A brief chat between my daughter and I

[feilong80]

thought this was mildly amusing:

Me: Daughter,* did you know today is Independence Day?

Daughter: What's Independence Day?

Me: Independence Day is when America was born! A bunch of really smart people decided to make a country based on freedom!

Daughter: What's Freedom?

Me: Freedom is the idea that you can do whatever you want, as long as you don't hurt other people! Isn't that cool?

Daughter: But I like hurting people!**

Me: Well, uh, that's not freedom, that's anarchy.

Daughter: What's anarchy?

Me: Anarchy is when you let everyone do whatever they want, even if it hurts others. The idea is that order can spontaneously arise from chaos. I think it's stupid.***

Daughter (with massive cheshire cat grin): What's stupid?****

Me: Sigh.


*I don't use real names on the forum!
**Yes, this was actually said. She is a very cute and nice little girl, but she does rather enjoy doing things like doing knee first wrestling moves on my abs, so I'm thinking she thought freedom meant she couldn't play rough with daddy...
***This is the point of the conversation where I stop trying to make my ideas "three year old friendly."
****She knows what stupid is, but she KNOWS that asking me something that I already know she knows drives me NUTS! So she does it MORE!!!!

[ECM]

This is why we don't let children vote. No, wait. We let liberals vote...dammit.

As for that last footnote, well duh? She's a woman and she's trying out her training wheels. Wait until she's a teen! That'll be punishment for...well...you were kinda a saint as a teen, I wager, so I guess bad things do happen to good people...like liberals voting.

[feilong80]

Dude, I had to be like the easiest kid to raise EVAH.

Let me put it this way: when I started getting into music and into various rock bands, my parents trusted me to play in bars before I was 21 and not drink... and they were right. I never did.

There biggest complaint about me was that I spent lots of time in my room (either playing guitar or video games) and they worried about my social development or something like that.

[AllenSmithee]

A few things!

One is that I really like the idea of the fundamentals of a right winged society -- rugged individualism, striking out and forming your own lot in life. Becoming you! Creating you! Being you, and only you!

And I also understand that in terms of the world we live in, economics are a big ol' thing. Anyone who says otherwise is sort of crazy.

I don't like a lot of what goes on because of economics or because of people justifying their freedom, and I totally dig that -- doing what you want but not hurting others. That's a big thing in objectivism -- y'know, climbing the ladders, becoming great, but not stepping on other people's toes, and this is a big thing people don't know. People think that libertarian thought is basically telling everyone to sod off and eating other's food -- no. It might be stealing bread when you're starving -- because if the world has denied you bread it has denied you life and you have a right to that.

Anyway, yes, so basically, happy Independence Day! This is also the birthday of my first love... imagine that!

And, I'd like to say that Anarchy is not what you describe -- that is Anarchism. Anarchy is an ideal world of absolute democracy and peace, but one that'll never come to be, unfortunately. Basically, the absolute individual, where everyone does his part, and it is all good and cool. It is such an ideal it'll never actually come to be, and yeah, anarchism is terrible.