Some folks out there can't stand the idea of free markets as touted by columnists like Thomas Sowell and Walter E. Williams.  Although I don't personally know each and every one of these people, I think it is safe to say that most of the most vocal critics of Sowell's and Williams' writings on free markets fall into one of the two following categories:

1) People who don't want to reap what they have sown. These people don't value what they have to offer others, and they may very well be right in that respect, but wrong when blaming others for how their lives are going.

2) People who are doing well in life but think other people can't possibly do well without being treated like children and handed everything by someone else.

We all have something to offer others.  Most of us can take steps to increase what we have to offer others.  In a free market, we exchange what we have in abundance for something we need or want that someone else has in abundance.  It is best when we can do this directly, without the interference of anyone else.  Either party to the trade may choose to delegate for the sake of efficiency (for example, they are better at making something and not so good at actually closing a sale).  But if you are not a party to the trade, why should you get a say in the terms and conditions?  You would be interfering.

The more we place restrictions on free markets via government, the more we are interfering.

One way we can truly lower the overall collective cost of health care is to decrease the amount of health care needed.

People mostly need health care due to:

• Disease/sickness
• Injury/trauma
• Pregnancy/birth

Should we work to reduce all three of these things?  Some people say yes.  Just about everyone says we should continue to work to reduce the first two.

But how do we go about doing that?  Should be we use forced wealth redistribution - such as taxpayer money - to encourage people to behave in ways that make them less likely to get sick or injured?  Should we tax certain products and services to discourage their use, because using them is linked to higher likelihood of illness or injury?  Should we use force to try to prevent people from engaging in those behaviors or using those products at all?

The more any government engages in any of those things, the less personal freedom there is.  Is that what you want?  Maybe something you like to eat will be made illegal.  Maybe a sport or other recreational activity or even bedroom activity you enjoy will be deemed too dangerous and banned.

Most likely, courts will protect most of those private, voluntary behaviors from being banned, so the costs from those will continue to rise.  But the courts certainly won't stop them from being taxed.  So get ready to pay even more in taxes.

There are other ways of going about this.  Private money (VOLUNTARILY provided) can be used on programs, projects and campaigns to encourage healthy behaviors and discourage unhealthy and risky behaviors.

I am strongly pro-choice.  Here's a classic Playful Walrus entry explaining what I mean.

Here's a great letter to the Orange County Register.

Gary Ford of Lake Forest wrote:

Socialists meddle in the free market and try to manipulate it through laws and politics.  When the results are bad, they claim capitalism has failed and that we need to push even harder for socialism.

The current political and economic situation was created, not by the free market, but by government meddling with the free market.

The bureaucrats perpetuate the problem by refusing to allow the market to correct itself.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.  Kudos to Mr. Ford, and kudos to the OCR for printing his letter.

Capitalism exists everywhere.  In free markets, all have access to it.  In other kinds of markets, only the connected or the criminal have access to it.  Do we want a free market, or another kind of market?

Our founders did not set up a religious system.  They did not set up a moral system.  They did not set up a social system.  And they did not set up a financial system.  They set up a governing system.  The other systems unavoidably express some of their influence through the government system (especially via our votes), but it is not the place of the governing system to exert control over them.  It is the place of the governing system to defend our freedoms, which includes dealing with crime.  As such, our government can help facilitate trade – but it ought not control trade, either on a micro level or a macro level.

The other systems were already in place when our founders replaced one governing system - the Articles of Confederation - with another, the Constitution.  All of the systems are important to our society, and breakdowns in a system tend to hurt us.  But we should not trade our freedoms in a vain attempt to improve another system through the government system.  It is not the government's place, nor within the government's capability, to change everything we don't like, or every wrong, or handle every problem.  We can't force people to be true to God.  We can't force people to be right to themselves or each other.  We can't force them to be polite.  We can't force them to be financially responsible.

This is the headline set that me off: Administration Unveils Financial System Overhaul

It's not the government's place to overhaul the financial system.  It is the government's involvement in the financial system that has contributed to current conditions in the first place.

The headline comes from a story by Associated Press economics writer Martin Crutsinger.

Here's my plan:

1. The federal government should stop doing anything it isn't expressly instructed to do in the Constitution, sticking to things like prosecuting actual fraud and other forms of theft involving interstate commerce.

2. Reduce taxes accordingly, eliminating taxes on corporations, truly simplifying taxes.

3. Let people make their own financial decisions and let them enjoy or suffer the consequences - don't try to punish some and reward others with targeted taxes, tax credits, and loopholes.

Some people accuse conservatives of fighting progress because conservatives resist such things as federal funding to kill innocent human beings, court-imposed marriage neutering, and expanding the size and reach of federal government.

Yet these accusers tend to be the same people who want us to give up technological progress.  They don't want us to enjoy our automobiles.  They don't want us to enjoy modern plumbing (flush less often!).  They don't want us to enjoy air conditioning, or the latest televisions.  They also don't want us to enjoy trade progress, encouraging us to shun the bounty of the world for the sake of "local" products.

I suppose the answer to the title question comes down to what one considers progress.  For some, progress is freedom from coercion and crime to pursue the fruits of one's own labor and decisions, in an expanding circle of free humanity.  For others, progress is more polar bears and fewer human beings.

Our Constitution limits our government.  It tells our government specifically what it can do.  This is not how things are practiced these days, but it is how they should be.  Limiting government maximizes our freedoms.

Our Constitution isn’t there to list all of our rights.  Unless otherwise stated, we, the people, are supposed to retain all rights.

The founders of our nation had a lot correct and constructed a brilliant Constitution.  Once the evil of race-based slavery was abolished and it was recognized that each and every person has rights such as those enumerated in the Constitution, we were on the right track.

But what are rights and where do they come from?  What’s the difference between a freedom and a right?  What should be the role of government in our lives?  I've written about these things before.

Here are some of my other entries relevant to this issue:

We Still Have the Power

Rights Are Not Hand-Outs, and Hand-Outs Are Not Rights

Not All Freedoms Are Rights

Imaginary Rights

Legislating For Feelings?

Should Your Government Be Doing This?

Ask Not What the Government Will Do For You

Nobody Owes You a Job

Who Owns Your Earnings?

Funding Government: Of Fees and Taxes

Time For Education to Evolve (Featured in Townhall Magazine)

Each American generation brings a new crop of idealists who think they are the exception to history - that they are so much smarter and inherently better than previous generations that they can govern in a way that will do everything right and solve all problems.  These people don’t (yet) understand human nature, and the further we go without an event like Pearl Harbor or 9/11, the easier it is for them to cling to their fantasies.  Three opinion pieces in today’s Los Angeles Times help make my point.

The editorial board questions the seriousness of the terrorist threat.

But by taking on a movement rather than a government, the United States has confronted unprecedented legal and procedural challenges that continue to haunt it -- and will do so long after a new president takes power, particularly if the current occupant of the Oval Office has his way.

The editorial board does have a valid point here.  “War on terror” is like “war on drugs” and “war on poverty”.  I believe Christ will return and the world will be transformed – and life will be different.  Until then, however, we’re always going to have sin, and poverty, and crime, and terror.  It isn’t like taking on one regime or one country.  Make no mistake – we need to fight terror, disrupting terrorist plots and killing or incarcerating terrorists.  Any regime that harbors terrorists who strike out at other countries needs to be defeated.  But there will be no end to the “war on terror” as long as life continues as it currently is.

In recent months, the Bush administration has been reaffirming its wartime powers by inserting language in legislation, rewriting intelligence procedures and changing regulations. For example, the New York Times reports that the administration added a provision to a proposal for hearing legal appeals from detainees at Guantanamo Bay that asks Congress to "acknowledge again and explicitly" that the U.S. is at war with Al Qaeda, the Taliban and related movements.

Good for Bush.  That’s his job – to protect us from terrorists.

Bush doesn't need such declarations in order to continue the war in Afghanistan; that was authorized by Congress on Sept. 14, 2001. Rather, he seems to be trying to solidify the legal justification for some of his administration's most questionable policies, such as holding detainees indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay or carrying out wiretapping operations on Americans without a court order.

The Taliban within Afghanistan are not the only terrorists in the world.

Should we consider our conflict with terrorists a war or a police action?

It’s a war that, like police work, will never end.  We ought not treat foreign enemies who murder as guerillas as mere criminals.

Preventing another attack on the homeland isn't a war, it's a security challenge.

It’s a security challenge that is aided by war.

The consequences of our war footing are not only restrictions on our freedom and privacy that would never be tolerated under ordinary circumstances, but the expenditure of billions of dollars on measures that may not be justified.

Oh please.  The only thing that has changed in my life is extra scrutiny in the airport and restrictions on what I can pack.  So what?

As just one example, is the degree of danger posed by the theoretical possibility that terrorists might put a "dirty bomb" in a shipping container really great enough to justify the amount we're spending to prevent it from happening?

This is from an editorial board that thinks because some people don’t have health insurance, all of us should be on government health insurance and because a few gay people think a marriage license would make them feel better about themselves and their relationships, all marriage licenses should be neutered and traditional marriage should not be esteemed.  They are for government intervention and control of so many things - except when it comes to one of the basic functions of government - protection of citizens from foreign threats.

Bush argues that the measures he has put in place are the reason the United States hasn't suffered a major terrorist attack on its soil since 9/11. Maybe that's true. Or maybe the threat just wasn't as great as the administration has made it out to be.

Bush can’t win.  If there has been another attack already, these same people would be blasting him for not protecting us.  Since there hasn’t been another successful major attack on our soil, then they doubt there was really a threat.  Maybe they wouldn’t be talking like this if the terrorists had crash an airliner into their building.

There is also this piece by Timothy Garton Ash, a contributing editor to their opinion pages, who is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University and the professor of European studies at Oxford University.  In it, he talks about the rise of Russia and China in recent world events.

What has proved false is the neoconservative claim that this single threat now defines the whole pattern of world politics; that, as Norman Podhoretz puts it, the struggle against Islamofascism is World War IV.

Do neocons really say that Islamofascism is the only threat?  I don’t think so.

Analysts at Goldman Sachs predict that by 2040, Brazil, China, India, Mexico and Russia will have a larger combined economic output than today's G-7.

That means we’ll have more customers, more investors, more suppliers.  It does us no good if other parts of the world are using less of their potential.

At the same time, worldwide economic development based on the free movement of goods, capital and services (a.k.a. globalization) is exacerbating a whole set of trans- national problems.

That’s strange.  Usually such things solve problems.

Carbon dioxide emissions that accelerate climate change,

Oh brother.  You’re going to look like a fool in just a few years.

mass migration,

What’s wrong with migration?  Illegal immigration is only bad when the area being flooded with poor, unskilled newcomers has socialist and taxpayer-supported welfare and education programs.  Like California.

the risk of pandemics

Maybe people should be more hygienic?

Power is diffused to too many competing states, many of them illiberal, as well as elusive networks such as Al Qaeda.

It is not a problem that power is diffused to “too many” competing states.  That is a good thing, actually.  The problem comes with too much sin and corruption, and not enough Constitution-style separation of powers, checks and balances, and representative government; a lack of freedom and openness in capitalism, and a lack of authentic Christianity.

Russia and China are not simply great powers challenging the West. They also represent two alternative versions of authoritarian capitalism, or capitalist authoritarianism. Here is the biggest potential ideological competitor to liberal democratic capitalism since the end of communism.

Only when the people in control try to mimic free-market capitalism.  If they didn’t have us as an example, they wouldn’t know what to do.  What would China do without the U.S. market?

Radical Islamism may appeal to millions of Muslims, but it cannot reach beyond the faithful, except by conversion.

All it takes is a handful of them to kill millions of people.

He goes on to argue that an alliance of countries that are also democratic free-markets would be a bad idea.

There’s also a piece by Heraldo Muñoz, a dissident during the Pinochet era, who is Chile's ambassador to the United Nations, asking…

Should Pinochet be remembered merely as a tyrant who became an international symbol of repression, or as an economic reformer who turned Chile into a global success; and to what extent did the U.S. government bring about his dictatorship?

The bottom line here is that places like Darfur, Georgia, Iran, and North Korea are the default state of the world.  People are sinful and many are power hungry.  The reason we as a nation rose to prominence so quickly and have the freedoms and prosperity we do is because of the brilliance of the founders in understanding human nature and the need to limit government and the need for a Christian populace.  The government should stick to the Constitution.  The Church should make disciples.

We often hear politicians and activists talking about “rights”, as in a right to health insurance, or “We should not take away a couple’s right to marry” or there should be a “right” to just about anything.  I have said before that true rights do not obligate others without their consent.  God (that’s Nature, to you pagans, philosophical naturalists, etc.) has given us many rights.  The government does not give us rights.  It is supposed to protect our rights from those who would infringe upon them by force or fraud.  The Constitution does not give us our rights.  It lists some of our rights, but it also says that we retain all rights and powers not specifically given over to the government in the Constitution.

There can be a difference between a right and a freedom.  Not everything that we have the freedom to do is a right.  For example, we can run through an open field because it is open.  We can have that freedom.  But if that field is owned by someone else, we do not have a right to run through it.  If that owner decides to fence off the property, our freedom to run across it is gone, but we have not lost any right.  I have the freedom to order a pizza from Domino’s. But if they decide not to sell pizzas anymore, I can’t say that they’ve taken away my right.  What would be a violation of my rights would be if the federal government told me I could not freely exchange something I had for a pizza being offered freely for trade by Domino’s.

So the next time you see someone claiming that their “right” will be taken away, think about whether what they are talking about is really a right or if it has been a freedom they’ve enjoyed.

Gregory Rodriguez has an opinion piece in today’s Los Angeles Times claiming that marriage neutering may make us happier as a nation.

Well, right off of the top of my head I think it would almost be worth it if it would stop the incessant whining and cries of persecution from the homosexuality advocates, which would make me happy.  But we know they won’t stop.

But in their search to discover which countries are happier than others and why, these scholars -- led by University of Michigan political scientist Ronald Inglehart -- have stumbled on one pretty fundamental conclusion about what people want out of life: freedom.

I would argue that forcing me to issue neutered marriage licenses is taking away my freedom, and it doesn’t extend any new freedoms to anyone in California.

And -- here's the takeaway -- social tolerance "broadens the range of choices available to people," thereby enhancing happiness for both the tolerant and the intolerant alike.

Ah yes, freedom makes everyone happier – you know, casual fornication, shacking up, having kids out of wedlock,  abortion – except that these studies don’t take into account the children who grow up in broken homes, and how that has an impact on their happiness.  It takes years to see the results of that.

The transition from a subsistence economy to moderate economic security has a profound effect on a nation's happiness.

Yes, economic freedom is very important.

Traditional religion, according to the researchers, is also conducive to happiness.

Yes, but that’s not how you skewed this piece.  Interesting.

The study suggests that religious faith and social tolerance are a winning combination.

I find it hilarious that someone thinks that four judges overturning the voted will of the people – not to mention all of human history, and forcing the removal of “bride” and “groom” for marriage licenses - is “tolerance”.

In the ideals of American tradition, our laws have been meant to protect our God-given personal rights (such as freedom of speech and religion), protect property, and facilitate and protect honest trade.  Where our laws erred is when they sought to infringe upon these things, such as with slavery.  Ideally, someone should be free to do with their property and run their business as they choose, as long as they do not infringe upon the rights of others.

In order to rectify past injustices, we implemented laws that prevented employers and landlords from discriminating against people on personal characteristics such as “race”.  But this idea has grown into a nefarious, Orwellian situation where we are now in the disturbing position of passing laws and, even worse - suffering court decisions overturning laws – in an attempt to protect feelings, to keep one person from offending another, to affirm choices in personal behavior that bring nothing productive to general society.

How did we let ourselves be ruled like there is a right not to be offended, or a right to public affirmation of personal choices that should not be society’s concern, especially when these things infringe upon clearly recognized rights to freedom of speech and religion?

I often hear that “freedom of religion doesn’t give you the excuse to perpetrate bigotry”.  While homosexuality advocates would disagree, I don’t promote bigotry, either in law or personal interaction.  However, I do believe that if a gay man wanted to open a business and staff it entirely with other gay men, he should be allowed to do so (without tax funding, of course).  Protecting property rights does not mean supporting bigotry.  Neither is noticing that there is a difference between the sexes and it is that difference that makes marriage marriage, and also behooves us to license marriage as a state.

When people exercise their rights, sometimes they will do things with which we disagree.  Sometimes, someone will be offended, or their feelings will be hurt.  That is the price of liberty.  As long as someone isn’t harming the physical person of another, slandering or libeling them, or destroying or stealing their property or defrauding them, they should be allowed to do what they want with themselves and their property – including offend someone.

As far as traditional marriage licensing hurting the feelings of some gay people – that’s something they should learn to live with or get over.  Licenses are issued by the people of a state, and are a privilege – not a right.  Like all licenses, we issue marriage licenses for a specific reason, for a specific purpose, and that isn't because we think it is a great idea that this particular couple is planning a life together or that we can see they are in love.  We don't issue driver's licenses based on how much we think the person will enjoy driving.  A gay person can choose to obtain a marriage license the same way a straight person can.  That most gay people do not want to enter in to traditional marriage does not obligate the state to change the licensing, despite what the California Supreme Court ruled.

Finally, just because you have the freedom to do something doesn’t mean you have the right to do something.  There can’t be a legitimate right to do what is wrong – only a freedom to do so.  And if that wrong infringes on the rights of another, then the freedom to do it will either be curtailed or the action met with legal consequences.

Ideally, anyway.

...but we need to deal with reality.

We don’t live in a libertarian country.  Any move towards a libertarian policy needs to be weighed against what will remain "non-libertarian", at least until it gets addressed, too.

For example, I think people should be free to offer their services on a daily basis unencumbered, and anyone who wants to hire them should be able to do so, unencumbered.  And it really doesn’t matter to me at all if that person who is being hired is here legally or not.  But I also think that 1) there should be a lot less public property – places where day laborers tend to congregate; 2) there should be stronger private property laws, so that if someone wants to host day laborers, they can (AND they can set the conditions, such as “no littering”), and if others want them off of their property, they can remove them; 3) government should not regulate the workplace (aside from actual crimes like fraud), nor collect payroll taxes; 4) there shouldn’t be tax-funded public assistance programs and thus no illegal aliens getting my tax money; 5) there should be separation of state and school, so that I can choose whether or not to pay for the education of the children of illegal aliens; 6) the federal government should control of the national borders so that terrorists, criminals, and their tools don’t make it here.

Under those conditions, the complaints that many people have about day laborers would be addressed.

Libertarians often argue that even illegal aliens greatly contribute to our society, because of their inexpensive labor.  I heard this once from a libertarian guest on KFI’s John & Ken Show.  The hosts couldn’t believe it; they kept describing how illegal aliens were ruining neighborhoods, schools, and other things.  The hosts and the guest were kind of talking past each other.  Although I understood what was going on, the conversation never got to the point where the guest explained that in “his” world, the negatives of illegal aliens would be largely eliminated – in his world, the schools and roads and such are private property and not funded by taxes or controlled by government bureaucrats, and illegal aliens don’t get public assistance.  That’s something the hosts didn’t seem to catch, and something the guest never explicitly explained.

In a libertarian world, there are no tax-funded schools, so it doesn’t matter how many illegal aliens are in our schools.  In a libertarian world, infrastructure is paid for by users, not by taxpayers.  In a libertarian world, there are no social welfare programs paid for by taxes.

Take another example - “drugs”.  I would find legalizing them more tolerable if I have the right to freely fire (or not hire in the first place) someone who does them, and to protect myself and my property from someone who is high, and if I had other libertarian freedoms, such as not paying for the health care of druggies.

Legalizing prostitution is more tolerable if I can own the sidewalk in front of my business and bar streetwalkers from standing there.

Get the picture?

Over and over again, we see politicians, academics, activists, pop artists, and media propagandists proclaiming that we have a “right” to things such as health care, education, retirement pay, mass transit, housing, a job with a “living” wage, food, abortion, and doctor-assisted suicide, all funded and/or arranged for by the government.

This is not how the people who created and adopted our Constitution saw rights.

They saw rights as something we naturally had, something coming from “nature’s God”, and that it was the government’s role to protect, not grant, rights.

Living as we do in a bountiful, wealthy society of hundreds of million of people, it is tempting to look around and think you deserve - and therefore have a right - to something you see around you and that you want.  But again, that is not how the people who created and adopted our Constitution saw rights.

Take the right to free speech.

Your right to free speech does not mean anyone should be forced to listen to you.  They can walk way, and it wouldn’t be a violation of your right to free speech.  Nor does your right to free speech mean someone else has to provide you with their billboard, printer, telephone, satellite, DSL line, cable, or broadcasting system for you to get your message out.  You can pay them to provide those things.

You have a right to free speech because God gave you the means of communication – the physical abilities to communicate.  If you found yourself on an island where there was no government employees, no politicians, no telephone, no radio – you would still be able to talk with or sign to or write to anyone you encountered.  You could believe and worship (freedom of religion) as you saw fit.  You could use a rock or anything else you could get your hands on to defend yourself (right to bear arms).

You could take care of yourself, you could learn, you could store up for the future, you could build a cart or raft, you could build a hut, you could decide to make things or do things for other people in exchange for what they had to offer you, you could eat what you had access to, you could fling yourself against a boulder to kill the life within you, you could jump off of a cliff to kill yourself... HOWEVER, you could not FORCE someone else to perform surgery on you, or teach you something new, or take care of you just because you are old, or haul you around in their cart or raft, or build a hut for you, or to give you something to do and pay you whatever you want, or to go get food for you, or to perform an abortion on you, or to kill you gently – not without violating THEIR rights to choose what they want to do.  You could make VOLUNTARY exchanges and arrangements with them, if they chose to be near you.  Maybe they would even CHOOSE to do some of those things for you for free.

The government is not “someone else”.  It is us.  It is funded by us.  Now, we can collectively use force (via laws, backed up by the military, law enforcement, etc.) to FORCE a doctor to perform surgery on someone, and then pay them what we decide is fair or not pay them at all.  That is possible.  But that doesn’t make it right, and it doesn’t make it a right.

If you look at what the founders of the U.S. put in place, you’ll find a system where our natural rights are recognized and protected, and where everything else is based on a voluntary exchange in which force need not be involved, except to expose and counter theft and other denials of natural rights - crimes which involve force or deception themselves.  Health care provided by someone else is NOT a right.  It is something provided on a voluntary basis by doctors, nurses, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, etc. who have put a lot of time, effort, and money into getting to the point where they can provide those services and products.

Everyone should be able to offer their services and their property to whomever they choose, for the compensation they choose.  Sometimes that compensation will simply be a warm heart (that’s called charity).  Whoever is offered those goods, services, and property should have the choice to refuse, or make a counter offer on the compensation, or to agree to it as-is.  Likewise, if you are seeking goods, services, and property, you should be able to approach whomever you want and offer whatever you want as compensation, and go from there.  That is liberty. That is freedom.  That protects rights.

If you opened up a shoe store, you wouldn’t want government force to be used to set your prices, determine what kinds of shoes you will sell, or to force you to sell shoes to someone, even if that person will immediately take that shoe and throw it at other people.  People need shoes in the same way they need specialized health care.  Why should the doctor, nurse, hospital administrator, insurance company worker, or pharmaceutical researchers be treated that way?

What most people mean when they call for “universal health care” is that they want someone wealthier than they are to be forced to provide something to them.  There are wealthier people who call for such schemes, too, but almost invariably they do so because they think it will get them some personal advantage such as being able to use their connections in the government to be able to gain a monopoly or to skim money somewhere in the system.  When a company that manufactures medical equipment endorses increased government involvement in medical care, you can be sure it is because they are confident that they can manipulate the system to their advantage.  It is far easier to manipulate something when the power is centralized in Washington D.C. or Sacramento than when the power is with multiple organizations consisting of voluntary membership or spread among millions of families and individuals making their own choices.

Health care is not a right.  It costs money, and while it certainly is a wonderful thing when a medical professional chooses to take care of someone who will not be able to provide material compensation, that professional should not be forced to work for free or less than his or her worth.

If you make voluntary plans and arrangements that provide you with what you need and want in the areas of health care, education, retirement income, transportation, housing, work/wages, and food, then good for you.  Voluntary agreements (which don’t include any conspiracies to steal from, assault, or murder someone because they victim is not a volunteer) ARE something to which we have a right.  Exercise those rights, instead of counting on “someone else” to take care you simply because you are alive.

I’m in favor of property owners choosing what to do with their own property.

I’m in favor of employers choosing whom to hire, promote, and fire.

I’m in favor of employers choosing what they will offer as compensation, and employees choosing whether or not to accept.

I’m in favor of allowing each employee to choose whether or not to join a union.

I’m in favor of people choosing whether or not to pay for health insurance.

I’m in favor of people choosing whether or not they will save for the future.

I’m in favor of parents choosing which school, if any, their child will attend (if accepted), and which school(s), if any, they will financially support.

I’m in favor of people choosing whether or not they will own or carry a handgun, unless they’ve shown they can’t be trusted with a gun.

I’m in favor of people choosing whether or not they will support a business.

I’m in favor of people choosing whether or not to be charitable, and being able to choose which charitable efforts they will support.

I’m in favor of people, even if they are elected officials, choosing whether or not to publicly express their religion.

I'm NOT in favor of legally ensuring someone can choose to kill their own child without legal repercussions.