Happy Independence Day

As I sit here and listen to my neighbor’s children setting off fireworks, in addition to the larger (and louder) fireworks being set off outside my neighborhood, I’m torn.

On the one hand, I dislike the fact that I’m going to be getting less sleep tonight than I’d like because of the noise. On the other hand, I appreciate the fact that there are people who are willing to defy the local municipalities who outlaw everything but sparklers. On the gripping hand, I have to realize that most of these people are idiots who are defying the law because of a desire to play with explosives, not out of principle.

Then again, maybe I’m over-thinking things. Take your freedoms where you find them, people. The freedom to be obnoxious and foolish is necessary. As C. S. Lewis said in his book, God in the Dock: Essays on Modern Theology:

“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”

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