WHAT AMERICA NEEDS TO DO
What does this country need to do? If everyone is as unhappy as the media (based upon their incessant polling) would have us believe, then there can be little doubt that we (as a nation) need to do something. I suspect, however, that it is something that we will very likely never do. In the same way that an individual with issues needs to stand back and take a hard look at themselves, America needs to undertake its own form of introspection. (I’m talking serious introspection.) Like I said, I don’t think it will ever happen. But what would America see if it ever were to take such an inward look? Assuming that it would be honest with its self-appraisal, I strongly suspect that it would soberly (and somberly) gaze upon a grossly mutated image of America. Yes, present America is but an ugly mutation of what the founders had in mind. As it was then, so it is now. Freedom is still the name of the game. It is indeed worth fighting for. But do we actually have it anymore? I don’t think we do. And if we are no longer enjoying unadulterated freedom, then it is truly hard to understand what it is exactly that we are fighting for. We do have a form of freedom, to be sure, but it is severely diluted. What we take for freedom now, I seriously doubt that the founders would accept. The freedom that they knew has become distorted beyond recognition. One of the reasons it has come to be so disfigured (perhaps displaced is a better word) is traceable to one of the dynamics that started the big ball rolling in the first place. I refer to the puritan ethic that seems always to be running as an undercurrent in the collective consciousness of American culture. It is the puritan conscience, for example, that prevents prostitution from being legalized. Why do I use this as an example? Like it or not, prostitution is a way of making a living. At least it is in a truly free market. But our marketplace is not free, not really. It is kept from operating in a fully free environment by an abstraction that we call moral values, all of which are ultimately rooted in the aforementioned puritan ethic. There is no other reason that prostitution may not be practiced as a viable (and legitimate) form of income production. You cannot offer the disease threat as an objection. Cigarettes are universally recognized as agents of disease and death (over 400,000 deaths attributed to them per year), but are they illegal? What about the tax thing? Can you tax prostitution? Why not? We have zoning laws in place everywhere, laws that have a bearing on the tax structure for that zone. I consider prostitution as a sort of barometer for gauging the true freedom of any marketplace. No matter how free you claim that your marketplace is, if it does not allow someone to sell their body for profit, then it is not free. A person's body is their own business, not the state's. It may be the state's business to levy and collect taxes, but certainly not actions that we choose to perform with our own bodies, so long as those actions do not deliberately, wilfully, wantonly, or with malice aforethought, affect the liberty of someone else. Accidents will always happen. But so long as we do not intentionally inflict any harm on another, we should be able to do pretty much whatever we please, including sell our bodies for sexual activities, or take drugs, or kill ourselves, or whatever. But not only is prostitution not allowed, its practice is actually deemed as criminal. If anything is criminal it is that fact - that we say it is criminal. The crime consists in the fact that we make it a crime. What does America need to do? For starters, get rid of all victimless crime. The very concept is absurd. Think of it. We actually prosecute and punish crimes for which there is no victim. Could anything be more askew? Not to mention a complete waste of taxpayer dollars? What does America need to do? It needs to get over its Self, especially the Self that is rooted in the silliness of an antiquated puritan ethic. As a nihilist, I do not believe in evil, except perhaps for one unique variety. I consider it evil to teach that there is such a thing as evil. By that standard, every nation in the entire world is evil. I consider this just another reason to get rid of nation-states. We will never enjoy a truly humanitarian world until we do so. So often the needs of the nation take precedence over the needs of the human begins who comprise it. A nation is an abstraction. People are real. And they do no evil. They merely behave as human beings are prone to behave. It is no doubt wise to implement and enforce certain behavioral standards. But calling deviations from those standards evil should itself be considered as another form of deviation. People naturally seek pleasure and avoid pain. Allow them to do so, no matter what the form, so long as the pursuit does not interfere in another's quest for the same. There is only one pleasure we should not allow: the disruption of someone else's pleasure (unless it is a pleasure intent on harm to another). America needs to abandon its identiy, to utterly and completely give it up, for the sake of all the human beings who live within (and without) its borders. The American (or any other nation-state) identity is very similar to an individual identity. It is a pure abstraction, fabricated with nothing but words. America (the nation-state) is made of words. People are made of flesh and blood, real stuff. Let my people go, America. Stop restraining them with the manacles of puritanism. Let them go. Allow them to be truly free. The sense of genuine freedom engenders no desire to harm another. Only those who feel constrained, tied and bound, struggle with the animosity that might prompt them to reach out and do harm to others.
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