"The successful solution to every problem we ever face will always be MORE freedom, not less."

I'm glad to participate in this debate with you. Let us make it a good one. Good luck and have fun. Hopefully we both learn something in the process. Let me start by addressing your hypothetical situation and its attempt to justify your conclusion. Putting bed straps on the patient for no reason other than to protect the patient from harming himself -- with apparently no tangible reason to fear he will truly harm himself -- would certainly be a ridiculous practice. However, I feel that it fails to substantially support your conclusion. This situation is an example of limiting freedom -- yes. This situation is not solved by limiting the patient's freedom -- yes. Yet, it fails to address the true issues that lead to the necessity of restraining freedoms on many occasions. It is often needed to protect people from others. Some restraints need to be applied in order to prevent someone from harming others, and infringing on those peoples freedoms. So, let us continue the hypothetical situation. You wish to free the patient of his bed straps. But, the patient, being a patient, happens to be mentally ill and very violent, or, perhaps, he is very sick and very contagious. He is potentially a risk to himself, but more importantly a risk to others. With the latter, you may say he is more than just a risk, but a certainty of damage to others if freed from his straps. The answer now seems clearer -- the bed straps are superior to the lack there of. The bed straps are a successful solution. "The idea that we can help a patient's health by continuously adding various forms of bed strap is obviously insane." It does not seem that the goal of the doctor was to help his health in the first place, but rather, to restrain the patient and prevent his harm to himself. The temporary solution of strapping the patient was obviously not insane. If he was not strapped down, he would have hurt himself, or in my version, which allows the restraint of his freedom to be more justified, he would have hurt another. Now, of course, if it appears the patient is soon prepared to be relieved from his straps you would do so. The straps are not inherently permanent. If the patient moves on from this to be fine, he will not be strapped up again. If he begins to infringe on the freedoms of others by harming them, he should be strapped up again. His freedom should then be limited. And, that is a successful solution to the problem. By showing just one viable problem that could arise which is solved with less freedom as opposed to more freedom, your conclusion is nullified. "The same is true of law. The spirit is lost in time and situations change, laws by their nature resist adaptation, because they are modeled after physical law, which does not adapt at all. " The spirit of the law does not necessarily become lost over time. Situations may change, but for some laws there may be no realistic situations that would require its adaptation. Some things are always the same, and thus some laws will not require adaptation over time in the first place. "Options lead to solutions, and law limits options." However, laws do not eliminate all options. Law, or, 'less freedom', may outlaw viable solutions. It may also outlaw as many or more unviable solutions. By removing law in order to allow new viable options, you would also allow an innumerable amount of unviable, unmoral options. Perhaps removing law for one problem that occurs in your life will help solve the problem. You find your solution. But, in the process only more problems will be spawned by all the people in the world who would live to take advantage of their new freedoms -- even at the expense of others, and those people's freedoms. To solve these problems, you must reapply the bed straps, once again, you must limit the freedoms, and in doing so find a successful solution.