Zaphod for President

If I had to sum up my entire political philosophy with three soundbites, I would choose these:

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.

- Thomas Jefferson

And, who could forget about this little gem?

Government is not a solution to our problem, government is the problem.

- Ronald Reagan

And, how about this?

Our country’s founders cherished liberty, not democracy.

- Ron Paul

What is liberty?

As best as I can tell, liberty is one of those “you had to be there” things. The innate qualities of liberty are tame, almost boring, however, the emotional reaction to free action can be absolutely overwhelming. For example; skinny dipping with a girlfriend, smoking a joint of marijuana, or walking out of the front door at three in the morning- all of these might be considered mundane tasks, or remarkable testaments to liberty, depending on your perspective. To determine liberty we must trust our gut, our instinct, our emotions- our mess of random chemicals spinning about in a blob of cholesterol hidden inside our skull.

My support of liberty is so extreme that it could easily be classified as either a religious dogma or mental illness. Just consider some of the horrible opinions I sincerely hold:

• The Virginia Tech massacre is a small price to pay for the freedom to bear arms.
• The atrocity of abortion is irrelevant when compared to a woman’s freedom to choose.
• A slow death from lung cancer, obesity or diabetes is laughable when contrasted with the freedom to consume whichever substances we wish.

Lunatics shooting innocent people is bad. Surgically destroying human life is bad. Trans fats, cigarettes, and even my beloved Mountain Dew are all bad. Losing the associated liberties is worse.

I love liberty, but only because I can accept its true nature. Liberty is ugly, and cold, and raw. Liberty is not a buzzword, it is a consequence of sacrifice. To me it is the bottom line, the ace in the hole, the value for which I will sacrifice all other values. And thus, liberty is also a Catch-22.

To use a common example: I can choose to go and buy some marijuana. If I do, there is a chance that a uniformed officer will force me to sit in a little cage and think about what I have done.

The paradox: which is an act of liberty? To sit in a jail cell, having attempted to purchase some marijuana, or to go about my day, uninterrupted, without marijuana, despite wanting it? Which would make me a free man?

What is liberty?

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