Agree or disagree: Your government has a higher duty to protect your......

[Dis]

life (mainly from other nations not things like an individual doing stupid things)

[Perfection]

They need to both be protected by the government. When they conflict I take it on a case by case basis instead of making sweeping generalizations.

[Blake]

You can't separate "life" and "freedom". You need life to enjoy freedom and freedom to enjoy life.

Freedom is what we make of it. One can be free in a box through the power of meditation (indeed, that's the cave monk concept).

A prison is "A place you don't want to be". So freedom involves not putting people in places they don't want to be.

If a government were to come up with some arbitrary standards for freedom (like say everyone should have a TV and a car) and then attempt to enforce that "quality of freedom", they would find the cave monks very frustrating.

The government has an "obligation" to ensure basic needs are met.
Food, Water, Shelter, Peace of Mind

Those are the ONLY requirements for total freedom. If someone has peace of mind they are free. It's a fair bet that the lack of food, water or shelter will detract from peace of mind, someone should have to make a strong case for depriving themselves of food water and shelter.

Peace of Mind is subjective, but where there are things causing fear, distress, ill health (which leads to distress) etc, an effort should be made to remedy that as satisfactorily as possible.

Anyway you can't separate these things. The governments responsibility is to ensure peace of mind (in the sense of, that's what they should strive for, a state of 100% peace of mind is not possible... people are dumb like that). The most important parts of peace of mind (other than trivial basic needs) are probably "Not fear for your life/safety" and "Have hope for the future".

The USA fails to a remarkable extent, with a severe homeless problem, atmosphere of fear, shorter lifespans than other developed nations, etc.

[Sandman]

Damn right they should, the constitution says we have the right to bear arms and our leading founding fathers expressed it is our civic duty to rebel against an oppressive government-how can we do that without some serious hardware?

A lot of oppressive governments are the work of heavily armed rebels. In fact, they're often the worst...

[Bkeela]

My government has only one duty: to protect the interests of big business.

[Vesayen]

Originally posted by Sandman


A lot of oppressive governments are the work of heavily armed rebels. In fact, they're often the worst...

Despite increasing similarities, America is not a banana republic, there is no group of any meaningful size thatwants to rebel(and would suceed).


Let me fix that quote for you though heh....

Originally posted by Sandman
A lot of oppressive governments are the work of heavily armed rebels. In fact, they're often the worst...

[Chemical Ollie]

Re: Your government has a higher duty to protect your......

Originally posted by Vesayen
The government has a higher duty to protect your rights, freedom and liberty, or your life?

All of the above