What rights?

If you would have asked me about restricting the speech of a Muslim cleric 6 years ago, I probably would have come up with a creative solution involving litter and your ass. Now, I'm all for it.

Freedom really isn't all its cracked up to be, is it? People think they're entitled to wealth and/or a good time in whatever shape strikes their fancy. Freedom means being able to do what you like, regardless of the consequences to others.

When I lived near PSU off Jefferson in Portland a car was stopped along side the road. I don't remember what they'd done to us but it sparked off some nastiness. The people in the car threatened us, saying they were going to come to our little house and beat the shit out of my housemate and I. She ignored it but I panicked and called the police. Their response? 'Well, you kids want your freedom of speech.' Apparently, saying that you're going to go to their house and kick their face in whilst approaching isn't enough to actually press charges. They have right to do that. They have to throw the blow first.

I don't believe that's actually the spirit of the ideal. Free speech was meant to be a way for people to criticize those more powerful then themselves in times of potential or ongoing oppression. It wasn't meant for neighbor's stereos or parties at 4:00 in the morning. That's our current interpretation of that freedom though, isn't it? We believe that it is our God given right to express our fun selves as we see fit, be damned of the consequences. I wonder if it's the lack of fight we have to pursue that's driven us into such a sad combination of wretched and carless sanctimony? Surely the ideal of freedom was meant as noble and higher when germinated by the men to shape our governments? But they didn't forsee our current situation, did they? They didn't see bleak existences where God, purpose and charity were discarded in favor of things that could be destroyed in a year. They didn't see that the humanity they wanted to protect, to develop into their romanticized purpose would be come such a rude and heartless group. They didn't know that our lives would no longer contain purpose, or trial. That in our future we would give up chivalry in the face of selfishness and greed.

It's no wonder we've trivialized everything that people fought, died, burned and thought for. We're so well fed that we're fat. We're so rich we can afford to kill ourselves slowly with drinking and cigarettes. We're so pompous that we think we're entitled and that life will always be this way. Perhaps it is time that some of our freedoms were taken away. If those men saw their precious freedoms being bedraggled by people who didn't use the world they created to their advantage, if they saw what soulless and arrogant idiots we've become, they'd take our freedoms away once more. And so they would be right because perhaps then we'd reclaim our ability to be decent again. After all, you don't know what you got 'til it's gone.