Comments Elsewhere

Jaime:

There is no such thing as true freedom. At least while living, anyway (in the philosophical sense, then, true freedom is a condition without any laws which act on you, including those of mortal or immortal demesne). Otherwise, civic “freedom” is anarchy …

Well, I’m an anarchist. So merely pointing out that a view leads to “anarchy,” or to the end of law as such, is hardly going to dissuade me from it.

However, you and I may have different ideas about what “true freedom” means. I don’t think that political freedom is primarily defined by the absence of law. I think it’s defined by the absence of coercion. Since government law is systematized coercion, that entails the absence of government law down the road, but that’s a secondary consequence, not the definition.

Because this nation is a nation of (essentially) free people, there are restrictions where acts would infringe on the rights of others, and as such there is [potential] criminal liability attached to virtually all acts that would concern another person or property in this country.

I have nothing against using force to restrict people from violating others’ rights (there is a right to self-defense, and there is a right to defend innocent third parties from aggression). What I’m suggesting is that forcing people to take a civics class against their will is itself a violation of the rights of the person you’re forcing to take it. Playing hooky from a civics class victimizes precisely nobody, violates nobody’s rights, treads on nobody’s property. Thus there can be no justification whatsoever for having government use coercive means to make people take it when they do not want to. If you do advocate that, then you advocate violating people’s rights in the name of evangelizing your political program.

If you want to become a member of this nation, you must abide by the rights of all that dwell therein.

Fair enough. What I’m asking is that you abide by my right not to be forced to attend a civics class that I don’t care to attend.