December 04, 2003

Too High a Cost

I was asked in a comment on this site this question:

If you think freedom has a limited value, what would you be unwilling to exchange for it?

This give me carte blanche to go nuts with hypotheticals, which can be fun:

  • I would not exchange the lives of every man, woman and child in Burma for the freedom of religion in Pakistan.
  • I would not exchange the freedom to vote in England for the freedom to vote in China.
  • I would not exchange the money in my pocket for the freedom to keep and bear arms anywhere.

    Anyone can come up with bizarre compromises that no one would make. No, they aren't realistic, but they underline the point. I disagree with the notion that freedom carries some magical value that is higher than anything else. Life is pretty high on my list. Education is very high. Freedom is also high.

    The sense I'm getting is that me even suggesting that a cost/benefit analysis of creating a freer society is somehow treasonous or evil. Every decision every person who ever lived ever made was a cost/benefit analysis, whether they knew it or not.

    No decision has more capacity for extraordinary consequences, both good and bad, than the decision to go to war. To not explore as fully and objectively as possible the decision making process (cost/benefit) is dangerously ill-advised.

    Posted by Russell Lutz in Current Affairs & Politics at December 4, 2003 05:49 PM

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