I confess that you probably don't need me to remind you of that. Rape and murder are considered among the most egregious of crimes that people commit. Have you ever wondered just why this is so? The thought exercise can be enlightening.

I assume you know what rape and murder are. What they both have in common is that both represent an attempt by one person to enforce a choice on another. Rape is forcing someone to have sex who would not otherwise make that choice. Murder is forcing someone to stop living when the person would not have made that choice himself.

When I look at this, something fairly obvious jumps out at me. What makes murder and rape wrong is simply that they violate the right of a person to make his own choices for himself. There really isn't any other reason.

So let me take a logical leap here and make the claim that the basic human right is the right to make ones own choices for himself.

Consider the right we think of as "freedom of speech". A person has the right to speak his mind. Isn't this just an extension of making his own choices for himself?

Consider the right we think of as "freedom of religion". A person has the right to believe in, or not, whatever belief system he desires. Isn't this just an extention of making his own choices for himself?

Consider the right we think of as "freedom from self-incrimination". A person has the right to choose to cooperate with investigators or not. Isn't this just an extension of making his own choices for himself?

When I look at what we consider basic human rights, I invariably find that, beneath that right, what pops out is the fundamental right to make one's own choices for one's self.

This is a far cry, by the way, from "doing whatever you want". A right isn't a right unless everyone shares it, so violating someone else's right -- rape or murder, for example -- is still wrong. A right can only be enjoyed while also being respected. Anything else is hypocrisy.

This is the entirety of the basis of my own morality. It might be likened to "personal sovereignty", but some folks confuse that with "do what you will", the basic tenet of Satanism, which I don't advocate. Insisting upon one's right to make one's own decisions for one's self, and respecting and insisting upon the right of others to make their own decisions for themselves, is the entirety of my philosophy of morality.

To extend this further, any law which respects this most fundamental of human rights is a proper law. Any law which does not respect this right is an improper law. These days, we have a lot of improper laws.

The Ninth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is meant to remind the goverment that just because the Bill of Rights does not explicitly describe a right does not mean that the right does not exist. The implication is that the goverment has no business creating laws which trample the rights of the people -- even those that weren't thought of when the Constitution was being written.

A right to make one's own choices for one's self is an awesome responsibility. It means that one has the right to choose what one does with his own body, what one does with his own mind, what one does with his (or as a) spirit. Are you ready for that level of freedom? I am!

That level of freedom means that a lot of folks will be participating in activities to which other folks object -- sometimes strenuously. The measure of a free society, however, is simply how much disagreement that society endures and still remains functional as a society. Freedom is the opposite of forcing everyone to conform. As a freedom-loving American, a freedom-loving earthling, the last thing I want is to force everyone to conform to my personal choices.

All I would ask of others is to respect my right to make choices for myself. The Golden Rule demands, therefore, that I respect the right of others to make their own choices for themselves.

That's all freedom really is. Anything less is not a "Free Society".

This means that what one does with one's health and one's body, one's mental state, one's spiritual growth or stagnation, all these are the individual's right to choose, without coercion or threat of punishment from others.

It means that what supplements a person consumes, or what drugs a person takes, are entirely up to the person, even if many of us disagree with those choices for ourselves. If I want to take antibiotics, or echinacea, or ephedra, or mega-doses of vitamin C, or opium tea, this is my choice to make. Not the government's. Not some special interest group. Not some religion.

The funny thing is that the federal government -- specifically, the Supreme Court of the United States -- virtually recognized this right, in a little case we either love or hate, called Roe vs. Wade. In this ruling, the Supreme Court recognized that a woman has the right to make her own choice for her body, to serve as a host to an unborn child or not (and further went on to say that no law in human history -- read the Old Testament, for example -- has ever granted full human status to an unborn child). Notice, however, how backward this recognition is. The Supreme Court recognizes the right when it comes to killing the unborn child, but it does not recognize the right when it comes to, say, altering one's mood with marijuana. I don't know about you, but I find the former a lot more questionable than the latter. Not even in the same league.

While I do not intend to argue for or against Roe vs. Wade here -- abortion of any of my children was never an option, but I nevertheless cannot insist that my viewpoint is necessarily the right one for everyone -- I bring it up because it does in fact recognize that making one's own choice for one's own body is a question of the Ninth (and Fourteenth) Amendments, so this idea is not really all that radical.

Government has, as its only valid purpose, the protection of the rights of the people. We have a judicial system to protect those rights. We have armed forces to protect those rights. We have police forces to protect those rights. And that's really all we've ever needed. Sometimes, people make mistakes. Sometimes, people are downright mean and don't resepect the rights of others. This is when, and only when, government needs to intercede.

We don't need to be protected from ourselves. Well, I don't, anyway. I can't speak for you, of course, but I know what freedom is, and in this Land of the Free, I demand that We the People, and the Government we established in our name, make good on our promise to ourselves.

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