Today, here:
"[F]reedom" is taking on a whole new meaning, incorrectly and dangerously so. I might say -- and I know I'm gonna make some people mad by saying this. But this very broad definition of freedom that is used to, for example, justify gay marriage, is being advanced not just by radical leftists but by libertarians as well, and even some conservatives. ...
Freedom without virtue isn't freedom. It will eventually destroy a society. Freedom without morality. Freedom without proper constraints and restraints. Freedom without an accompanying sense of responsibility. Freedom without a spine or a spinal cord of morality. We're not talking freedom. But in today's modern vernacular, we are. To young people today, that's exactly what freedom is.
Freedom is hedonism. Freedom is your sybaritic pursuits. You do whatever you want, and as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, there's nothing wrong with it. And it's the "as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else," that's where the trouble begins. Because is there great harm to a society when an age-old, I mean, as old as humanity itself custom is corrupted? Any custom, any tradition that has demonstrated its usefulness, its primacy over hundreds of thousands of years, is a freedom that would corrupt that, actually good? Is it virtuous? It isn't.
