Posted in Current Events

The Logic Trap of “Choice”: But Whose Choice?

Some communities insist no one has the right to tell you what goes into your body. Vaccine mandates for children? Eliminated. Parents, they say, should decide. Yet the same lawmakers ban abortion, declaring the state must dictate what goes into—or comes out of—a woman’s body. One breath they champion autonomy—“your body, your choice.” The next, they revoke it. That is the hypocrisy of their own making: a logic trap.

This is hubris—elevating choice above consequence until the reckoning arrives. By enthroning autonomy in one case and crushing it in another, political positions collapse under their own contradictions.

The deeper problem is not hypocrisy alone, but the refusal to face consequences. If a sick, unvaccinated child infects another and death follows, is that so different from a parent choosing to end a pregnancy? Both are questions of prevention—or its absence. Both end in the loss of life. Stripped of rhetoric, the moral arithmetic is the same.

Plato’s Ship of State reminds us that freedom without shared responsibility is not freedom but chaos. To let each untrained helmsman steer as he pleases is to wreck the vessel and drown all aboard. Vaccine “freedom” follows the same course: individual choice unmoored from collective duty imperils the innocent.

Abortion bans claim to “protect life.” Yet removing vaccine safeguards erodes the very protections that preserve the living. Both paths, meant to uphold life, may instead hasten its loss. Vaccination is not solely a personal decision; it is an act of care for the vulnerable child who cannot choose. To shrug it off is to clearly echo and exclaim the denial: “I am not my brother’s keeper.” That is tragedy—outcome born of blindness to consequence.

If morality is to mean anything, it cannot be applied with one hand and denied with the other. If a child who is unable to be vaccinated dies from exposure, who bears responsibility? The parents of the unvaccinated infecting child? The government that stripped safeguards? The community that endorsed it? Those who hold women accountable for abortion, especially those who are rape victims, cannot escape this parallel dilemma. Freedom framed as virtue but practiced as refusal to protect another is no virtue at all. Either the body is inviolable, or it is not. Either life is sacred in all forms, or it is not. Pretending otherwise is meant to satisfy a political base, but it cannot withstand the test of reason—or history.

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Posted in Philosophy

Bound in Fragile Balance: Freedom and Liberty

Can you be free without liberty or have liberty without freedom?

When freedoms are being challenged, coerced, and twisted to fit ideologies—as they are now- this isn’t a rhetorical question. It is an essential one. Because freedom and liberty are not the same thing. You can be free without liberty; however, you cannot have liberty without freedom.

Freedoms are what everyone is born with. They are innate. The freedom to speak, roam, think, and express yourself. Liberty is the social contract, a framework that defines those rights and protects them from government overreach, ideology, mob rule, and individual abuse.

Freedoms can exist in isolation; liberty requires a society. You can escape to the wilderness and be as free as you like. Liberty exists to balance the tensions between individual freedoms and the responsibilities of societal citizens coexisting in a communal environment. There will always be tension between them as social norms and technologies continue to evolve. But it is our liberty that will guide us, allow us to protect it, and our freedoms. Liberty protects our rights to do what we ought to do, not the power to do what we want to do.

Liberty is guarded and protected; freedom is what you assert and claim. And yet, liberty’s role is to protect your freedoms if others impinge on yours and vice versa. Liberty is for everyone and must be protected by everyone. Because freedom can be absolute, liberty must be conditional. Without setting civil boundaries within the construct of liberty, freedom will run amok. Everyone believing and acting as if they have no responsibilities or accountability is the recipe for chaos and anarchy, making humans no better than any other social animal. Freedom untethered isn’t freedom at all.

Liberty is created when people agree to limit certain freedoms. Ironic as that may seem. Liberty is a civilized form of freedom. It is the civil contract we live by. It allows the freedoms we agree upon. Freedom of speech, but not speech that incites violence. Freedom of the press, but not a deceptive, manipulated media. Freedom to worship and assemble without fear of retribution by worshiping a minority religion or assembling to support, or protest, what may be viewed as unjust or a violation of liberty. Within the context of our liberty, we should pause before yielding to the temptation to trade freedoms for perceived security. Once lost, those freedoms are hard to regain, just as yielding civil authority to the government.

While Patrick Henry decried, “Give me Liberty or give me Death“; Thomas Paine opined, “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one.” Their’s wasn’t a cry for freedom, but for a governing system that protected the agreed-upon freedoms of all. We may not like the clamorous protests demanding action, or the ideas and opinions espoused by others—just as much as they may not appreciate ours—but in our Liberty we have agreed to allow them, and that Liberty is worth defending. Without it, the saber of perceived justice can and will cut both ways, depending upon who yields it. The Liberty we should protect, our Liberty, must sheath the sword and allow the voices of freedom to be boldly, openly, and freely expressed.

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Posted in Philosophy

No Place for Hate—Not Here

There is no room for Hate…NONE

There is no place for hate in our homes, our faiths, or our government—none. The grievances of Palestinians, Ukrainians, and displaced peoples around the world may be deep and justifiable—and may very well usher in generational hate. But we Americans have no excuse to let hate in. Not in our hearts, our homes, our places of worship—and definitely not in our policies.

Yet hate has become almost reflexive—normalized, even celebrated. It’s hoisted like a banner, waved by those clinging to lost causes and imagined enemies. It grows in minds and festers in rhetoric, often without genuine cause—and with no end goal beyond destruction and domination.

Those who lead or campaign on hate do so to divide, not to solve. Hate is a wedge—driven between communities to create illusionary superiority and incite rage. It doesn’t clarify; it confuses. It doesn’t elevate; it manipulates. When leaders resort to hate, they expose their inability to persuade, to unify, or to understand. Their bluster masks weakness. Their venom reveals fear. They seek the power of the mob, not the strength of dialogue or the courage of compromise.

Listen carefully: hate speech is no longer fringe. The denigration of individuals—by race, gender, belief, political group, or origin—has become a strategy. Its purpose is not discourse, but dominance. Not freedom, but control.

This country cannot be governed by contempt. We must reject those who exploit division. Hate has no place in a nation built on liberty—and none in a future worth striving for. America is stronger because of our diversity, not despite it. We are more mature—intellectually and emotionally—because of our historic willingness to understand and compromise.

Look neither backwards with anger nor forward with hate. Don’t give hate any space. Not here. Not now. Not tomorrow.

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