{"id":582,"date":"2010-06-22T19:58:56","date_gmt":"2010-06-23T02:58:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=582"},"modified":"2010-06-22T19:58:56","modified_gmt":"2010-06-23T02:58:56","slug":"protect-us-from-ourselves-please","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/?p=582","title":{"rendered":"Protect Us from Ourselves, Please!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"image\"<\/a> I usually enjoy reading the biting sarcasm usually found on The Onion<\/a> website, taking most articles with a grain of salt, but today my son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s facebook post drew attention to a classic article<\/a> from back in 2003 that would be much funnier if it were not so true.<\/p>\n

The article began:<\/p>\n

\n

\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Alarmed by the unhealthy choices they make every day, more and more Americans are calling on the government to enact legislation that will protect them from their own behavior.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Hey, this isn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t satire.  This is reality! What about seatbelt and motorcycle helmet laws?  Why not protect me from eating that juicy hamburger?<\/p>\n

The final paragraph tells it all, highlighting the eternal conflict between personal responsibility and guaranteed salvation: <\/p>\n

\n

"The fact is, personal responsibility doesn’t work," Nathansen (Lucifer) said. "Take a good look at the way others around you are living, and I’m sure you’ll agree. It’s time for the American people to demand that someone force them to do something about it."<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

(My parenthetical comment included.)<\/p>\n

del.icio.us Tags: freedom<\/a>,Freewill<\/a>,Agency<\/a>,Responsibility<\/a>,Government<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I usually enjoy reading the biting sarcasm usually found on The Onion website, taking most articles with a grain of salt, but today my son\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s facebook post drew attention to a classic article from back in 2003 that would be … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[15,28,77,30,44],"class_list":["post-582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-freedom-article","tag-agency","tag-freedom","tag-freewill","tag-government","tag-responsibility"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ilovefreedom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}