“Colorado’s ski resorts and mountain towns are bracing for an influx of tourists,” writes Trevor Hughes in USA Today, “seeking a now-legal Rocky Mountain high.”
Recreational marijuana legalization worries some “police and ski area operators,” Hughes explains. Marijuana tours have been set up by some enterprising folks, and the locals worry “that tourists who don’t understand the rules will be sparking up on the slopes.”
Or in their cars.
Or on the sidewalks.
One sheriff clarified: “We do have this misperception … where people have smoked in public, been charged, and were under the perception that it’s a free-for-all.”
An over-reaction to what appears to be an end to the war on drugs? A lack of awareness that all sorts of things get regulated at the local level?
Or perhaps a few people don’t really understand the nature of liberty.
Liberty — freedom for all — isn’t a free-for-all!
That is, the freedom that we all can have isn’t a “do anything you want/anywhere you want/any time you want” deal. The freedom we can all have is a freedom from initiated force, from intrusive coercion, from interference with our persons and our property.
“Free speech” doesn’t mean you can barge into my home and shout in my face. “Freedom of association” doesn’t mean the Skeptic Society can hold a conference in a Christian Science Reading Room, or the Klan can march through the campus of Howard University. “Free Exercise of Religion” doesn’t mean you will be allowed to hold a candlelight vigil in a fireworks factory.
There’s a logic to liberty. Most Americans get that. Even most tourists.
This worry should should vanish like a puff of smoke.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
4 replies on “Freedom for All Not a Free-for-all”
Very well put Paul. I will use it in the classes we provide to help individuals learn ideas on liberty. Thanks for your well written/spoken words.
What is commonly forgotten in claiming and action is allowed by personal liberty is the prohibition that those actions cannot harm or impinge upon the life, liberty or property of others without their agreement.
Some of us are presently celebrating the birth of the person who stated “Do unto others as your would have done unto you”.
That is simple, memorable and an easy reminder of the correct limitations of personal liberty which, if practiced, liberates all.
Good point, Paul, though you might have been a little clearer with it this time. My own experience, whereby the first time I ever sparked one up was AT a ski area, in a car in the parking lot (ca. 1969?), has kept me from ever combining challenging athletic activity with such.
True, the weed had been treated, as I later found out, with DMT, so the “trip” was a bit more intense to say the least, but the feeling of distorted vision and complete loss of motor control was still horrifying; I somehow made my way down the seemingly narrow slope while ‘peaking’ for the first time, and arrived at the bottom alive and intact somehow!
What I realize in retrospect is how much I was also possibly endangering anyone within several yards of me as I made my harrowing descent. I’d hope that those indulging and then taking to slopes would be as aware of their potential effect on others …
After seventy years of prohibition, (our entire lives) some people are bound to go overboard in their zeal to say “F” you to the man.
In Seattle they first smoked out publicly at the base of the needle…in plain view for all to see (against the law) when the law changed and the shackles of prohibition where finally removed.
Freedom, after so long without, is cause of the zealous celebration.
Things will calm down as time goes by and people get use to the idea.