Tuesday, June 14, 2011
"Live Free or Die" - It's More Than a Motto
Bayou Renaissance Man has a link to an interesting study that ranks the 50 states with regard to the freedoms they give their residents. The state of my birth and my youth, New Hampshire, is first overall. It is interesting to note that only 4 of the Original 13 rank in the top half. Alaska, which you would think would be a haven for personal freedom and individuality ranks 44. Louisiana is 35th - not a great showing. New York, not surprisingly, is Tail End Charlie.
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4 comments:
I'm dubious. I note that Michigan is much higher on the index than we in Louisiana are. Having lived in both states, I don't perceive that I had greater personal freedoms in Michigan than in Louisiana.
Perhaps it is merely that where you live in each state (rural/urban, blue/red, etc.) has more bearings on your perceived freedoms than which state you live in. Or perhaps the difference between states is merely marginal and so there would be no perception of difference. I suspect, however, that their weighting of the various freedoms is merely so different than mine that the comparison that they are making is meaningless for me.
On reading some of the state by state summaries, I noticed that some of the criteria they used dealt with laws that could be considered Nanny State laws. For example, decriminalizing marijuana got states a higher rank. NH does not have a seat belt or motorcycle helmet law and hence got a higher rank on personal freedom. Texas would have fared better had it allowed gambling. So there is a give and take - if you want more personal freedom, you have take responsiblity for your own behavior. And that is something my folks taught me back in my teens.
The rankings were pretty cool, with one big exception: homeschooling. I think the 'freedom to homeschool' is the freedom to be ignorant. Texas' "no regulations whatsoever including no records-keeping" on homeschooling is particularly stupid: any college you'd want to apply to is going to want to see a HUGE number of records. There's a reason why you see very, very few homeschooled kids in college (despite around a million homeschooled kids in this country; sad).
Texas also gets credit for not going the Louisiana route on gambling in my book as well, but I see how that can fit into the ranking.
I agree with you on the home schooling thing. But I think the point behind the study was that you have the freedom to be stupid if you want to. The down side to that freedom is that the Nanny State is not going to protect you from yourself. You are free to gamble and ruin your life if you can't control it. You are free to eat fast food and weigh 400 lbs.
If you are not careful you end up like San Fransisco where they want to take your freedom to be circumcised, eat Kids Meals or own goldfish.
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