Freedom from within
I feel like I could die
I'm falling off
I don't know why
I still believe it when you say,
It's another perfect day
another perfect day...
- American Hi-Fi
The lyrics popped into my head when I read a quote on Samizdata from Holocaust survivor Victor Frankl.
In the midst of his experiences, Frankl would project himself into different circumstances, such as lecturing to his students after his release from the death camps. He would describe himself in the classroom, in his mind's eye, and give his students the lessons he was learning during his very torture.
Through a series of such disciplines ? mental, emotional, and moral, principally using memory and imagination ? he exercised his small, embryonic freedom until it grew larger and larger, until he had more freedom than his Nazi captors.
This is a truly individualist message about the power of the human will over the external universe. Only a collectivist view of the world can suppress this innate gift. Sure, there are authoritarians everywhere that try to define values for everyone else, and they often try to juxtapose depravity with dignity...
Romney has it absolutely right: it is one of society's most treasured institutions, and if it's also exclusionary, then that's just tough shit. (The same is true of the Boy Scouts, and look how the militant homosexual lobby is trying to infiltrate them, or failing which, put them out of business.)
...but they don't succeed unless others allow them to do so. Yet watching the local news here in Boston has shown me people are in fact willing to let their minds fall victim.
"We were pretty surprised that the court came out with such a positive response," said Ahlstrom, a teacher who works at three schools in Boston and MetroWest. "We hope that our relationship will be equally valued."
No. Muskets and bayonets do not determine value. Only the human mind can determine value. Allow John T. Kennedy and Lynette Warren to explain.
It's a core belief that dwells in the hearts of collectivists, liberal and conservative alike, that if they can, by force of law, dabble here and tweak there, then goodness and morality can be dispensed from the floors of state assemblies, legislatures, and city halls everywhere. Working from such a premise makes it nearly impossible to realize that there is nothing by way of grace or moral legitimacy that the state can bestow on anything. [...]
Sovereign Individuals are the Makers of Manners
Don't let the collectivists determine your values for you. There are more gigawatts of might in a single free mind than in all the atomic bombs combined.
Make everyday another perfect day.

It seems to me that the
It seems to me that the mania for State-sanctified same-sex unions is in large part an artifact of the insane employer-provided insurance scheme that persists in this country.
I respect Mr. du Toit's
I respect Mr. du Toit's strong stance in favor of gun ownership, but that link you posted Jonathan...good lord. It's sad he can't make the leap from one expression of freedom to another and divorce the entitlement rhetoric of the Left from the fundamental issue of freedom of association.
It's even sadder he absolutely refuses to keep the issue open for debate.