn and milk products, because he’s very enlightened, as is our self-congratulatory and appallingly smug 21st century.
And everything he is doing was understood in the 19th century as a fundamental tyranny. Particularly by Chesterton and C.S. Lewis, two pretty damned enlightened men.
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences.” –C.S. Lewis”Two Englishmen warning us from the early 20th Century, that to give up our freedom “for our own good,” is not freedom. It is acquiescing to tyranny with thumb in the mouth, iPod buds in the ear and the tv set on an endless loop of Dancing with the Stars and Say Yes to the Dress reruns.
And as Kathy Tyers pointed out through a character in One Mind's Eye, yes a free person may be harmed, but so can the slave, and they have no choice.