Kids These Days

Youngster brainiac Mrs. Peel has a terrific post up on freedom.

I had an alarming conversation with a friend recently in which he staunchly defended smoking bans and Bloomberg-style health Naziism, because, he said, people can’t be trusted to make their own choices about their health. And no matter what I said, he could not see the evil of his position, nor how the exact same reasoning could be used to, say, restrict the amount of time he spends playing video games.

There’s a Chesterton quotation I discovered recently (via the Anchoress):

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.

I’m heartbroken and appalled at how few people, especially in my birth cohort, understand that quotation.

Quite pithy. You go read now.

posted by Laura. at 02:45 PM

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