Sunday, December 16, 2012

Price of the "Freedom of stupidity"

I feel that the gun laws in the US are stupid. They belong to a different time in the history of the country when people kept slaves and the women were second class citizens who had no right to vote. This stupidity has survived because the constitution makes it so difficult to make any laws at all. Every law must survive the house, the senate, the president's veto, and the supreme court and if you want to change the constitution it is close to impossible. 

Love of guns is the stupidity that  is our tradition. But it It is also our tradition to allow stupidity because a majority vote should not decide what is stupid and what is not. Somethings simply should not be decided by a majority. "The freedom of stupidity" is one of them because in rare cases what looks stupid to people or common sense might be actually not stupid at all. The earth being flat or the Sun revolving around the earth and lately the Keynes theory of economics of depression which beats common sense. Keynes theory is still considered stupid by FOX news along with every other scientific idea. The idea of human beings having evolved from apes looked stupid to so many and still does. If such stupid ideas were banned where would we be?

Many of us would like to take away all the guns,  drugs,  religions, hate speech,  and every other stupidity? And it may not look wrong because a civilized society always restricts its people from doing certain things. 

The death of 20 innocents kids and 8 adults  is simply the price our society has just paid for this freedom of stupidity. Just as Hurricane Sandy made many believers out of global warming spektics, let us hope this is a wake up call to do something about gun laws. 

When the price of stupidity goes too high that freedom is not worth it. A civilized society gives up on many freedoms because the cost is simply too much to bear. What limits the freedom of stupidity is the price a society is willing to pay for such freedoms.