Was that last one too obvious?

I sure hope it was. It may seem that I am going way to far back trying to get a running start and will run out of steam when it's time to jump, but I think it's pretty important that I understand why we have a government before I just go around saying how other people are doing such a poor job running it. In my last post I have a link to a transcript of the declaration of independence not because I think that the founding father were these perfect people who had tea with God every afternoon, but because I wanted to get an idea where to go from my obvious stand point that there needs to be some framework that keeps us from "eliminating the competition".

I did read the whole thing, but since it is mostly about what a bad king the king of England was I will only refer to the part that anybody who did open the link was likely to read anyway. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". The first unalienable right is kind of indisputable to sane people. The second is weird since this document was written by a slave owner (don't get me wrong here, he was apparently pretty good to them), and our whole penal system is based on depriving evildoers of their freedom (and sometimes life), but the third one has got to be one of those things on which each person has a completely different view.

"The pursuit of happiness"!?!? Please forgive me, but I think I have to go to the most primal level to comprehend this. Say we go back to the scenario where there is no one on earth but me, and my actions are not bounded by the responsibility of not hurting someone else. Suppose the thing that would make me the most happy is to talk to someone... This leads me to a tangent.

Have you ever met one of those people who talks crap about you having a full time job, or going to school and tell you how you are stupid for giving their life away to someone else just to get some money? But then they don't have the money to do all the stuff they want to do with their free time, and they begrudgingly realize that they are the ones who are trapped? (I realize this is more of the "what is freedom?" thing, but I forgot to mention it).

Back to my point. Complete freedom does not necessarily equal happiness. maybe it is because people are social animals, but I think people need boundaries if for no other reason to appreciate their freedom from them (don't take this out of context). I for example found that while I was looking for a job, having no time constraints was more tedious than now that I have to wake up at a certain time each day.

Back to my other point. We know it is wrong to kill people, we know it is wrong to enslave people (at least we think we do), but I am not so sure we have a problem stepping on other people pursuit of happiness. There is just something that makes it so mush easier to plan for what we want without taking into account what others want,or need. I think I will have to devote my next post to examples of this, but I am finally sleepy now (yeah, this one just turned out to be an intro to the next one [or few] I guess)