Olorinus wrote:
b) What the hell does Liberty even mean to you if it doesn't include the basics required to live a happy and healthy life? I mean seriously. If you think that "Liberty" doesn't include clean water and breathable air - what good is it?
It does not "include" those things at all. In the same way that food does not include air, and poetry does not include dog. Those are things which may be important to us, but do not have to be especially linked. You seem to want to insist that if we don't have something, we can't have the other thing. But that's just not the case.
While I happen to believe that the greater liberty we have the greater chance we have of having a happy and healthy life, it's a gross mistake to assume that anything which might improve the happiness or health of one's life also increases their liberty. They are completely different things. Liberty does not "include" those things, nor does it require them.
What good is it? Liberty means we have the freedom to pursue those other things. You're trying to trade liberty *for* those other things, but the problem is that once you do that, you no longer really have them. I honestly think that most people don't get this. In the process of the government giving you health, happiness, education, housing, etc, it must infringe the liberties of the citizenry. The health care mandates are just one example of this. But the problem is that if you have health, happiness, education, housing, etc but *only* because the government gives them to you, do you really have them?
A government that is empowered to give you a thing is also empowered to take it away. While not perfect, what you have in a state of liberty is actually yours. The concept of liberty is of things not being taken from you, so what you have is yours and can't be taken. IMO, it's more important to have less, but know that what you have is actually yours, than to have more, but only because of the continual intervention of an authoritarian government.
Don't you agree?